Much of my work is with animals that live closely with people as their companions in day-to-day life. I love my work with these animals and am deeply moved and inspired daily by the depth of their love for their people and the many ways people and their animals show their devotion to each other. In addition, an important part of my path with animals is to become acquainted with the wild and “exotic” animals that live in all corners of our world and to share their knowledge and wisdom with people.

All animals hold a special place in my heart, and especially wild animals. As a child I was able to communicate with many animals: those who shared my home, the neighbors’ dogs, the horses at the stable where I took riding lessons, and the wild animals in the area around my home.

In the woods behind our house I had a secret retreat, a special spot on a log by the stream, where I would go to be alone with nature and the animals. This solitary time invariably restored me. While I sat quietly on my log, the wild animals would come and go about their business, accepting me to some degree as one of their own.

Silently observing the animals and communing with them, I felt their thoughts and feelings washing over me. Much like the way clouds float across a summer sky causing shifting patterns of light on the ground, I could feel the shifting thoughts and feelings of the animals around me. The animals’ presence and the rhythms of the natural world would help me shed the stresses of the day and find my center again.

As a child I took all this for granted, but as I grew older the culture exerted a strong pressure to abandon “childish” ideas of communicating with animals. After a particularly sad experience with my horse in my teens, I stopped resisting the culture’s pressure and turned my attention to fitting in more completely with the adolescent human world.

Many years later, when I began to heal animals professionally with Reiki, the ability to communicate with them re-emerged. Animals are very conscious of giving something in return to those who show them compassion, and many animals took it upon themselves to help me re-learn how to listen to and communicate with them in return for the healing they received. Many of the shelter animals I worked with, as well as my private animal clients, began to show me how to listen to and speak with them; and one day, at home, the deer literally began to come out of the forest for healing and to assist me in learning to communicate with them and other animals.

Despite the importance to me of my work with Animal Reiki, the animals continued to point me down a different path, one of listening to them and assisting people in understanding them more fully. They have brought me back full circle to what was a natural occupation and source of delight for me as a child.

I continue to offer Reiki healing to the wild animals around my home, who come to me for healing when they are sick, injured, or troubled. My relationship with the herd of deer that lives in my area began when a pregnant doe chose our entry courtyard to deliver her fawn. Gradually the herd and I have moved into a close relationship, and they have come to trust me and to regard me as their healer and their friend.

When the deer are sick or injured, they come to my entry courtyard and wait until I come home or until I look out and see them there. Sometimes they even go from window to window looking in to try to catch my attention if I am home. Over time they have brought all manner of injuries and illnesses to me for help.

My work with the deer and other wild animals has taught me more about healing animals  than anything else I have done or read. The wild deer are not subject to any form of coercion or desire to please a loved human companion. Their understanding of Reiki and its benefits and their incorporation of it into the life of the herd are, for me, the ultimate testimonials to the potential of energy and spiritual healing for animals.

In return for the healing they received, the deer tutored me patiently about animals and how to communicate with them and nudged me gently onto the path of animal communication as my life’s work. Communicating with animals and assisting animals and their people in understanding each other is the most inspiring and rewarding work I can imagine; and living and working with wild animals is the realization of a childhood dream of understanding, affection, and mutual support with wild creatures.