Tuesday’s Tail: ❤️Strongheart call to action❤️Today, on this new moon, I’m asking you to take action for animals. 2018 feels to me like a year in which every small (and big) step is going to make a difference and even though sometimes we feel powerless to affect some difficult setbacks on a national & global scale, like losing legal environmental protections, there are so many ways we can personally claim (or reclaim) our power to help animals. We have tremendous power as individuals whose hearts are strong enough to love animals as equals. We become even more powerful when combining all of our actions into a movement to transcend the hierarchy of species through love.💜

Here are 5 simply easy actions we can take this week/month/anytime for animals:

1.) Tell someone about the immense love you feel for an animal companion (here or in spirit.) Talk about it authentically & fearlessly without editing and without hiding the full depth of emotion. When others hear this, it empowers them to do the same, and to acknowledge their own feelings. And if it is someone who doesn’t quite understand the truth and emotion that backs up your words, it will still give them pause and promote thinking about it in a new way.

2.) “Save” an insect. Gently and kindly scoop up and take outside an insect rather than killing them. This is also highly beneficial as an example if done in public or with others around because they will see your example and again, pause to consider, because the kindness you show will speak for itself.

3.) Have one super gourmet “foodie” vegetarian or vegan meal at a restaurant or at home. If you are not already veg-otherwise of course enjoy all your meals this way.) Just one, to try, but make it a really good one.

4.) Take 3 seconds to look at your beauty and cleaning products for the house before buying and make sure they are cruelty free.

5.) Consider one step you can take to help local wildlife around you. It could be a birdbath if you have a garden. Or educating someone about the incredible benefits of possums (or another less- popular animal neighbor.) Or deciding to not use toxic herbicides/pesticides. It can feel overwhelming to do all of these & more at once. Pick one, the easiest one & start there.
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❤️Thank you for being strong for the animals❤️

It's a fresh new year and as I sit here after my cat son Merlin climbed on my lap to snuggle, delaying my writing by 20 minutes or so, all that is coming to me are the words gratitude & honoring. I'm so grateful for my animal family, both here and in spirit, and I want to focus on honoring them and all they bring to our lives. There are so many ways to honor our animal companions.

If they are living, being present with them is so special. Truly being in the moment with them, not only when we are on our cellphones & watching tv, but taking time to look at them, connect heart to heart, checking in. Asking what they need. Sometimes they may drive us a little crazy running full speed through the house, meowing or barking. There is always a reason. Yesterday my cat kids were feeling a little bit of "cabin fever" because it has been too cold to go outside in their catio & playpen. My first instinct was to ask them to calm down, but when I stepped back & checked in I was able to feel this excess energy they needed to run off. So I adjusted my thinking and instead played more inter-actively with them, giving them space to chase a ribbon and these long leaves one of our plants drops-they love chasing them. I also set up their play pen in the living room and filled it with tissue paper left over from the holidays, to enrich their environment with new elements. They love jumping unto a pile of paper and chasing toys through it. When they ask for affection, or offer it, like Merlin just did earlier-if it is at all possible- drop what you are doing for a few minutes and give it to them/accept it. This always ends up lifting up our hearts as much as theirs, (if not more) and sometimes they are doing it for us more than for themselves!

We can also honor our companions who have crossed the rainbow bridge in so many ways. Thinking about them, talking to them (they can hear us,) keeping them also still present in our lives, realizing they are only a thought away. I love having their photos on the wall, and of course connect with them all the time. A kitty in spirit I communicated with wanted an oil painting made when her parents asked for ways to honor her memory. Whether in spirit or living, photos and paintings are a lovely tribute. I mentioned writing a love letter to them a few weeks ago. I am fortunate that as a photographer I have hundreds of wonderful photos of mine, but I also enjoy commissioning paintings. Hilary K www.hilarykart.com/who designed my logo included Merlin & Gracie Belle in it-so I see them on there all the time. I love the way she paints animals. Recently they were painted by Nicole Piar www.nicolepiar.com/who created the magical & whimsical Spirit Cats deck which I love. A few years ago we were surprised by wonderful neighbors who asked an artist friend to paint them. 

Finally, since this is my first post for 2018, I want to include my wish for this year. Last year I asked for us to change our language and stop referring to animals as "it" and instead use "he, she, them." And to replace words like "owner" with "guardian" or "parent," since we can not own another being. For 2018 I wish for us to expand our circle of kindness to all animals, including wildlife too. To be grateful for and honor what they bring to our lives even if it isn't always what we want. To honor the squirrels that eat the bird seed and find a way to feed/love them too and not chase them away. To honor the tiny insects in our homes and gently escort them out if necessary. And going even a tiny bit further and extending the honor & gratitude to the trees and plants around us. We are all so very connected and I feel strongly that 2018 is going to be a big year for us stronghearts to lead the way in transcending the species hierarchy and to showing all beings kindness, honor, gratitude and love. 

On the evening of May 28th at 7:02pm my world stopped.

My little 1.5 year old white, high spirited pitbull pup, Wynne, came into the kitchen while I was on a conference call. As she normally does, she made her appearance and headed for the pantry.

Only this time, she turned around, looked at me in sheer panic and began to seize intensely. I have seen dogs seize before, Wynne’s sister Carlee has had seizures for years, but nothing like this. In my gut I felt something was very wrong.

After she seized for almost an 20 minutes straight, which is very odd, I was frantically calling my mom, boyfriend and cousin who happens to be a vet. Long story short, I had to rush Wynne to the animal hospital 20 minutes away in Atlanta traffic all the while, she is still seizing in the back of my car, this makes it a total of almost an hour since her seizure started. We make it to the vet, they keep her overnight, I’m thinking that I would just pick her up in the morning and all would be fine.

I was wrong.  

I was a complete wreck and as soon as I returned home from the emergency vet, I remembered my friend Kelley Knight, who owns Modern Mystic Shop, had had an animal Intuitive at her shop a few weeks prior. Being an intuitive myself, but too close to the situation to even hear guidance…. I immediately sent Sigrira a message. She got back to me in no time and it’s been healing history ever since.

The next morning, I woke up early to go get Wynne from the emergency vet, or so I thought. I got there and the doc that kept her alive through the night had some bad news for me, she still had some seizure activity and needed some extensive testing and care….I was freaking out inside. How the hell did this happen?

So I had to put Wynne in the back of my car, with tubes and all the things, including her peeing all over herself (so sad). I took her 10 minutes down the road to Blue Pearl Vet Hospital where she ended up staying for a week.

In the time that I dropped her off at the hospital, Sigrira was completely amazing. She connected with Wynne last minute and got back to me right away. As it turns out, Wynne had felt sort of off for a little bit, a day at most which was odd to me because she didn’t seem like anything was wrong. Since we had just gotten back in town after being adventuring out west for 2 weeks I thought maybe we were just adjusting to our routine again. We had someone stay at the house with my girls while we were gone, so they were NOT at a kennel while we were away, so it couldn’t have been anything that happened while we were gone.

Let me rewind to when I adopted Wynne and brought her home. Wynne and I have not had it smooth sailing since she came to me. To be brief, She was an anxious little pup that bit a few vet techs when they tried to clip her nails at 3 months old, but wouldn’t you bite them if you didn’t know what was going on? They told me I should get rid of her or put her down because she’s aggressive and she will just get worse. Of course, I cried about that and felt in my gut that she was not the aggressive dog they thought she was (she’s actually sweeter than my little italian greyhound y’all). So from the start, Wynne and I have been through It with a capital I, together.

The day of Wynne’s episode, we had a great walk outside. She was playing fine, like her usual self. She didn’t show any sign that there was something off inside of her. Sigrira was able to pick up on Wynne feeling bad, drinking some sort of liquid that may have had something to do with it. At the time, I had no idea what that liquid could have been.

In the time between me dropping Wynne off at the other hospital and then heading home, Blue Pearl vet called and said I needed to make a decision, either the MRI or try steroids and antibiotics and see if that works, since we had very little information at the time about what had happened in the hours prior. I was terrified and just beyond in shock, how could I make a decision on my baby that was not even 2 and we had very little information about what ACTUALLY was happening.

They said I needed to either have a $5,000 MRI to see what was up, or they could start antibiotics and steroids and hope for the best. At this point, I was heartbroken. Of course I was ready to max out a credit card to make it happen. I was going to do everything in my power to save her.  I didn’t have the money for the MRI. Deep in my gut I knew that it was NOT a brain tumor. But if I didn’t do that test, was she going to die? It all felt so unfair that they wouldn’t do everything in their power to save my special bug.

I talked with Sigira, she had connected with Wynne to see if the MRI was absolutely needed. Right then, she let me know that no, it’s okay for now, but if she gets worse, it needed to be done. So that bought me a little bit of time. I prayed so hard for answers and healing. That is all I could do at that point.

About 2 hours later, I got a call that Wynne was doing better, the steroids and antibiotics were clearly working, but we were not out of the woods yet. I fully believe that the reiki that Sigrira was sending Wynne and the prayers I lifted up to Spirit were working. Over the next 2 days, Wynne continued to improve, Sigrira continued to check in with her and let me know how she was doing. Wynne had severe muscle pain, which was due to the fact that she seized for so long, and really, partially due to the root cause of her episode.

Wynne was in the hospital from Monday - Thursday. There were visitation hours like human hospitals, so my boyfriend Jason would take me there in the afternoons so we could see her and spend some time with her. The first day was really hard for me as she was so doped up on meds and when she saw us she would just cry, like mama take me home! My heart hurt so bad.

The day finally came that we could have a visit with her in a private room with no lines connected to her or doctors. I was a nervous wreck... What if she seized again? What if something else were to happen?
I was so traumatized from that whole thing I made one of the doctors stay in the room with us! Over the next 24 hours she began to really improve on the meds. At this point, she was on 2  high doses of anti seizure meds, 2 HEAVY antibiotics,  and  a very large dose of Prednisone. Yikes. That’s a lot of drugs.

The vet called me on Thursday morning and said that Wynne was well enough to come home. I knew she wanted to just come home and heal. Talking with Sigrira the days prior, all Wynne wanted to do was come home. So, Jason was leaving town that day for work, so I had my mom come up to Atlanta to help me with her because I had no idea how much work it would be and what I was about to embark on. We went to pick her up on Thursday evening, the docs pulled us into a private room and there was a stack of meds and paperwork sitting on the counter. I just started to cry. I was so overwhelmed with what they were telling me.

You are probably wondering what in the hey was the actual cause…. At this point in the game, they told me that she had some sort of immune mediated meningitis….. This is straight out of her discharge papers, and to be honest every time I read it, I had this insane feeling of doubt. There is NO WAY this dog could have something like this. I also had contacted Wynne’s foster mom whom we have stayed in touch since I adopted Wynne and she had connections to all of the other pups in the litter, not a thing wrong with any of the other 7 pups, which is why I was so baffled.  I work with immune system in humans and this just did not seem to fit. However, I went with it. So here is what they thought she had:

 “ Wynne’s long term treatment will likely consist of a long, slow taper of the steroids (over months). With this treatment, there are typically 3 categories of response that we can see. Some dogs will respond very well, and recover over a 3-5 month period of steroid treatment, the second group may relapse over time, the third group of dogs will never respond to therapy and will continue to get worse over time….”

After reading that and talking to the doctors and them telling me that she is going to have to be on these meds for the rest of her life,  I was crushed…and mad. Trying to accept that, okay, this is just what we have to deal with. I was still unsure of exactly what the cause was, I knew it was something internal and Wynne kept expressing to Sigrira that it was like the circuits in her brain would rapidly just fire. Wynne was so drugged, anxious, skinny, VERY sensitive to the touch for weeks when we brought her home, but she was alive.

We brought her home, VERY unprepared for what was about to go down once we got home. Due to the meds, Wynne was not able to have great control over her bladder. This was a wake up call. I live in a 3 story townhouse. Making it down the stairs before pee is everywhere was a real challenge.

I remember looking at my mom in tears thinking, I am not sure I can do this and if this is how her quality of life will be moving forward, it makes me really sad. I sucked it up, had an idea of doggy diapers and it changed my life y’all. It took a few days to figure out the brand that would hold all the pee in and not get on the floor, but we did it.
The next few weeks looked like this: Changing about 40 diapers a day, waking up every 2 hours and giving meds, morning and night. I completely changed her food and I did everything I knew to do to keep her gut healthy. I had a feeling that the food was playing a role in her inflammatory disorder. It was REAL.

Both of my girls switched to completely raw food and I also added CBD oil into their regime. Holy cow, this helped SOOOO much! Wynne’s body was able to heal faster with such clean food and a natural anti seizure/ anti inflammatory oil. I was in full on mommy mode for months. I was going to do everything in my power to help my girl make it through this. I was NOT going to lose her.

Over the next few months, we were able to wean Wynne off of prednisone, thank goodness, the amount of food, water and barking she did while on that med was insane. I remember I kept asking Sigrira, what is with her barking!! HA! It was driving me bonkers but Wynne was also letting me know, “Hey mom, don’t freak out, I’m getting better!!”

In July, after we had gotten her off the the steroid, I reached out to an animal chiropractor to come and see Wynne and give her some adjustments to correct the spinal alignment that was so forcefully affected by her seizing. Wynne loved and still loves her adjustments with Dr. April. I know between connecting with Sigrira and having her as a guide on our journey towards healing, having Dr. April come adjust her, cleaning up their diet and really being deliberate with what I was putting in her body and around her body has helped us get to where we are.

I made some serious changes and while making those changes I tried to educate myself as much as I could on canine health.

You see, I help humans heal who have been through the same things as Wynne had, I just needed to adapt my knowledge to a dog and make it happen. So that is what I did. I found a holistic, osteopath vet in my area, who is AMAZING and she helped me wean Wynne off of all of her other meds. We went from taking 5 meds to zero in 6 months.

I am happy to report that Wynne is seizure free still to this day. Wynne had some brain damage that she had to come back from. Everyday things were the best thing for her to relearn, like walking up the stairs (thank goodness she can do it again because carrying 70lbs up and down stairs is hard work), she even had to learn how to sit again. She had to relearn and gain muscle control over her back end which took about 3 months. She’s a fighter.
I also learned through connecting with Sigrira that Wynne is a medium, just like her mama! She sees energy, she helps me with MY work…. How cool is that?! I knew from day 1 that Wynne was special.

When I first took Wynne to see Dr. Kim, the holistic osteopath vet, she was in bad shape, better shape than she was in months prior, but still not in a good place, her skin was bad, her ears were itchy, her kidneys, liver and pancreas were all shot and tired. You guys, Wynne was NOT EVEN 2 years old at this point.  I knew the medications that she was on were, actually doing more harm than good.

I knew I had to get her off of them, but I was still fearful that seizures would happen again. This is where Sigrira put my mind and heart at ease by checking in with Wynne and keeping me posted on how she was feeling with all of the things I had changed.


Here is the kicker, Dr. Kim is also very intuitive. She got a hit to look in her brain, she had parasites in her brain…. NO WONDER SHE HAD SEIZURES!!!!! She was also bitten by a spider, Brown Recluse to be exact,  weeks prior to her incident AND she had a bad reaction to her vaccinations that she had 6 months prior.

Had I spent that $5k on an MRI at Blue Pearl, it would not have shown anything! I am still mad to this day that they did not do some sort of parasite test on her. They kept asking me if she ate anything and what food I fed her, etc. Nothing about well, maybe she could have worms in her brain.

Well, Dr. Kim took care of that, we got her on some homeopathic remedies for the brown recluse spider bite, started to slowly wean her off of keppra and phenobarbital, added some whole food supplements to help her thyroid and other organs heal and cleanse. That first day that I took Wynne to see Dr. Kim I knew we  were in the right place. I knew we could finish out the rest of this healing journey with truth and support of what is actually good for her and not what vet businesses push on dogs to “see if it works”.

This has been a long road, but I am so grateful for Sigrira and her amazing abilities to connect with animals and help them heal, she also helped me so much. She put my heart at ease and I knew I had her support and I trusted her. Over the course of this journey, I spoke with Sigrira about 8 times, more so in the beginning and now we just intermittently check in, which is so very valuable to me.  Wynne is truly my little miracle pup.

Here’s what all did I change about both my pups’ food, vaccines, flea and tick, etc…

I changed them from kibble, which I thought was really clean, HAAAAA! NOT! If you have not seen Pet Fooled yet, please do yourself a favor and watch it.

My girls eat a completely raw diet. Which at first was a little intimidating but once I dove in, it’s actually not that hard at all! There is actually a local company in Atlanta called Rebel Raw that is amazing for raw food if you are just starting out. They make it all for you, and even deliver it to your door if you want! This has saved me so much time!!

They snack on things like blueberries, sweet potatoes, apples, carrots, dehydrated livers, mangos, raspberries, duck feet, chicken feet.

I also decided that they would never be vaccinated again because, guess what, the other thing I learned was that they don’t need all of those chemicals in their body!!! They only need ONE rabies shot in their life. ONE. And the “pet business” has you getting them every year. No wonder we are experiencing all of these crazy things with our furkids! Our vet now, Dr. Kimberly Parker-Royer, will do titers on her to see how her immunity is and IF she needs another vaccine, but the chances are slim!

For flea, tick and mosquitoes I use an Easy Defense tag that goes on their collar from Only Natural Pet.com. This actually matches the energy of your pet’s body to naturally repel these guys. And it does work!

For heartworm prevention I use all natural remedy that is twice yearly doses, in October and April for two weeks…. That’s it!! I get it on Only Natural Pet.com.

There is so much that the pet industry is hiding and it’s up to us to question it, research on our own and create good choices from there when it comes to taking care of our furbabies!

Wynne has taught me so much about the power of love, faith, trusting my intuition and taking action. She’s truly my little miracle and she continues to teach me every day! I am forever grateful for Sigrira and all of her continuing help with helping Wynne heal and get back to her spunky self!!

Story written by Colleen McCarthy www.colleen-mccarthy.com/
Photos by Colleen McCarthy

I would like to share a dream I had a while back & wrote down because it felt so vivid. I am getting guidance from the animals that now is the time to share it. 

​In the dream I saw bears in a forest. The sun set and as it got dark there were bears with walls (they looked like castle walls) around their hearts and they had trouble seeing. Then I noticed other bears that had removed the walls around their hearts and their hearts were radiating so very bright that they were able to shine the light forward and lead the way for the other bears until they too were brave enough to tear down the walls around their hearts. There were big tall trees and they had fairy tale like doors that opened and had homes in them. The visuals were so beautiful of the hearts shining almost like stars or lanterns in the bears' chests, illuminating the dark forest path for all. 

I wish I could paint it but for now I took a photo of a little jade bear I have in my meditation area that reminds me of Jarvis and when I posed him to take the photo these lovely rainbows came through the window -they are not photoshopped.