Joy has always heard the inner voices of animals. “My whole life, they’ve been talking to me,” she says on the Zoom call—reading? session? consultation? living séance? I’m not positive what to call it—that she has requested with Riley, my sixteen-year-old shih tzu mix barely visible in one corner of the screen, stretched out and napping.
Joy first met Riley when my sister invited me to join her Atlanta run club for breakfast. I had come up from Macon that weekend so Riley could visit his vet and I could see my siblings and visit my parents’ graves. Since the runners usually ate on a patio, I could bring Riley. In fact, my sister wanted to make sure I brought Riley.
Riley basked in all the attention he received from the group that day, plus more from strangers at other tables. They say food brings people together, but I find that a cute dog will bring people together faster. While I have never been catcalled on a walk, my dog, with his upright triangle ears, sweetly curled tail, and face as round as a dandelion, has. (It’s not easy when your dog has more charisma than you.)
As Riley was making friends at breakfast, my sister introduced me to everyone—though in a way, I felt I already knew them, having heard her stories about them over the years. Her fellow club member Joy, I recalled, claimed to be clairvoyant. Over eggs and waffles, Joy, a surprisingly uneccentric-looking woman in her mid-fifties, volunteered that she had seen that my parents were together in the afterlife and were dancing. I couldn’t help but wonder if that looked as awkward in the hereafter as it had when they were alive, my six-foot-two father towering over my five-foot-three mother.
A week or so later, my sister called to tell me that over the past year, Joy had extended her talents into animal communication, and asked if I would like to do a session with Riley. She sent me a photo of Joy’s card, which had a drawing of a paw with angel wings on either side and “Animal Communicator” written below her name. The back side of the card read, “I talk to animals. That’s what I do.”
I was hesitant.
Not because I’m skeptical. I love ghost tours and podcasts about ghosts and grainy online videos that showcase orbs floating around old houses. Rather, I was scared.
My fear didn’t lie in the great beyond, but in day-to-day reality. Riley is sixteen. And even though my family had several dogs when I was growing up, Riley is my soul dog. The one I’ve poured all my love into. I think he was my parents’ soul dog too. My mother never liked animals. She tolerated them but never really warmed to any of our dogs except Riley. When I moved out of their house to Macon, I couldn’t take him away from them. They loved him too much.
Then, a few years ago, my parents passed within eighteen months of each other, and Riley moved in with me. He was well into his senior years by then, yet still capable of long walks through downtown Macon. I would take pictures of him with local landmarks and send them to my sibling group chat. Here is Riley at the Hay House. Here is Riley at the Grand Opera House. Here is Riley at the Cherry Blossom Festival headquarters. Eventually, though, our walks became shorter. He started limping, and I would have to carry him home.
Every day I watch as he gets older. Milky cataracts cloud his eyes, and his morning cough from his heart condition is getting worse despite the expensive pills I grind up and syringe into his mouth twice a day. Since moving around has become too painful for him, I now push him on his daily walks in a stroller, a little basket on wheels I picked up at the secondhand store that seems to amplify the need for passersby to stop and coo.
My fear of a reading, then, stemmed from the looming fact that I was going to lose my soul dog as I had lost my parents.
I began to poll friends and coworkers about the reading, and in time their enthusiasm changed my mind. What I took as morbid, they thought of as entertainment. I decided I should lighten up.
And so now here we are on Zoom, which Joy assures me will not interrupt her transmissions. She connects telepathically with Riley and asks him what he would like to share about his personality. She relays that he likes to move fast, and that he’s showing her a vision of himself on a skateboard, just going and going. He loves car rides, and on our stroller walks enjoys when I break into a jog and he gets a little wind in his face.
Joy does body mapping next, which entails the projection of Riley’s ailments onto her body. She says she feels a tingling in her arm and leg and a pressure in her chest. This does seem to match up with Riley’s arthritis and congestive heart failure. Joy says the pain and the pressure aren’t bad, but then I’m reminded of something she told me earlier in the session: that animals’ messages are only ever positive, since they operate on a level of unconditional love. I wonder if this is a case of Riley not wanting to complain too much.
Joy also tells me that Riley likes Macon, understands why he needs his medicine, wants me to get another dog (so he won’t worry about me after he’s gone), and hangs out with my parents all the time. In fact, she says, my parents are in the session with us, too, and in classic fashion are randomly butting in. (I love my parents, but they always had main character syndrome.)
“He really appreciates you taking the time and the energy and the thought that you put into him,” Joy says, “and you’re just making everything so amazing.” The statement is simple but hits me like an eighty-pound pit bull at full speed. I’m not married; I don’t have children; my dog is my only responsibility, so I go a little overboard. I’d never been an overachiever until I owned Riley.
Later in the reading, Joy says that Riley thanks me for giving him such a wonderful life. I hope Riley knows that he has given me a more wonderful life. His need for walks forced me to meet my neighbors after nearly eight years of keeping to myself. His need for variety encouraged me to find new places in Macon that he (and I) hadn’t been yet. His need for structure inspired me to push past the grief of losing my parents and show up every day, even though it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I don’t share all of this with Joy, because I assume she knows it anyway thanks to ESP or whatever. Really, I am afraid I’ll cry if I tell her. I just hope Riley knows. I may whisper it to him one day on a walk, just in case he, like all of us, needs to be told how much he’s loved. Not telepathically, but with words.