PROLOGUE

An Unbroken Bond

THIS IS MUCH MORE THAN THE STORY of a special bond with a dog. Many have experienced the depth of feeling that can develop between us and our four-legged best friends. What makes this story unique is that my search for a lasting and meaningful connection led me down a path that crossed over the boundaries of reason and concrete reality into the realm of the invisible. My dog Brio inspired me—a born skeptic—to investigate the paranormal. In doing so, I discovered that there is much more to heaven and earth than I had ever dreamed of as a fact-driven investigative journalist. Once we become open to new possibilities, we become open to a new world.

I grew up on pragmatism and logic based on my parents' teachings. Trained as a reporter, I built my career in television journalism, and lived my life bound by reason and fact. I saw myself as a questioning rationalist and still do, in many respects—at least as I function in the everyday world. But I stepped beyond my “comfortable” world in which everything had its place and made sense, and I ventured into foreign territory.

This book is about taking that step.

No doubt many people who develop particularly close relationships with dogs do describe the connection as remarkable. But surely a far fewer number embark on the kind of quest I undertook; they generally don't question the nature of their pet's spiritual origins. I came to contemplate the possibility of a wordless language between species. Moreover, I considered that such a conversation could take place across time and space and even across the boundary of physical death.

I entered a world of animal communicators, psychics, and mediums. In the beginning I would tell myself that it was a journalist's curious drive to investigate that led me down this road. In truth, I was fascinated. As a journalist, once I began to see evidence of a reality I had never contemplated before, there was no turning back. I had to get to the bottom of it all. Then, after the communicators and intuitives succeeded in convincing me, I began to turn my journey inward and develop my own spiritual aptitude.

Of course, I didn't come around to this new way of thinking immediately. My beginning steps were full of doubt and suspicion. But when the animal psychics and communicators began to report on their conversations with animals with startling accuracy, I had to acknowledge that whatever these people were doing, it was working.

As much as I questioned how the communicators could possibly know or hear or somehow see what my dog was “saying,” I couldn't deny they had access to information I had not verbally given them, information they could not have known by ordinary means. I came to accept that something extraordinary was happening, though I could not explain how or why.

This is the story of a continuing quest, of efforts to test the communicators and psychics, to gather the experience and opinion of other dog people, including professionals. Respected trainers and handlers interviewed for the book include Carol Benjamin, Donald McCaig—border collie trainer and author—and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, also a highly regarded trainer and author. Their insight offered invaluable perspective. Some professional handlers believe the idea of psychic communication with dogs is an insult to traditional training methods. Others are open to the possibility of an extrasensory language; some have even become committed believers. Furthermore, some scientists whom I interviewed are convinced of a canine afterlife.

I sought out other people I trusted who had especially close relationships with dogs to ask about their experiences with communication between species. I strove to understand how the psychics work, how they could possibly get accurate information over a phone line about a dog they had never seen.

The voices of the animal communicators and psychics with whom I spoke were very important. The tone and frequent beauty of their words were often as convincing as the content of what they said. It would be impossible to tell this story and convey the emotional impact of what I heard without bringing the voice of these translators as close to the reader as possible. So I have quoted them often. As a tale of an intimate relationship with a dog, this is not an uncommon story—not even as an account of personal change and even transformation through that relationship. That is something many readers experience. My adventure is unique because it is an exploration into telepathy, afterlife communication, and metaphysics—which walks all of us on the journey out of skepticism, to curiosity, to the need to believe, the need to find proof, to a crisis of faith and, finally, into a new understanding of the unbreakable bond between humans and animals.

It is one thing to call oneself an “animal lover.” It is something else entirely to see a dog as an equal being, as much a teacher as a student and pet. That is one blessing that this journey has brought me: the understanding and conviction that a dog is a thinking, feeling, and yes, spiritual being. Dogs do have souls, and lives that extend beyond death's limitless horizon. Once you know this, how hard it becomes to speak of owners and of pets. How hard to think of dogs—or any animal—as creatures meant merely to obey and serve us.

From the beginning, I was not in control. I had expected a companion over whom I was master. I quickly learned that Brio, the dog who would change my life, was his own master. Our relationship was far from what I would have called normal. I recall what Pablo Picasso said about his dachshund, Lump: “Lump, he's not a dog, he's not a little man, he's somebody else.”¹ That's what this puppy, Brio, became for me—“something else.” This being, in the clothing of another species, was—is—to me, a great spirit. Our relationship exceeded all expectations. It has taken me to a place, a consciousness I could have never foreseen—one that continues to surprise and amaze me even today, long after his passing. In truth, his was the first soul I came to love.

In the course of my journey with Brio, I have moved from being someone who feared close relationships, struggled with them, to some-one who bonded deeply with another creature in life and death. I have become a more loving, engaged, open person because of the rich and uncomplicated bond I shared with Brio. Our journey together trans-formed me entirely and seamlessly, through the power of unconditional love and a deeply instructive spiritual connection.

I understand that the bond with Brio is unbroken even in death, not figuratively or metaphorically, but with an unshakable conviction that was once incomprehensible to me. This brings me an enormous sense of peace and gratitude about my own life, its meaning, and its transitions. There is gratitude also for the fact that my need to understand “just a dog” led me to explore aspects of existence that I'd never considered. Do dogs—do all beings—have abilities to perceive that transcend the five senses? Do these “extra” senses offer ways to communicate within and between species in ways that the precepts of Western, materialistic science do not acknowledge? The seventeenth-century French philosopher and scientist René Descartes shaped centuries of modern scientific thought with his doctrine that materialism is the only explanation of reality.

According to this view, there are no metaphysical (“beyond the physical”) truths. There is no consciousness that exists outside of or is not governed by the physical brain. Some scientists and philosophers are now questioning this view. Quantum physics, certainly, is challenging the view that everything—including our minds, our consciousness—is fundamentally physical, material. There is also a discernable shift in scientific thinking about our fellow animals. Descartes had insisted that only humans have the ability to reason and think because only humans have verbal language.

In the nineteenth century Charles Darwin opposed this belief. Darwin is often credited with having given birth to the field of animal-mind research. Darwin said, “There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.^”2 Today there is much new activity among scientists eager to investigate the intelligence, cognition, emotions, and communication capabilities of nonhuman animals.

As I consider these developments in the world of science, philosophy, and understanding of animals, it seems that my personal trans-formation coincides with a much larger shift in perception about our relationship to our fellow beings.

One might say that mine was a journey on two parallel paths: rooted in the immediate joys of life with a dog, right here in the now, the walking, the running, the tail wags, the smiles, yet simultaneously leading me down a road toward tantalizing questions about who animals are and what they tell us about who we human animals are as well. It's a journey to revel in.