Love, Miracles, and Animal Healing: A heartwarming look at the spiritual bond between animals and humans - Softcover

Proctor, Pam; Schoen, Allen M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684822733 ISBN 13: 9780684822730

Publisher: Fireside, 1996

Synopsis

Reveals natural and effective healing techniques, presents the case stories of seemingly hopeless animal patients, and explains how to stock a homeopathic medicine chest

About this title

About the Author:

Allen M. Schoen, D.V.M., is the founder and director of the Veterinary Institute for Therapeutic Alternatives in Sherman, Connecticut, where he lives. A renowned author and international lecturer, Dr. Schoen holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Cornell University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

CHAPTER ONE

Megan's Miracles

Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends the animals, especially for animals who are suffering; for any that are hunted or lost, or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death. We entreat for them all thy mercy and pity and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals and so to share the blessings of the merciful.
Albert Schweitzer

My awakening as a veterinarian began the day I met her.

She had the worst case of heartworm disease I had ever seen. Peering through a microscope at a slide smeared with her blood, I was aghast to see that her red blood cells were being crowded out by dozens of immature worms -- a sure sign that the disease was in an advanced stage.

That could mean only one thing. By now, thousands of insidious "microfilaria," as the baby worms are called, had already multiplied and moved into her heart tissue. There, left untreated, they had grown into adult worms up to a foot long. Little by little, they would continue to fill up her heart until she died of heart failure.

With my stethoscope, I listened to her heart and lungs and knew from the coarse sound of her breathing that she didn't have much time left. But I also knew that I couldn't just abandon her. Even though I held out little hope that she would pull through the long, dangerous treatment, something about her compelled me to try to do everything in my power to save her.

With a sigh, I looked into the tired, pleading eyes of the sick, homeless golden retriever and made a promise: "If you make it, I'll keep you."

I called her Megan, a name that conjured up images of greatness. The Irish had popularized the name as a diminutive of Margaret. And like the moon, which the Greeks called Margarita, or "great pearl," Megan was for me a precious gift that I sensed would illuminate my life.

A friend of mine had found Megan in the little Yankee town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, not far from Peterborough, where I had my first job as a veterinarian. Day after day, the forlorn creature would wander lethargically outside my friend's office, looking for a handout and a shred of kindness. Every few steps, she would collapse to the ground in paroxysms of coughing, then struggle to get up, and, a few steps later, collapse again.

There were no identification tags. Not even a collar to suggest that once, long ago, someone had loved and cared for her. She was alone, sick, and helpless.

My friend knew where to bring her. Just the week before, I had announced my new personal dog policy: "Because I'm so busy, I don't want a dog unless it's a golden retriever, completely trained, well mannered, sweet, and loving."

That was Megan. I was hooked the minute my friend brought her late one night to my little white cabin in the woods. She had the dearest face I had ever seen. As I patted her head and scratched under her chin, she immediately nuzzled up close, as though we were long lost friends.

With a detached, veterinarian's eye, I did a quick appraisal of her condition. She appeared to be about four years old, and although her dark gold coat was dull and dry, I could tell she had once been a beauty. Now, she looked old and haggard. Her gums were pale, and her hacking cough signaled the severity of her condition. I suspected the mosquito-borne heartworm disease, which was rampant in that part of New Hampshire. Any dog that did not receive preventive treatments was almost certain to be stricken.

I spent a sleepless night, with Megan at the foot of my bed. Then the next morning I took her to my office and confirmed the diagnosis with a blood test.

The treatment that I began immediately was almost worse than the disease. Twice a day for the next two days, I injected a derivative of arsenic intravenously into Megan's bloodstream through a catheter in her front leg. The poison would slowly work its way through her system to kill off the deadly worms that were clogging her heart.

Megan must have sensed that I was trying to help her. I could tell because never once did she flinch from the needle or recoil like other dogs. Instead, she dutifully held out her paw, and as I took it in my hand to insert the IV needle, she seemed to whimper a mournful acknowledgment of my efforts.

For the next month, Megan had to be kept as quiet as possible to make sure that the remains of the dead worms were slowly reabsorbed by her body. In this delicate process, which is similar to what happens when a lump of sugar is dissolved in a cup of tea, cellular enzymes break down the worms bit by bit into chemicals that pass into the bloodstream. There, they are carried off and excreted as waste. The danger was that during this time, any physical exertion could cause chunks of the worms to dislodge and form clots that could block her lungs as well as her kidneys or liver.

I tried everything I could to keep her from moving around. During the day, I took her to the office and put her in a cage at the animal hospital, a cavernous former barn filled with about thirty different cages for recovering patients. In between appointments, I would run over to Megan, give her a pat on the head and a few words of encouragement, then rush back to my work. At night, I walked her to my car and brought her home to the cabin, where she would curl up on a thick, fluffy blanket in front of the wood stove. Many nights after a long day of work, I was out in the snow chopping wood to keep the fire stoked so that she would be comfortable.

Megan never failed to show her gratitude. When I came in from the cold with an armload of wood, she lifted her head and beckoned me to her for a warm hug. When I visited her cage at the hospital, she let me know by the tender look in her eyes that the sound of my voice and the touch of my hand were all she needed to hang in there for a little while longer.

Despite her inner calm, I was often uneasy. Like the father of a newborn baby, I awoke some nights in a panic, afraid that she had died in her sleep. I would scramble to the foot of the bed, where she was lying nearly inert, and put my head down by her nose to test her breathing. Only when I felt her breath on my face and saw her body move up and down in the quiet rhythms of respiration could I plop my head back down on the pillow to sleep.

Day by day, she improved. After about a month, she was strong enough to take the next phase of treatment -- a series of pills that would destroy any worm larvae still in her system. After another month had passed, I brought her into the office for a second blood test. By this time, her cough had gone, there was a brightness to her eyes, and her coat had the beginnings of a healthy sheen.

"Well, girl, are you ready?" I asked.

With that, Megan held out her paw for me to draw more blood. I prepared a slide, and what I saw through the microscope was miraculous. There, floating around in her plasma, were big, healthy red blood cells. There wasn't a trace of the heartworm, not even a wisp of microfilaria to hint at the horror she had faced. By all appearances, she was completely cured.

My broad smile reflected my inner excitement. As I leaned over to hug her, I must have communicated the overwhelming joy I felt because Megan let out a couple of boisterous barks, wagged her tail, and slobbered my face with kisses.

From that moment on, she came alive. As her health returned, the sweetness and warmth that had drawn me to her in the first place took on a new dimension. She seemed to possess a special gift for reaching out to others, a limitless capacity to love. It was as though she had a wellspring of maternal tenderness that created an instantaneous bond between her and her companions, no matter what the species. In her quiet, unassuming way, she became a life-giving force, reaching out to the sick animals that crossed her path and nursing them back to health.

My first glimpse of Megan's special talents as a healer came one night in January, when I brought home an injured lamb that had been viciously attacked by a pack of wild dogs. Such packs are not uncommon in wooded areas like those just outside Peterborough. Stray and abandoned dogs band together and, for survival, revert to the hunting and stalking behavior of their ancestral natures. This particular pack had surrounded the lamb and was going in for the kill when they were scared off by the farmer's gunshots.

The lamb, limp and lifeless, was carried into my office by the farmer early in the evening, just near closing time. Her tiny body was covered with tooth puncture wounds, and it was clear from the depth of the bites that she had barely escaped being torn to shreds by the frenzied pack.

As quickly as I could, I rigged up an IV tube in her neck and started administering electrolyte solution to the lamb to treat her for shock. After about a half hour, she looked up from the examining table and began to show signs of improvement. But she was still so weak I didn't think she would make it through the night. To give the tiny lamb the best chance to survive, I decided to bring her home and let her sleep in front of the wood stove as Megan had done. That way I could keep her warm and also check on her through the night.

But from the minute the lamb got home, I didn't have a chance to play nurse. Megan immediately took over, pouring out every ounce of her maternal concern on this injured creature. She padded over to the lamb and gently began to lick her, clean her, and nuzzle her. Her tongue was like a poultice, bathing the ugly wounds in a soothing balm. As she went about her ministrations, she seemed to be hardly a dog at all. Where the pack of wild dogs had attacked the lamb with intent to kill, Megan nursed her, intent only on restoring her to health.

Although the lamb was barely moving, she roused herself to respond to Megan's attentions with a wan little bleat. Megan paused for a moment to listen to the baaaaa, then kept licking all the more. And when she had finished, she nestled down right alongside the lamb and guarded her all through the night. There wasn't any question about where her duty lay. Without any prompting, she chose to forgo the pleasures of her customary spot at the foot of my bed so that she could sleep with her charge.

Early the next morning, I was roused by Megan, who tugged at my covers and led me toward the door. Thinking the worst, I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. There, standing before me on sturdy legs, was the lamb. And right alongside, like a proud mother, was Megan. Her tail was wagging wildly, and her tongue was hanging out of her mouth in a doggy sort of grin.

The very next day, we were able to send the lamb home to her farm. I say "we" because there was never any doubt in my mind about why the lamb had recovered so quickly. As a scientist I knew, of course, that the IV treatment for shock I had given that very first night had helped stabilize the lamb physically and set the stage for recovery. But in medicine there is often an intangible factor, a mysterious "something" that makes one patient get better and another fade away.

For the lamb, that something was Megan. In the deep communion between this canine Florence Nightingale and her patient, I could see a healing power that went far beyond anything I had learned in veterinary school. With her simple outpouring of love, Megan had touched the very essence of the other creature to cause a physical transformation within. The special bond that now existed between them had apparently energized the lamb and enabled her to respond positively to those complex inner chemical and electrical forces that can further the healing process.

From that day on, I began to look at Megan as a co-worker on my journey of healing. Often, when I had to go to the animal hospital late at night for an emergency, I would take her with me and let her roam the wards to see her "patients." I would watch in amazement as she went from cage to cage, licking the animals and caressing them. It didn't matter whether the creature was a dog, a cat, or a ferret. Her approach was always the same: love them, lick them, and sometimes even lie down with them. If an animal was too sick to stand up and reciprocate, she would simply lie down in front of the cage for a while to give comfort.

When Megan was around, any natural antipathy that might have existed between species seemed to disappear. One time she even acted as a midwife for a cat who had been rushed to the hospital at 3:00 A.M. while she was in the midst of giving birth. The cat, a Maine coon, had delivered one kitten at home, but another was stuck in the birth canal and she was howling in pain.

I had no choice but to do a cesarean section. With the owner holding down the cat and Megan pacing anxiously at the door, I administered anesthesia and prepared her for surgery. It was a race against the clock. With a few swift incisions with the scalpel, I opened up the uterus and breathed a sigh of relief. Two little gray balls of wet fur were still alive. Sadly, their little brother, who was lodged in the birth canal, didn't make it.

Carefully, I plucked the kittens from the womb and handed them to the owner. She cradled the kittens in her arms and carried them into the recovery room, where she laid them in a box I had lined with a soft towel. But the kittens, seeming quite disturbed without their mother, cried and cried.

It was their loud cries that summoned Megan into action. She rushed to the kittens' box and without even a pause started licking the amniotic fluid from their bodies. Instinctively, she seemed to understand that the mother cat, in a stupor from the anesthesia, was in no condition to care for her offspring.

The owner grew more and more agitated. As she watched Megan lick the helpless kittens, I could almost read the woman's thoughts: Would the dog suddenly become playful and toss one across the room? Would she turn vicious and cruelly attack them as they lay weak and blind? But then, just as I was about to step in and pull Megan away from the kittens, the look of concern on the owner's face softened into a smile. "She's like a surrogate mother!" she said in wonder.

To some dogs, mothering newborn kittens would have been an unnatural act. But for Megan, it was the most natural behavior in the world. Even more remarkable was that she had an uncanny sense of her true place in the scheme of things. As soon as the coon cat was well enough to join her kittens and start nursing them, Megan willingly stepped aside. There was no jockeying for power with the mother, no attempt to control the litter as though it were her own. Instead, standing quietly by the box, watching the contented kittens as they nursed, she wagged her tail in approval.

The cat and her kittens spent the rest of the night at the hospital, while Megan and I headed home to catch a few hours of sleep. By the time we arrived back at the hospital the next morning, the Maine coon was up and about, and in good enough shape to go home with her offspring.

Skeptics might ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Fireside
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0684822733
• ISBN 13: 9780684822730
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240