Energy Healing for Dogs, by Nicole Wilde

Nicole Wilde wants to empower you, by helping you to discover the energy flowing through your own hands. It's not magic, but many of us may feel intimidated at the idea that we can actually send energy to another being--human or animal--falsely believing that the ability to do so is owned by a privileged few natural-born healers.

In Energy Healing for Dogs: Using Hands-On Healing to Improve Canine Health and Behavior, Nicole deftly and clearly demonstrates that we are all blessed with the ability to sense, clear, and affect another's energy field, simply by tapping into time-tested techniques that are easily accessible to anyone who wants to learn them. And in spite of the fact that the title of her book suggests that you have to be touching a dog in order for it to work, Nicole explains that you can send energy across a room or even across a continent, to help dogs who are out of sync with their emotions, their bodies, their companions, or their surroundings:


"When a dog experiences energetic blockages or imbalances, he may become
stressed, anxious, depressed, irritable, or even fearful or aggressive. . .Although
energy healing is not a substitute for training or medical care, it can serve as an
excellent adjunct. When a being achieves a state of homeostasis--balance--the
result is better health, a sense of well-being, and better behavior. That applies
to both dogs and people. When we are balanced energetically, we feel healthy,
happy, and content, and are therefore likely to interact in positive ways with
those around us."

All living beings are made up of energy, and are surrounded by an electromagnetic field--sometimes called an aura--which vibrates at a certain frequency. When we--or our animals--are sick, or frightened, or angry, our energy field can contract, or mutate, or become murky, and that's when problems can ensue. So when we adopt a shelter dog who has been displaced from the only family it ever knew, and then been caged and bombarded by the sounds and smells of other fearful, barking dogs, it's no wonder that he may display behavioral problems. Until his energy field has been cleared and calmed, he may come across as sullen or unpredictable or just downright depressed.

For anyone who has faced these situations, Nicole's book is a godsend. She shows us how we can affect our dogs' health and happiness in ways we may never have imagined possible. She coaches would-be canine healers to let go of their expectations, hold an intention of the highest good for their dogs, and then to just let energy flow. We don't have to push it or pull it or make it go. We just have to let it happen.

There are terrific chapters on clearing a dog's energy field, using a technique similar to one known as "Magnetic Clearing" in Healing Touch for Animals, and on drawing pain and inflammation out of a dog's body by visualizing your palm as a strong magnet. And there are some very cool "Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments" you can try if you remain skeptical.

I loved Nicole's way of presenting a potentially complex topic with ease and simplicity. If you share your life with dogs, you'll want to read Energy Healing for Dogs and incorporate its techniques into your personal toolkit.

Talk with Nicole Wilde, Author of Energy Healing for Dogs, during October 28th Teleconference

The next "Conversations with Animal Authors" teleconference will feature Nicole Wilde, who will discuss her book, Energy Healing for Dogs: Using Hands-On Healing to Improve Canine Health and Behavior, on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 8:00pm (EDT).  The call is free and all are invited to participate.

Nicole Wilde is a natural healer and Reiki Master, as well as a Certified Pet Dog Trainer who specializes in behavior issues.  A prolific writer, she is the athor of seven earlier books, including Help for Your Fearful Dog.  Nicole runs Gentle Guidance Dog Training in southern California, offers energy healing for pets, and assists rescue groups, shelters, and dogs in need.

In Energy Healing for Dogs, Nicole demystifies and simplifies the process of channeling energy for the benefit of our canine companions, and so effortlessly describes how to do it that even readers with no prior healing experience will feel empowered to try it with their own animals.

If you would like to learn how to use energy to heal your dog, you can join the "Conversations with Animal Authors" call by dialing 616-347-8100 and entering PIN #1063739.  Long-distance charges may apply.  For those who would like to hear the interview, but cannot participate live, a recording of the call will be posted here within a few days after the event.

Equine ER: Stories from Year in the Life of an Equine Veterinary Hospital, by Leslie Guttman

In Equine ER: Stories from a Year in the Life of an Equine Veterinary Hospital, Leslie Guttman was given an incredible opportunity. She has used it well. For one entire year, the Lexington, KY-based journalist had unprecedented, 24/7 access to the often tense--and always intense--workings of the prestigious Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, where veterinarians treat 11,000 horses each year, and attend to another 5000 during barn calls.

She made me feel like I was there, too.

Leslie's gift is in her ability to make the reader care passionately about what happens to the horses she chronicles, many of whom are in terrible trouble. You'll root for them to make it. And sometimes, miraculously, they do. But sometimes, in spite of sleepless nights and herculean efforts, and months of round-the-clock care, they don't.

I cheered when the feisty thoroughbred mare, Slewpy's Star, who was dying of pleuropneumonia, was brought back to life with the help of the experimental drug, SLO, and the expertise of Dr. Bonnie Barr. But I cried when the sweet, sweet Quarter Horse mare, Surely Awesome, eventually lost her battle, after shattering the long pastern bone of her right hind leg when she was 10 months pregnant, being expertly put back together by Dr. Alan Ruggles, and subsequently foaling and nursing a beautiful filly, nicknamed Sophie:

"So many stories in the horse world are about missed chances, or almost
making it--the colt that almost won the big race like his grand-sire. The
mare that had just about recovered from a difficult delivery but then
died of an infection. The thousands of shocked people in the stands right
after the Belmont: two minutes earlier they had thought Big Brown would
win the Triple Crown. It is this almostness that can drive you crazy, whether
you're in breeding, racing, training, owning, showing, healing.  Surely Awesome
had almost made it."

In each of the cases she profiles, Leslie deftly weaves information about cutting-edge veterinary medical initiatives into her gripping life-and-death accounts of horses whose fates are anything but certain. Most of the horses who arrive at the doors of the Rood & Riddle hospital are there because it offers their last, tentative chance at survival. Some, like the proud thoroughbred colt, Chelokee, leave the clinic in remarkably good shape, the beneficiary of the arthrodesis technique pioneered by the hospital's Dr. Larry Bramlage, and others, like the gallant Dutch Warmblood, Piaff, perish, a victim of the complications of EPM.

Yet Leslie writes with suspense, not sentimentality. She's a great storyteller, accurately capturing the clinical details of each case, but infusing them with so much more. You can feel the tension in an examining room, the achey "spent" feeling of the vets, interns, and techs who seem never to run out of gas, even after they've already put in a full shift and a horse's condition suddenly spirals out of control. And besides the dignity of the horses themselves, what also pours through these pages is the emotional investment made by the veterinarians and their staff in each patient. I honestly hadn't expected that.

The stories of the horses in Equine ER are compelling because, as Leslie writes:

"Throughout the year, I saw that people need horses more than horses
need people, whether it is an owner with the dream of the winner's
circle on Derby Day or someone with an illness or life setback who finds
strength and determination through the love of a horse or the example
of its courage. I came to see that horses save people more than the
other way around."

If you need horses, or care about them, you'll want to read Equine ER too.

Talk with Leslie Guttman, Author of Equine ER, during September 29th Teleconference

The next "Conversations with Animal Authors" teleconference will feature Leslie Guttman, who will discuss her recently published book, Equine ER: Stories from a Year in the Life of an Equine Veterinary Hospital, during a free hour-long event on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 8:00pm (EDT).

Leslie Guttman is an independent journalist, freelance writer, and animal lover who spent a year on the ground and driving around with veterinarians at the Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington Kentucky, which she describes as "the Mayo Clinic of horse hospitals."

Leslie's intimate and often heart-wrenching observations of the life and death dramas that are played out at Rood & Riddle and at the Bluegrass farms attended by its practitioners make Equine ER a riveting read. I couldn't put it down, and I found myself in tears more than once as I poured through its pages.

I look forward to talking with Leslie about her experiences as a witness to the often super-human efforts put forth by Rood & Riddle veterinarians to save every kind of equine creature, both famous and and unheralded: foals who seemed doomed during difficult births, horses who sustained dire injuries in freak paddock accidents, racehorses who suffered catastrophic breakdowns on the track, and horses stricken by illnesses that put their lives in imminent danger.

If you would like to learn more about Equine ER, and hear first-hand what goes on behind the scenes of one of the top equine hospitals in the world, you can join the call by dialing 616-347-8100 and entering PIN #1063739. Long-distance charges may apply.

If you can't participate live, a recording of the interview will be posted on this site within a few days after the event.

The Animal Reiki Handbook, by Kathleen Prasad and SARA Members

As the leading Animal Reiki educator in the country for the last several years, Kathleen Prasad is a silent but very powerful revolutionary in the field of holistic healing for animals. Her previous book, Animal Reiki: Using Energy to Heal the Animals in Your Life, co-written with Elizabeth Fulton, was the first to address this cutting-edge topic, and it remains the best.

Kathleen's latest mission is to support animal-loving Reiki practitioners who would like to ease the fear, stress, anxiety, grief, and sense of aloneness and helplessness that is experienced by dogs, cats, horses, and rabbits who, for various reasons, no longer have a home of their own, and are confined behind bars. Most are scarred; virtually all are scared.

With a scarcity of financial and human resources, shelters and sanctuaries are usually able to offer little more than kindness and the rudiments of physical sustenance to the creatures in their care. The animals' emotional and spiritual needs are mostly unmet.

Until now.

With other like-minded colleagues, Kathleen has founded the Shelter Animal Reiki Association (SARA), to not only teach an understanding of energy healing, but to provide a standardized approach to implementing professional Animal Reiki programs in shelters and sanctuaries, and to document the effects of this gentle intervention, not only on the animals themselves, but on the people who devote their days to caring for them.

The Animal Reiki Handbook: Finding Your Way With Reiki in Your Local Shelter, Sanctuary or Rescue, is the group's down-to-earth primer on how to introduce the practice of Reiki into a shelter environment, and what to expect from both the captive cats and dogs and the volunteers and staff, many of whom will be unfamiliar with Reiki, and even skeptical of the usefulness of this modality, whose benefits flow unseen.

According to The Animal Reiki Handbook, Reiki "can maintain health and well-being on the physical, mental and emotional levels, induce deep relaxation and stress relief, accelerate healing in sick or injured animals, or animals recovering from surgery, help reduce pain and inflammation, help reduce behavior problems and aggression, help animals heal from past mental/physical trauma, complement conventional and alternative therapies," and even "support the dying process."

And perhaps most intriguingly, it is the animals themselves who control the Reiki treatment process, "taking only the amount of energy they wish to receive."

The challenges of bringing Reiki into a shelter environment are formidable, and The Animal Reiki Handbook addresses them with realism and compassion. Not only are there noises and interruptions that require the practitioner to stay centered and calm, but there are aggressive dogs, terrified cats, and suspicious horses who may initially want no part of what they perceive as unwanted and even threatening intervention. And in certain shelters, there is always the possibility that the animal who is receiving a Reiki treatment today may be euthanized tomorrow.

The Animal Reiki Handbook deals with all of these situations with grace, and ultimately, with a gentle reminder to the practitioner that, "You are there to create a healing and harmonic energetic space, not only for the animals, but also for anyone and everyone who is within that space and open to healing." It is wonderful to contemplate how the quiet clarity of those called to work in shelters or sanctuaries as Animal Reiki volunteers will truly transform the lives of everyone within the range of their healing intent.

Talk with Animal Reiki Expert Kathleen Prasad during the August 31st "Conversations with Animal Authors" Teleconference

The next "Conversations with Animal Authors" teleconference will feature Kathleen Prasad of Animal Reiki Source, who will discuss her new book, The Animal Reiki Handbook: Finding Your Way with Reiki in Your Local Shelter, Sanctuary or Rescue, during a free hour-long call-in event on Monday, August 31st at 9:00pm (EDT).

Kathleen Prasad has been a full-time Animal Reiki teacher since 2002. In addition to The Animal Reiki Handbook, she is the co-author of Animal Reiki: Using Energy to Heal the Animals in Your Life, and has written many educational articles on animals and Reiki for holistic publications around the world. Kathleen's work has been featured in The Journal of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, Animal Fair, The Whole Dog Journal, Dog Fancy, Animal Wellness Magazine, Equine Wellness Magazine, and Natural Horse Talk Magazine.

From my own experience as a student of Kathleen's I can attest to her compassion and effectiveness as a teacher of how Reiki can be used to help and heal animals who are experiencing pain, discomfort, stress, or illness, or who are approaching the end of their lives. Kathleen's quiet presence unfailingly radiates a feeling of peace to both animals and people.

If you would like to learn more about Animal Reiki, and about the Shelter Animal Reiki Association, you can join the call by dialing 616-347-8100 and entering PIN #1063739. Long-distance charges may apply. If you can't be on the call but would like to hear the interview, I'll be posting a link to the audio within a few days after the event.

The Magic of Music for Pets, by Janet Marlow

It seems intuitive that music which sounds soothing to us, would also have the same effect on our animals. But is that true?

Well, yes and no, according to Janet Marlow's short primer, The Magic of Music for Pets: How to Use Music for the Well-Being of Dogs, Cats and Horses. Janet is an internationally known composer, with a special expertise in designing acoustically appropriate environments for dogs, cats, and horses. As she explains in The Magic of Music for Pets, "music for human listening does not guarantee behavioral calm and a soothing environment for animals."

This is true, in part, because dogs, cats, and horses (the animals most thoroughly studied by Ms. Marlow) are capable of hearing different frequencies than we are, and are most comfortable when sounds are within their optimal hearing ranges. Horses have a hearing range between 55 and 33,500 Hertz (Hz), which is similar to ours, while dogs (67 to 45,000 Hz) and cats (45 to 64,000 Hz) are capable of hearing sounds that are considerably higher.

So how can our knowledge of our animals' sound sensitivities help us to design music that will enhance their lives? It's here where Janet really excels, describing the process she used to create her CD series, Relaxation Music for My Pet and Me, and Relaxation Music for Horses: "When composing, I place the music in the register or octave range best suited to the animal. The final stage of the production is to digitally position the frequency range of the music directly in the middle of their hearing comfort zone to avoid any extremes that would cause an animal stress or make them flee from their resting place."

Based on my own observations of my Springer Spaniel, Tish, I can attest that Janet's techniques worked amazingly well in Relaxation Music for My Pet and Me (Volume 3). Within a few moments of my turning it on, Tish gravitated to the room where it was playing, and was soon fast asleep!

The earlier Relaxation Music for Dogs and Cats volumes apparently achieved the same results when Ms. Marlow tested them at veterinarians' offices, local shelters and rescues, grooming parlors, and private homes:

"I could see that dogs were resting within 5 to 7 minutes. Cats that were
out of view in the home came into the room with the music and curled up
to rest. . .Rescued dogs at the kennel diminished their anxious barking.
The recovery area at the veterinary hospital had a pleasant feel to it
and the staff commented to me that it helped them feel calm as well."

Similar effects were noticed when Janet played her Relaxation Music for Horses compositions at local stables. I found it fascinating that she modeled her equine music not on classical motifs but on country music, based on anecdotal reports from horse people who had noticed that their horses seemed to enjoy listening to Country Music stations when the radio was on in the barn.

Because the music in Janet Marlow's Relaxation series for animals has been composed and recorded with such care and awareness, it can be profoundly useful in easing the stress of separation anxiety, for example, or during thunderstorms, or for animals who fear getting into cars or trailers. These sensitively created CDs are a gift of peace for both animals and their people.