Gracey the Dog's Story: I'm a Pirate, Mom!

When a pet reincarnates and returns to you, how can you know it is "them?" Is there ever such a thing as two animals co-sharing the same body? What if the new companion animal is older - is it still possible for the old pet to reincarnate back to you? Animal communicator Shannon Cutts uses Gracey the dog's story to explain different ways this can work.

Chief's guidelines were clear and I relayed them to Betty with absolute clarity. Chief also gave her some "tells" to watch for - some signals and signs so she would know her intuition had guided her to the correct dog.

When our conversation ended, it was pretty hard to tell who was more impatient for this cliffhanger to resolve - me or Betty.

Joyfully, I heard from Betty just a handful of weeks later. She had placed her order, she told me, and her intuition led her to Wink, a five-year-old hound mix. Wink got her shelter name from a congenital eye deformity that left one eye nonfunctional. She was also heartworm positive.

Betty was undeterred by the daunting task of healing Wink from the heartworms (which deserves a separate blog post in its own right). But she was a bit concerned about a potential reaction from children to the appearance of Wink's nonfunctioning eye.

Here, Wink was clearly the one who was undeterred.

She sent me a whimsical inner picture of herself wearing a dashing pirate's patch over the malformed eye. "Tell Mom I'm a pirate!" she delightfully proclaimed.

By this time, Wink had also weighed in on her name and she was now Athena Grace, or Gracey for short. "Tell the kids I'm Pirate Gracey!" she suggested.

Betty loved the idea. So did I.

And truthfully, I cannot wait until I see a picture of Pirate Gracey in her new role of therapy dog, her faithful human mom Betty at her side.

But there is more to the story. As Gracey and I chatted, I learned that Chief has in fact returned to Betty through her, but not in the way either Betty or I expected. He and Gracey have a longstanding deep bond of love that is one part teacher and student and one part pure soul-level romance. In this incarnation, for a variety of reasons, Chief would be serving as mentor to Gracey from the other side. He would also partially inhabit Gracey's body alongside her own spirit, popping in and out as his own inner wisdom prompted.

Chief wanted Betty to know he would make it obvious when he was physically present in Gracey's body, but he would be there as a co-share of her body, not to supplant or replace her. And he wanted Betty to know he would always be there for them both as their joint spirit guide.

Are you wondering how your animal feels about a seemingly life-limiting health challenge? Have you ever hoped your aging pet could return to you again in a new body? Do you have questions about how it might work if your current situation will not accommodate bringing a new pet of the same size or species into your home but you want your pet back anyway? I can help with all this and more.