The incident and the gate to healing

These are our thoughts feelings and experiences. We accept responsibility for them. We understand your journey may be different. We honor and respect that. Wishing you effortless joy. Eloise and Jake

Some history:
Rich (my husband) and I have been married for 17 years although we have known each other since we were 9. We both love animals; especially dogs. We have had several dogs together as a couple and several in our childhood and previous relationships.
Polly is a longhaired flat coat type black lab. Any one who meets her immediately is attracted to her sweetness and beauty. She is like a person and is very intuitive. She prefers people to other dogs. She tolerates other dogs and animals, but will always seek out attention and play with humans. Up until three years she was the only dog. (And very much the princess alpha dog) And loyal and connected to each of us equally. She was a rescue dog and was probably less than a year when we got her. (in Florida)
Three years ago we were presented with the opportunity to rescue Gus after hurricane Katrina. He was brought to Florida from Mississippi by our VET. At first I did not connect with him, because he didn’t have a lab personality, and he was presented to us as a lab. After spending the weekend with him however and watching his body language, it became apparent to us that he had boxer in him. He has a boxer type personality. (And a beautiful boxer body and Lab face) When he plays with other boxers (females) they run and play the same). Then we fell in love with him. And have had him ever since: about 3 years.
For three years Gus has been a joy, a love, a playful delight. We have had hours of raw gratefulness that we were given two such incredible treats as these two children. Now as delightful as Gus has been, he is a dog. He could care less about people, but loves to play with dogs. When Polly doesn’t want to play, Gus willingly turns to us, and we have a blast with him. We have hugged, wrestled with, rolled around on the floor with, and probably invaded every inch of “his space”. Without any remote sign that there ever could be a problem. I even reached down once and took a piece of raw animal meat out of his mouth that he was chewing on like an addict sucks on his drug, without even a growl or a dirty look. Some people were afraid of him because his boxer body and strength could knock you over if you were paying attention to where his body was going. But he has always been a delight. He sort of became Rich’s dog and Polly became my dog. However both dogs follow Rich when he is outside and follow me when it is inside time.
From a pure energetic perspective, Gus has been sound asleep in other part of the house and yet senses when I am meditating and about 10 minutes into the journey he seeks me out and puts his paw on my arm or lays down next to me.
Polly looks into your eyes and you know she is connected to you and is speaking to you with her eyes. With Gus that spiritual connection is not in his eyes but always seems to show up when spirit is being honored or communed with.
I am very much connected to my animal totems; which at this time I connect with about 9 of them. Rich is a whisperer type to many animals, dogs, cats, horses and doesn’t believe in killing any of them.
THEN… Wednesday before Thanksgiving after dinner, I reached over (was sitting on the floor next to Gus) and hugged him. He was licking rich’s plate from dinner, and out of the blue he turned and attacked me, with violence. (I can still see in my minds eye the look on his face for that split second before his jaws hit my face). To get him off of me, rich kicked him out of instinct (which is unlike rich’s passive personality) and Gus then turned on him, but only got his shoe. He ripped my cheek to shreds, and ended up in one ER who transferred me to another due to the severity of it, and 100 stitches later, I am home and in totally shock. His shots were up to date so we quarantined him here. I am healing physically with great speed; thee plastics guy was truly impressed. But emotionally I am trying to figure this out.
Gus has changed in all of this. He used to happily bound over to me, wiggling his butt and smiling. Now he sadly strolls over turns around and just sits down next to me, with such sad eyes.
My big melt down was Saturday night after the incident, and I was ready to put the dog down. Rich was not. Then after much discussion he became more open to it, but then I did not feel good about it.
We decided on a plan: Which included:
1. getting the opinion of our holistic vet.
2. getting the opinion of a traditional vet
3. getting the opinion of a trainer or behavioral specialist
4. getting a muzzle for when unexpected company comes
5. to kennel him when the grandchildren come
6. praying and seeking out are own independent wisdom
Then we heard about a healer / pet psychic. http://www.healingwholeself.net/index.htm We decide to start there. She asked us to give her a little history and describe our circumstances, which is where the majority of this blog has come from.
This is what I / we said to her:
From a psychotherapeutic perspective: I love this dog, and can pet him, and walk him and talk to him with love. I am saddened that I do not feel safe with him. Heart wrenching sad that I can’t (won’t) hug him. I can’t figure this out. I was so blindsided. However: I also know I have some responsibility to be sure this never happens again to another animal or another human.
I am also a firm believer in the laws of attraction: And know that I/we attracted this into our life to provide wisdom, growth, and love. I know the universe is blessing us as we speak because we have had this experience. I can be grateful for it, as I simultaneously feel fear. I do not make decisions out of fear; I try to make them out of love.
The Intention of session:
Our consensus together of what we needed from the session was:
1. Some understanding of why he did it? (We want him to feel good and feel safe and us not do again what ever it was that we did to trigger this)
2. Healing for us: Emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually (us meaning Gus, Rich and I)
3. What do we do now? Should we put him down to insure the safety of “others”?
Other relevant miscellaneous information:
Rich and I are a very balanced couple. (True yin and yang) I thought that the majority of this was for my benefit, because I took the biggest hit. But also knew it affected us both tremendously.
My husband is a very old soul who lives in the present moment. His spirituality is subtle (but actually can be more powerful than mine) He is very concrete, and linear. I am very actively participating in my journey and can flip from right to left brain almost to a fault. I do energy work, have been on shamanic journeys and can relate to what you say on your web site. I have believed that prior to this that there were no accidents, only levels of awareness and consciousness. This event has gone to the core of that. What did I miss?
I have never been able to explain to him in language he understands, what channeling is, or even energy work. but believe on many levels that he does it without even knowing it. (He is an old old healer) He is not skeptical about what healers and light workers do, because he has seen so many spiritual miracles come out of situations I present to him (like going to a sweat lodge etc). But he kept asking: “well what is she going to do? Does she give advice, or does she see things or what?” His precious very simplistic mind can not wrap itself around what healing from an energetic perspective is all about. (I really don’t know either but I just trust the process and know that intuitively it’s the right thing to do.)
We both knew there were past traumas related to animals wrapped up in this: (ie: Rich had a dog with his ex wife. Her name was Mission. She was a huge St Bernard. (I have seen pictures of her). He had to put her down because his apartment was too small and the neighbors complained about her. He said: “I will never forgive myself for that.”
We lost a dog to an alligator attack, another beloved dog to heart worm despite being treated, another one hit by a car etc…
We knew the need for healing existed on all levels. Will try to describe in words exactly what happened in our session. But will do that in another message. This message needs to end with the thought that. We are grateful we did not react impulsively. We are grateful we started with a healer. We have decided to keep Gus.
We are grateful for the abundance of prayers and love we have received. We are grateful for the healing of my face. (at the level of a miracle). We are grateful for light workers, and energy healers. We are grateful for the many gifts we have begun to discover as a result of this incident. I still have questions about it… but the fear and anxiety of it has substantially subsided.