| My name is Karyn
Garvin. I have been training animals for several years. I have
worked closely with many dog owners, and I have been doing it
long enough to have had the privilege of training one puppy,
and of later being there for the owner when that dog came to
the end of its journey here with us. A lot of my clients come
to me in that time of heartbreak, and I am always there for
them; for as Robert Schuller often says, "In love's service,
only broken hearts will do" -- and, yes, my heart has been
broken, too! Even in this moment of writing I feel the grief,
as I share with you a story I have shared with many. It is a
blessed story which is meant to be shared. It was my comfort
through one of the most difficult losses of my life. It has
comforted the hearts of many others since.
It is a story about the loss of my first dog. She wasn't
really my first dog - as a child growing up, my family always
had dogs, dogs I loved, dogs whose passing I mourned. This dog,
Erikka, was more like a soul mate. This dog was my daughter.
I had always wanted a large dog, so when I graduated from junior
college and moved into an apartment with my first girl friend,
Jane, the time seemed right. Our apartment had been broken into;
we felt we needed to do something to protect ourselves. So we
each decided to get a puppy. One Sunday morning we looked though
the newspaper classified section. Jane found an ad for an Irish
setter which sounded good to her, and I found an ad for German
Shepherds which sounded great to me. That very evening we both
had puppies: Simon, a male Irish setter and Erikka, my silver
female German Shepherd.
In junior college,
psychology courses had been my passion, and I had decided that
I wanted to be a psychologist. I know that my obsession with
understanding behavior stemmed from wanting to understand myself.
I was fascinated with the principles of behavior modification,
and quite naturally applied them to training my new puppy. Wow,
did it ever work! Erikka loved her lessons as much as
I did. We were equally impressed with what she was capable
of learning and to this day, I've not known another dog as smart
or as knowledgeable as she was. In the twenty years since I
have been without her no other dog has taken her place.
You can't replace times and
loves that have passed. Erikka was there for me. She was my
buddy, my partner at work as a dog trainer, and my protector.
In fact, she kept me alive in my suicidal years. Overwhelmed
with grief, and still too young to know how to rise above it,
I wanted to leave this planet. There were a few things that
kept me from taking that final step such as not wanting to hurt
anyone I knew. But most of all, I knew I couldn't leave Erikka
behind, which meant I would have to take her with me. And there
was no way I could take her life. Because of my love for her,
it was easier to stay alive.
Erikka worked with me every day, and it
is largely because of her I became a professional dog trainer.
I quickly grew so close to her that I hated going to work without
her. I therefore started looking for a job to which she could
accompany me. My first job working with dogs was for a guard
dog service. I did that for a couple of years while I continued
going to school. Then I applied for a job with a dog training
company in Phoenix. The man who owned the business hired me
strictly on Erikka's performance, so impressed was he by her.
So Erikka continued to work with me daily. She and I were as
one. I knew her and she me. With and without words we communicated.
In Erikka's sixth year I started thinking
about the fact that she was getting older; attached to her as
I was I dreaded the thought that one day I'd be without her.
So I got another German Shepherd puppy and I named her Ingrid.
Ingrid was a very different dog. From the start she was totally
fixated on Erikka: she was as bonded to Erikka as Erikka was
bonded to me. Poor Ingrid was less than a year of age when she
came down with valley fever, and it hit her hard. Valley fever
-coccidial mycosis -- is endemic to California's Central Valley,
southern Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, and is caused by
fungal spores found in the soil and blowing dust. Certain
people and animals are more susceptible to it than others.
When Ingrid contracted the disease the treatment
in use today was only at the experimental stage, and not available
to help her. I realized Ingrid was dying, slowly and painfully.
When she became paralyzed in her hind quarters, and in such
pain that she would snap at me if I went to move her, I knew
the kindest thing I could do was to take her in to the vet and
have her put to sleep. But even though I knew this was the right
thing to do, it was one of the hardest decisions and the most
difficult action I ever had to take. Usually when you do the
right thing, it just automatically feels good. But not this.
It takes a lot of justifying to come to peace with euthanasia,
particularly when you really don't know what happens to your
animals after they die.
To make matters worse, shortly before Ingrid
got so very sick, my Erikka was diagnosed with the same disease,
valley fever. I was devastated. Luckily Erikka remained pretty
healthy until her last day. There were mornings where I knew
she was feeling poorly, but still she wanted to go to work with
me. She loved her job. I have a hunch that Erikka and I had
one thing in common: our work was a big part of our self-worth.
But there came the morning when I woke up,
looked at Erikka, and could tell right away she had taken a
turn for the worse. She really felt awful. I remember the panic.
I called the veterinarian and made an appointment to take her
in at once. But before bundling her into the truck I called
Beatrice Lydecker, with whom I had once spoken about Erikka,
to see if she could give me any insight.
Beatrice Lydecker is the author of several
books, among them What The Animals Tell Me, and
Stories the Animals Tell Me. When I first had heard about
Beatrice and her uncanny ability to communicate with animals,
I had been skeptical, but having used her services I had become
a believer. She had worked with several veterinarians in puzzling
cases where perhaps a horse was having difficulties and the
vet couldn't figure out what was going on, and Bea was sensitive
enough to be able to feel how the animal felt, where it was
hurting and help the veterinarian to locate the problem. She
would also do phone consultations and communicate with pets
and help their owners over the phone. Distance was immaterial.
So I called Beatrice, told her what was going on with Erikka
and that I was about to rush her to the vet. I asked her what
she thought. Should I cancel all of my appointments and
stay at home with her all day? Yes, Beatrice replied, that would
be a good idea. And so that was decided and off to the vet I
went. The doctor was clearly concerned when she saw Erikka,
but could not tell exactly what was going on. She drew a blood
sample and gave her a huge injection of vitamins as an interim
measure. You could see Erikka felt better almost immediately.
As we drove home to await the results of the blood test Erikka
was obviously happier, sitting up and looking out the truck
window. Once home I tried to make her comfortable. She had always
had a thing about keeping her eye on me every second so I made
her a bed on a couch and sort of positioned it in the middle
of the living room so she could see me wherever I was. I made
sure to not be out of her sight for long: I didn't want her
to have to come looking for me.
Alas, the improvement from the vitamins
shot was short-lived. As the day wore on and I kept checking
on her I could see she was feeling worse by the hour. She was
gradually losing her ability to move, and by the hour I could
see her loosing her vision. She was going blind, she could barely
lift her head, and I myself was almost blind with grief. I was
in tears, humbled, powerless and totally in Gods hands. I remember
praying, crying "God, you're the only one that can save
her." Then, I heard these words: SHE WILL BE REPLACED WITH
SOMETHING MUCH GREATER... That was a shock! Where did those
words come from? The voice was loud and clear. I looked around
the room in wonder, trying to see who had spoken these words.
They weren't my words. Replacing Erikka was certainly not on
my mind at that moment. But this experience actually shocked
me out of my grief and panic until later that evening. Around
nine o'clock my girlfriend Cindy came home from work.
She took one look at Erikka and she too knew that this was it.
By this time the poor dog was almost totally blind and unable
to even lift her head. Again panic grabbed and shook me. I couldn't
just sit there!!
Grasping at straws I called Beatrice again,
not really thinking she would answer the phone at that time
of night since she had strict office hours. To my surprise she
did answer. And her first words, even before I spoke were "Yes
Karyn,". I told her Erikka was dying and I really didn't
know what to do. There really was nothing I could do, she replied
adding, "You know when you called this morning I felt like
she was dying but I really didn't want to say that over the
phone till I was sure."
"Karyn," she continued, "do
you believe in Heaven?" "Yes, why?" I answered.
She said, "Well, it might help you to know that dogs go
to heaven too! I said "What?", thinking what kind
of story is this? Then she described how when dogs are very
near death they see this big green grassy hill with a bright
white light behind it. When they go over the hill into the white
light they go to heaven too. And again I'm thinking, "yeah
what is this lady telling me?"
Beatrice continued: "Karyn, whenever
a dog dies some dog that it has known in their lifetime comes
down to lead it up over the hill. Right now you have a solid
black, little female German Shepherd there with you to lead
the way for Erikka."
"You mean Ingrid?", I said. Immediately
on hearing me mention that name, Erikka started screaming and
throwing her body struggling to sit up. "Erikka, is Ingrid
here?", I asked. And she screamed again, trying to sit
up saying to me as clearly as if she spoke English, "YES,
YES INGRID IS HERE!.
I got it! I was astounded! I had never mentioned
anything to Beatrice about Ingrid and Ingrid, who had died approximately
a month and a half before, was indeed a solid black little female
German Shepherd. I got off the phone with Bea, still dumbfounded.
Of course to test what I had just heard I asked Erikka one more
time and she again told me in the same way, YES!
Still not satisfied, still wanting to save
her, after I got off the phone with Bea I called the veterinarian
at home. "This is it," I said, "she's dying.
What are we going to do? We talked for a moment and then I said
"Shall I bring her in and maybe you can give her another
shot?" All at once Erikka started screaming at me again
but this time she was saying NO, NO, and it was only when I
told her, "It's OK, you can stay" that she relaxed.
The veterinarian heard her screaming over the phone and cried,
"My God, Karyn, is that her?" I said yes, and she
intuitively knew what Erikka was telling me. She said, "Karyn,
you've got to let her go!"
That was it. I got off the phone. I knew
the time had come and there was nothing I could do to stop things.
I lay down beside Erikka. She really did
not want to go. But I told her, "It's OK, you can
go now." She was terribly tense, so I started calming her
with my voice, telling her to relax. Speaking quietly to her
I soothed her into a relaxed state and she seemed to slip away.
Sure that she was now gone I sat up, but she came back again,
so once more I went through the whole procedure of relaxing
her, and the next time I felt her slip away I just lay there
and stayed still till she was gone. I helped her leave. God
was everywhere in that room at that moment. And as sad as it
was, there was a joy that it was over. Erikka had climbed that
grassy hill into the light, and God was there everywhere. I
didn't go to bed sad that night; on the contrary, I was full
of peace. I was overwhelmed, astounded by the miracle of God's
presence. Of course, when I woke up next morning I held Erikka
close to me, and cried for hours over my loss.
Years later I was involved in a seminar
by the Shanti foundation, an organization which operates as
a support system for people who are terminally ill. The seminar
gives you training which, upon completion, qualifies you as
a volunteer for the organization. The concerns and feelings
of someone near death are brought to light, so that you in turn
can understand them and be a good support system. You can well
imagine the gravity and sadness that training of this sort would
bring up for those attending.
I thought I was faring quite well through
the program until they showed a video of people being interviewed
who were very near death. Over and over again the dying reported
experiences such as seeing a deceased aunt standing at the foot
of the bed, knowing the aunt had come to show them the way.
It was during this video that I burst into tears as hearing
from the lips of humans what my Shepherd had told me so many
years before. I know dogs go to heaven, too. After all, as Elizabeth
Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs,
once said, "It wouldn't be heaven without dogs!" |
