Your pet makes a contract with you to be your companion, to love you, to look after you and to do their best by you. Your pet knows when you’re not happy because they can feel it in your energy field. You go off on your travels during the day, picking up heavy emotions such as grief, shame, anger and resentment. You also create these emotions yourself through worry and fear. You carry them around with you like shopping bags, which get heavier and heavier the longer you carry them. Some of them you can let go of yourself, others you have great difficulty releasing.

When you come home from a difficult day and flop on the sofa, your pet comes over to you to sit by your side and a natural healing process occurs. Your pet wants to help you so they willingly absorb your pain, taking your shopping bags from you, so to speak, and helping you to feel better. Some animals are always tuned in to the energy of healing, so just sitting next to them can help you relax and feel better (I have a friend who says all cats are Reiki Masters!). Your pet does a better job at letting the energies go than you do because they don’t associate them with a particular worry. Your pet will clear these energies as fast as they can, providing you’re not bringing home far more emotional pain than they can handle. If your pet has made a soul contract to be your pet, it’s part of their job, and they do it willingly.

However, your pet may not have made that contract with you; they may be there for someone else or for some other purpose. Think about the pets you have had in your life – those you have felt close to and those you haven’t. A good example is my husband’s dog, Maxie. She’d acknowledge me in the house and come over to say hello, but it was him to whom she gave her heart. This was something I never realised until Maxie got hit by a car and was in the animal hospital. The day I heard she was hurt I was upset, but more for my family than for myself. I went to see her in the hospital and something strange happened energetically – she became my dog. In those last few days she transferred her contract to me, and she gave me her whole heart. I could feel the difference in the flow of energy between us, it was as if she knew that I would be there for her for the last few days of her life. When she died, I was devastated, not only because she had died, but because I realised that there was a closeness and flow between us at last, and it had been missing for all that time she was ours. What a blessing that was.

I was able to connect to a source of energy healing at the animal hospital and allow it to flow through my body and into Maxie’s through touch, to give her relief and enable her body to do what it needed to do. It calmed her down, she ate her food and seemed to improve. Her death was a shock to us, and my heart knows that it was her time to go, but my head is still coming to terms with it. We don’t always know the reason why something happens the way it happens.

Pets certainly touch us in ways we don’t expect. Now that you know your pet takes your heavy emotional energy from you, you can give something back to your pet in gratitude. I know many pets that have become sick on behalf of their owners. As a pet owner you can really help your pet by doing your own personal work and releasing the energies that can ultimately make you and your pet ill. When you’re less stressed and more relaxed, there’s room for the body to heal itself, and there’s room for joy to come in. Bringing joy home instead of stress is such a different experience for you, and for your pet too!

There are many practical ways that you can use energy healing to help you and your pet feel better. I always say that you don’t need to have a certificate or formal training to heal yourself, and you certainly don’t need to wait until there’s an accident or an emergency. If people have a daily spiritual practice then they’re in better shape to begin with, but if something does go wrong, knowing energy healing is right there at your fingertips (literally) is a huge comfort.

Here’s an easy exercise you can try on your own, or with your pet:

• Sit with your pet, put your feet on the ground and breathe.
• Bring your mind into the present moment as best as you can.
• When you feel present, allow yourself to visualise the number of shopping bags of emotional energy you’re carrying that you don’t need to carry.
• Let them dissolve away, and allow yourself to feel lighter. Know that you don’t need to carry anyone else’s pain – so let those shopping bags go too.
• Now breathe out all the stress and tension in your body, and breathe in a source of healing. It’s as simple as that – you’re the radio, tuning in to the vibration of healing, and you’re breathing it in. Breathe out emotional pain, breathe in healing.
• At this point visualise your pet’s biological energy field, and notice how it is getting softer with each breath you take because you are more relaxed.
• Allow the healing energy that you’re breathing in to flow down your arms, out of your hands and into your pet

You can sit like this as long as you want to, breathing in the healing, having it flow through you and into your pet through your hands. You can stroke your pet or just leave your hands gently on their body. Pets are natural healers so they don’t need as much healing as you do. They’ll get up and move away from you when they’ve had enough.

Pets will come into your life when you least expect it. After Maxie died we didn’t plan on getting a new dog for at least a year, but Milo showed up in the meantime. A friend of a friend needed a home for her dog, so she sent us a photo and we all fell in love instantly. The moment I met Milo I could feel the heart connection between us. This was Maxie’s gift to us: a new friend.