The REIKIDOGS Blog

Moving out of the house I've occupied for the past decade, I had to practice discernment as I attempted clutter elimination. Looking around every room, every day, I labored over what to discard and what to keep, what was necessary and what was excess. During the three-month process, I gathered scattered pottery pieces and in the closet rediscovered beautiful watercolors a friend did for me in the early 90s. We collaborated on a children's book about elephant conservation in Africa; she did remarkable paintings of the elephants. Just before Hurricane Andrew hit us in 1992, I took the draft to Miami Metrozoo as a gift, hoping they could publish it and use it for fundraising to stop African elephant slaughter. The hurricane surprised all of South Florida by refusing containment along the coast and instead brutally impacted southwest Dade County where Metrozoo is situated. I remember the news reports of demolished aviaries that freed hundreds of rare birds. Metrozoo was a...

I was driving with a long-time friend of mine, a multiple dog owner and former teaching colleague, sharing with her a recent reading I had done on an injured spaniel in Pennsylvania. I had read for her now-departed German Shepherd, Athena, three times: once, when her puppy exhuberance led her to destroy the bathroom towels; a second time when she developed a fear of airplanes and helicopters and refused to go for walks; and a final time, when she lay immobilized on the patio, giving us permission to let her leave the earth gently. So Maryann was no stranger to my work. "How did you do a reading without going to Pennsylvania? On the phone?," she asked. I said, "No, via e-mail." She reacted with surprise. "I know you almost 20 years and am still finding out new things about you." I thought about it and realized that this surprise was most likely a glitch on my end because I never explained to her exactly how I am able to do readings across the cou...