Like many of you, I've loved and appreciated all kinds of furry pets across a lifetime. My favorites have always been gentle and intelligent golden retrievers, although I carry an affection for all dogs, many cats and other of God's creatures.
So it was not surprising when perusing The Book Store in Harrison the other day that I walked out with an older hardback, Strange Powers of Pets by Brad Steiger and his wife Sherry Hansen Steiger.
I became interested in the possibility of this consciousness link years ago after reading controversial British biologist and parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake's remarkable book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.
In Strange Power of Pets, I discovered dozens of stories describing strange--even unbelievable--links between various animals and humans with whom they apparently formed undeniable "pack-like" bonding.
There are multiple accounts of pets navigating vast distances in strange places to reconnect with loved ones, even across oceans. Others have averted car wrecks, played the piano, performed sophisticated math, predicted calamities, caught criminals, saved children and even conversed intelligently.
For instance, the Steigers' book tells of an affectionate Capuchin monkey saving a Canadian filmmaker from a grizzly bear, and the remarkable story of a stowaway pooch, a black-and-white terrier who accomplished "one of the greatest journeys" in the annals of pets.
One story among the relatively short chapters is devoted to Bernard, the St. Bernard (what else?) who saved two teenagers from a car crash. Another tells of Oscar the cat who saved a choking infant. Then there was a baby raccoon who became a soldier in the war on drugs.
Tom the housecat, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Smith, in 1949 spent more than two years following his owners to San Gabriel, Calif., after the couple left him with the person who had purchased their home in St. Petersburg, Fla.
The cat ran away two weeks later. One afternoon in early August 1951, two years and six weeks after their move to California, Mrs. Smith heard a cat wailing in her backyard. When Mr. Smith walked outside, the skinny, scraggly, frazzled feline raced toward him and into his arms. He recognized it was, in fact, their Tom.
When frail 2-year-old Ernest Mann and his dog Ivy wandered away from his family's summer cabin outside Albuquerque, his parents called Cibola County Sheriff Ed Craig, who organized a search that stretched through a cold night in the mountains. At midmorning the following day, a black stray dog emerged from the woods and found one rescuer in a group. Gently locking his jaws around the man's wrist, he began tugging in one direction.
The searchers followed the dog to little Ernest, who was snuggled in the chilly morning between Ivy and another stray. The story quoted a journalist who said the sheriff described the boy, who weighed but 18 pounds, as "scared, dirty, confused, but awfully glad to see us."
Sheriff Craig said Ernest cried out to his rescuers: "Doggies! Doggies! Warm! Warm!" as he hugged the animals. There was no other way the boy could have survived the night, the sheriff said, especially since his diaper was soaking wet. Somehow, Ivy had recruited the two strays to join him in keeping Ernest from freezing through the night.
"Never in all my years in law enforcement have I seen anything like what those animals did," the sheriff also told the reporter.
The book also tells of a cocker spaniel named Joker separated from his master U.S. Army Captain Stanley Raye of Pittsburg, Calif., during World War II. Raye was deployed to an island in the South Pacific.
Not long afterwards, Joker vanished. Army doctors reported seeing a stray cocker spaniel near the docks in Oakland, about 30 miles from Pittsburg. Somehow, Joker found his way abroad a freighter bound for the South Pacific. A sympathetic major on board volunteered to watch over him.
Witnesses on board later told the Associated Press that with each port docking Joker would sniff the air at the helm and study the new seaport. Finally at one port, he jumped ship and ran while being chased until he found an astounded Captain Raye. Afterwards they became inseparable until the dog's death in 1958.
So what greater unseen intelligence told Joker to board a ship, or which island was harboring his master among the many at which the transport stopped? Wish I could tell you.
Dr. Larry Dossey, an acclaimed physician of internal medicine and author from Dallas who is a former chief of staff for the Medical City Dallas Hospital, believes he has an answer. As a respected medical doctor also involved with metaphysical aspects of existence, Dossey contends there's a common misconception between humans and our understanding of the fullest scope and potential of what I call mind stuff.
He believes its a mistake to believe the animal mind is limited to simply the brain and therefore unable to acquire and process knowledge "at a distance." He and others believe the mind is not limited to single location. That would mean if a nonlocal animal/human connection exists, as seems the case involving pets that mysteriously find their way across great distances to reconnect with their owners, it is due to a vast mind/consciousness connection the animals can detect and utilize as a guide.
In other words, as in the case of Joker, his owner certainly knew where he was and how he got there, which allowed Joker's mind to tune into that knowledge and ultimately locate Captain Raye.
Dossey, along with some non-mainstream psychologists, physicists and students of consciousness studies believe this nonlocal form of form of communication also helps explain humans' premonitions, how dogs can possibly know the moment their absentee owner chooses to head for home, and the shared consciousness connection between twins.
Dossey says it shows our minds that we view as individually unique in actuality are "something larger that we cannot claim as our own private possession." In other words, he believes our brains as well as those of other animals are receivers for this vast field of consciousness.
The Steigers wrote that to understand and embrace this concept requires humility that allows us, according to a passage from Dossey's book Recovering the Soul--A Scientific and Spiritual Search, "to know deeply that consciousness is not the sole possession of an ego; that it is shared by not only other persons but perhaps by other living things as well. It is humility that allows us to take seriously the possibility that we may be on a similar footing with all of God's creatures."
Certainly food for thought for everyone with pets who closely relate to them. Got your own pet story? Please pass it along.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Web only on 07/13/2019