Karen Mandell is one of the 5 winners of our Animal Reiki Stories competition and has won herself a copy of the Animal Reiki Handbook for this touching story about her dog Sappho and their experience with Reiki…
ps – Everyone who entered the competition also gets to choose one of 1/2 hour Reiki meditations from our online Reiki Meditations!
In August, 2007, I was petting my dog, Sappho, when I felt a pancake sized lump on her right shoulder. I was a little startled but not too worried; she was a healthy three year old full of life and energy. Besides, she would have her annual check-up in a few days, and I’d ask the vet if the lump was still there. At the visit, the vet, Dr.Kennedy, at Highland Animal Hospital in Needham, Massachusetts, palpated and probed; he was concerned enough to take a few drops of blood from the lump and check it under the microscope.
He didn’t like what he saw. He wasn’t a pathologist, he told me, but the cells seemed abnormal. He’d have to send the sample to the lab. He’d call me back when he got the results, and we’d take it from there. Now, of course, I was worried–and I didn’t like the sound of take it from there. I wanted him to elaborate, but he said that would be premature. But he looked grim. Sappho–a beautiful and gentle Cavalier King Charles and poodle mix– and I went home. That night, she and I had a Reiki session. I didn’t know the procedure for animal reiki, but I just treated her as if she were human. I called my friend, Kathy Jordan, who also attended the Shinpiden III course in Washington D.C. in March, and asked her to do long distance Reiki on Sappho. She loves Sappho almost as much as I do, and she gladly agreed.
A few days later, Dr. Kennedy asked me to bring Sappho in for a real biopsy and and X-ray to see if the tumor had affected her bones– the lab had given him a dismal report. I dropped her off at the office, and the staff told me they’d call me to pick her up later in the day when her anesthesia had worn off. A few hours later, a receptionist called and said Sappho was ready to go home. When I entered the office, Sappho bounded out of the examination room. Well, I thought, that must have been a pretty mild anesthesia if she has so much pep so soon after.
I looked up at Dr. Kennedy, and before I could ask anything, he told me that Sappho had never had the biopsy. We couldn’t feel the tumor, he told me. He said that he’d rounded up all the vets in the practice, and none of them could feel anything. He called the lab to make sure they had read the correct results, and they told him that the blood test showed cancer– they hadn’t made a mistake when they called him with the results a few days back. Dr. Kennnedy told me that they had given her an X-ray, but nothing at all abnormal came up. He said that he had never seen anything like it. I told him that my friend and I had done Reiki on Sappho. The laying on of hands, he said. A wonderful result for Sappho.
Sappho will have her fifth birthday on May 25.
