Our animals are family members, living with us as partners in the human-animal bond. Putting the burden on them to be our teachers and healers and spiritual gurus is a mistake. It comes from our lack of self-confidence, and our misunderstanding of their essential nature as animals.

© 2018 Robyn M Fritz

Humans tend to over-think our communication, especially with animals and other non-humans, who tend to be precise and logical in their telepathy. Sometimes too precise and logical for us to keep up with them! Join me for a few laughs and tips on how to refine your intuitive skills to better connect with our animal families.

Happy birthday, Oliver Alki (July 28, 2017)! This beautiful boy is 2 today. Impeccable breeding, beautiful, healthy, a delight to be around, fun-loving and settling into the work he came to do. Many thanks to his breeder who gave up his top show pick because he believed me when I said this was the soul I sent to him to be born. It was a huge sacrifice for something he admitted he didn’t quite understand—he only knew he wasn’t going to get between us!

As little Ollie steps into his work of ushering in an era of peace and compassion and collaboration between beings of all dimensions–a job he insisted he could only do in a dog body with me by his side, so I said, yes, come back and go here to be born, I’ll find you, somehow!–let us all be grateful that we can grow our souls together, that sometimes we can recognize when another soul needs a boost from us, and that this conscious evolving planet we all share as equals is thriving and will continue to thrive because love is all it takes. It really is.

Today I hope you share this post with others to remind us all that a human body is only one of many forms a soul can take to do its work in, and that some of the most profound and most critical work on our planet is being cheerfully and bravely undertaken by those wise old souls who have taken other bodies, some of them animal bodies, because that is the form they decided was best for their work. And that the human families they sometimes live in do their best to protect and nourish them so they have strong bodies and sound minds to do their work, grow their soul, and, of course, have a great deal of fun at the same time!

E-book now available! True stories animals and the afterlife!

Today I am grateful that Ollie had the most wonderful, loving start any dog could have from a top breeder who cared about great health and temperament and knew exactly how much he was giving up to send his best show prospect to a pet home because deep down inside he knew something truly magical had happened.

And to my beloved Alki, my tri-colored boy who died too soon and leaped right back into another body to complete his work, I love you and miss you and, yes, I see your soul looking back at me through Ollie’s eyes. Just as I have seen that soul in so many other bodies since I was a small child. You do get around!

The world is more amazing and remarkable than we sometimes realize. I challenge each and every one of you today to embrace the magic and mystery that is all around you. To never give up, to keep moving forward, to embrace your soul’s work. You matter. Peace. Love. And good humor, always!

And, yes, souls reincarnate. Here’s my e-book on how this beloved soul came back to me, and how it can play out in your family.

© 2017 Robyn M Fritz

I’m the animal communicator in the “Pet Talk” column in this Seattle magazine’s Pets and People issue, March 2017. You can read the entire magazine online or find it at various locations around Seattle.

Publisher Charity Mainville devotes her magazine to Seattle events and issues. This month she features Seattle movers and shakers with dogs available for adoption. Check it out!

And thanks for the honor of being included.

© 2017 Robyn M Fritz

Ollie the Cavalier

Images from the 2017 Seattle Kennel Club Dog Show—all about people and dogs and … dog sports! It’s the human-animal bond in action.

Some dogs need help getting around: the pet carrier is every bit as useful as it looks!

Herding dogs demonstrating how they work with ducks, who are showing how easy it is to show the dogs they are doing just fine.

Flyball was a new sport demonstrated. It’s for dogs of all sizes (and abilities). They race the course, jump on the platform to grab the ball, and then race back. It’s a competition (as a dog would say, it’s a ball, let’s go!). And it’s quite safe: the jumps are scaled for the smallest dog in the two-team competition. Here the highlight was a champion flyballer: a fifteen-year-old Papillon, the tiny dog with flying ears.

Agility takes a dog through numerous obstacles at top speed (defined as whatever speed the dog choose to go at). It takes time and patience but builds a strong team.

A dog show is a place where people who love dogs can meet people just like them—and learn about breeds they might be interested in. Remember to research before buying a dog, purebred or mixed-breed. Purebred breeders will be up front with you: does your athletic ability match the dog’s? How skilled are you at handling a dog? What will you and your dog do together?

© 2017 Robyn M Fritz

In Loving Memory

Murphy Brown Fritz

July 28, 1998 – March 8, 2012

“Dogs don’t make our lives better, they make them bigger.” from a commercial during the Westminster Dog Show.

Every member of our animal family makes a difference in our life. They bring us joy and frustration, humility and grace. With luck and perseverance, we do the same for them. That’s the human-animal bond in action.

Animals are not our healers and teachers, they are not gurus, they are family and friends. Those of us who live with them know we are not making it up—they are souls who have chosen animal bodies to do their work. They are equal to us, conscious, have jobs to do, free choice, and opinions. And, my goodness, did Murphy have opinions!

And this quote says it all: she made my life bigger because she had the patience and sense of humor to wait for me to catch up to her. Everything I do today, from trying to be a better person to helping people in their intuitive and spiritual lives—it all started in 1998 with this amazing soul in a dog body. I did not see it coming. All I knew was that I was buying a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy. But the minute I walked through the door and our eyes met, we both did a double-take as I heard a voice in my head say, “Oh, it’s you!” And that was before I ever heard of animal communication.

Murphy was another incarnation of a soul that has been with me all this lifetime, and in many others. Her brother, Alki, was the same soul, and that soul is back again as little Oliver Alki.

Five years on I still miss her so much it hurts. But I wouldn’t trade the life I had with her for anything.

She inspired my creative and intuitive life. And she still says that, somehow, I inspired her.

Today she remains in the afterlife, working in the form of a golden human woman, continuing to work between portals to usher in a new multi-dimensional reality, where we all step up to create fellowship and harmony across the planet and the universe.

Our animals sometimes choose remarkable jobs, work we didn’t even know existed. All their jobs are important, to them, to us, to a loving world.

Because I can’t hug her today, please hug your animals for me. For us. For a loving world. For peace. For humans and animals forming multi-species families. For the fun times, the happy times, the hard ones, the letting-go ones.

I love you, Murphy. And yes, I do remember I promised to bury your ashes on the first nice day of spring. I just didn’t say what year.

Until we meet again at the Interstellar Café. And thanks, Dad, for taking care of her. And thank you, Murphy, for taking care of him. And Alki. And … the universe.

© 2017 Robyn M Fritz 

Live with a dog or want to? Do yourself, and the dog, a huge favor and find out what’s in it. Purebred or mixed-breed, there’s hundreds of years of genetics involved that can make or break a family. In short, there’s a lot going on in your dog.

I know. As someone who lives with dogs, writes about the human-animal bond, and works as an animal communicator, I know that most of the enchantment and heartbreak of living with dogs comes down to their breeding.

Yes, you want a healthy dog, no question. And no, I don’t care where you go to get one (I do, but I won’t get into that now). What I want, and I know you want, is to get a dog that suits your lifestyle. Well, guess what? Your dog wants the same thing. And needs it, to stay in the happy home you’re creating for it.

As you know, for hundreds of years the dogs we live with now did work we bred them to do, from herding cattle and sheep to guarding the castle, killing rats, and especially, of course, being loyal companions. Purebred or mixed breed, there can be a lot going on in there.

For example, back in 1998 I was researching breeds. It had been 12 years since I had a dog, my beloved English Cocker Spaniel, Maggie. But the dogs I was looking at didn’t feel right to me, just … not right for me anymore. I wanted a smaller, easier dog, and considered the Norfolk and Norwich terriers. I talked to a few people who had them, who rightly warned me that terriers were a handful no matter their size and needed more exercise than I could provide, and so terriers got eliminated.

Then I did what I’m going to suggest you do: I checked out the American Kennel Club (AKC) registry, and just read about the different breeds. If you’ve ever watched a dog show on TV (or gone to a show, like this weekend’s Seattle Kennel Club Dog Show), you know the dogs are shown by breed first and group second. So dogs fall into toys, hounds, herding, working, sporting, terriers, and non-sporting (miscellaneous, dogs who don’t fit other categories).

Within those categories are dogs who are bred for certain functions. Dogs like Dalmatians are bred to run all day, others like the working group’s Bernese Mountain Dogs were used in the Swiss Alps as farm dogs. Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, like my dog, Ollie, are toy dogs, bred to be companions first, and indifferent birding dogs second (the lords of the manor used them to flush birds, who knows why, with all that hair).

So what’s the problem? There isn’t one, if you do your homework. Sadly, too many people don’t.

Ollie the Cavalier

I ended up with a Cavalier because of size and temperament. I’m handicapped, and couldn’t go as far as an English Cocker needs, let alone many of the other breeds. In other words, I did my research to find a dog I could live with who could also live with me. Three dogs later, we’re doing just fine.

Other dogs are not. I know someone who adopted a shelter dog who clearly had herding blood in its background. This dog did what came naturally to herding dogs, who were bred to nip at the heels of cattle and sheep to keep them moving in the right direction. This dog nipped at its owners’ feet, scaring them since they were older and had stairs. They followed their veterinarian’s advice and euthanized him.

Tragic, shocking and unnecessary, if that’s the whole story. First, they should have gone to a shelter who could better guess what was in the dog’s breeding and advise them on what to expect; and second, they should have returned him to the shelter in hopes he could find another home. My opinion. Probably yours, too.

I also know plenty of people who bought dogs they thought were cute but did not fit their lifestyle. Hounds who were left home unattended all day and became sullen and snappish. Big breeds like Shepherds and Labradors and Golden Retrievers who lost their homes because they grew up untrained and couldn’t be managed (some of these breeds are puppy-like for three years or more, meaning early and prolonged training is essential). A friend who went to the shelter and brought home a large breed dog who destroyed her furniture, but who called me crying, asking what to do, and worked with a trainer I recommended (eight years later they are still a happy pair).

So how do you decide?

Check out the AKC site, as suggested. And head off this weekend to the dog show. Watch the dogs in the ring, attend the Meet the Breed groups both days, to learn about breeds that intrigue you, and visit the many booths that breed clubs staff to let you meet a dog and ask questions. These are people who love dogs, know their dogs, and want for you and the dog you choose (and who chooses you) to live happily ever after.

And have fun!

© 2017 Robyn M Fritz 

In late May 2003 I was running errands and suddenly detoured to stop at a local pet store and get some dog cookies. They had long fostered cats and kittens from a local cat rescue service, but I was astonished to hear birds chirping, and asked if they were now adopting out birds.

“That’s kittens,” the clerk said, laughing.

That’s when it hit me, that “soul punch” that told me someone in my soul family had arrived. Again. Astonished, I blurted out, “Tweety?” as I turned and saw a tiny black-and-white kitten squeezed into the corner of the cat cage, glaring at me.

Tweety was my bantam chicken soul mate from my childhood. Now back in a kitten body. No doubt about it.

I had a brief chat with the kitten, acknowledging who she was, and wished her a great life, saying my house was full.

The dogs had another idea. As I walked through the door a few minutes later, Murphy and Alki confronted me, demanding to know where their cat sister was.

“You don’t have a cat sister,” I told them. Firmly.

“Yes we do, we saw her,” they insisted.

“You guys need to stay out of my head,” I scolded. Resigned to the inevitable.

And that is how, six hours later, Grace the Cat became part of the family. Things were perfect in my household until March 8, 2012, when Murphy died of cancer. Next in line was Alki dying of heart failure on November 17, 2014. What I somehow never expected was to lose Grace the Cat, but a massive stroke caused by a suspected brain tumor took her on September 21, 2106.

My perfect pack of three is gone. And I am stunned by grief.

We all know grief never ends. Grief hurts—it’s gut-wrenching, soul-testing pain. Grief matters, reminding us that if we didn’t grieve, we would never have lived the wonderful life we did with our animals. Grief is what death looks like in a multi-species family. It reminds us that we love, and love matters. Always and forever.

Still …

It’s hard to say goodbye to a beloved animal. Loving our animals as family members makes the uncertainty and heartache of loss as terrible as it is when we lose humans, and sometimes worse, if family and friends don’t understand and support the human-animal bond. Sadly, there are plenty of those people out there; in fact, many people who come to me for animal communication sessions in the process of losing their beloved animal family members also need grief support from someone who acknowledges their loss as what it is—devastating, debilitating, all but unendurable. Often that, too, for a time.

That’s where I’ve been in these last few weeks. My only comfort, outside of having had a wonderful (and sometimes exasperating) life with the only cat I’ve ever had, is that I know something about how souls come together, and leave again, and, yes, sometimes come back.

Yes, this is a huge subject, so for now, let’s just look at reincarnation and soul purpose.

Reincarnation, Soul Purpose, and Making It Work

Contrary to what some religious doctrines say, reincarnation happens. When it crosses species it isn’t inappropriate or a form of punishment, as mindsets that accept reincarnation sometimes imply. It’s simply the form the soul has taken to do its job for that lifetime—and an extremely advanced, old soul like the soul that has inhabited all my dogs, including my year-old son, Ollie, or the soul that became Grace the Cat, can do an awful lot.

Most humans are so focused on ourselves we’ve forgotten that literally everything is alive, has a soul, is equal to us—and has a job to do. For example, these days it’s fashionable, if myopic, for us to regard our animal companions as teachers and healers, as mystical gurus in animal bodies who are here to save us from ourselves (whatever that means). It’s a huge burden to put on anyone, and one animals may try to assume to please us, possibly to their detriment. We forget that families do learn and grow together (or should), which is why they’re families, but we’re all responsible only for ourselves.

But to assume animals are here to serve us is to forget they may have other jobs we may not know about or understand, jobs so huge they’re mind-boggling. A well-known animal communicator once talked about animal jobs at an event, then turned to me and smiled, saying, “Robyn’s animals have cosmic jobs.” Indeed, they do.

More on that in a bit, but first to families, who have soul purposes together while supporting individual purposes.

I learned things from all my animals and continue to. From my English cocker Maggie I learned to treat animals as souls. From my Cavalier King Charles spaniel Murphy I learned to live in a way I never considered, with my soul purpose front and center. From my Cavalier boy, Alki, I learned true love, which is helping me get along with my new Cavalier boy, Oliver (Ollie to all), his amusing, adorable, and rascally new incarnation. From Grace the Cat I have learned to laugh—and to live with an alien life-form, which helped when the real ones showed up. From me my kids learned to fully explore their lives and soul purposes with determination, humor, zest, love—and patience for their less accomplished human.

Could I live, love, and laugh before? Of course. But I learned new things from them, as they did from me, which is what should happen when souls come together again. We learned to live in a multi-species family while we whittled away at the other odd, challenging things we set out to do when we found our way back to each other. And so it continues.

How do you help others achieve their soul purpose, especially when most humans forget them when they’re born? Sometimes we just have to quit trying to explain it and fling ourselves into our lives—and theirs. By finding a way to live love, we free it to work its magic. And the magic happens.

Like with Grace.

My Magical Cat

Grace the Cat adored being a house cat (quite a difference from Tweety the chicken, who lived outside and ended up as a weasel’s lunch). Like all my animals, Grace also explored multiple dimensions, working on her own and with me at dimensional portals, which allow different dimensions to interact without blowing things up (an inadequate but necessarily simple explanation). In other times and places she would have been called a “familiar,” but whatever the term, Grace was an energy amplifier. She essentially “upped” the frequency so that I could do part of my work, which is as an ambassador to the earth, working with land and weather systems.

Grace and I did a lot of this work in our early years together. We worked with hurricanes, other weather systems, volcanoes, earthquakes … beings that most people don’t realize are alive. In fact, I’ve learned in my work that everything is alive, everything has a soul, consciousness, responsibility, free choice, and an attitude. Most humans don’t realize this, but we all have an effect on the world around us, which is why I argue against interfering with the work the planet is doing to keep itself stable, from hurricanes to earthquakes.

I’m getting back into discussing this in more detail in upcoming articles. For now, it’s enough to note that living with my animal family in the last eighteen years has deepened my fascination with souls. It’s why my work is about supporting souls, from intuitive to spiritual consulting. It’s why I know about reincarnation, and why I’m so thrilled to offer people multiple ways to tap deep into their souls with past life regression—through hypnotherapy, through intuitive insight, and through shamanic practices.

It’s why Grace went out, well, dramatically.

In our early days together I saw many previous lifetimes with Grace. Sometimes she was human and the dogs and I were cats, sometimes it was just the two of us together, working with the planet. These last years with my two soul mates—with the one soul in two dog bodies at once, and now a third dog body, and the other in a cat body—was a bit of what you’d call “upping the ante,” and not a moment too soon. Because the past lives I remember, including those shared with these remarkably advanced souls, are helping me support today’s advanced and passionate humans, who are trying to understand and live their soul purpose in a time that has forgotten much of what is not only possible, but desperately needed.

People, the world needs you. Now. Not because it needs healing, but because it needs connection. You can find your role in that by looking at your past lives, and at what you chose to do in this one.

I learned my work included working with the planet and different dimensions years before I started my current public work. I kept quiet about it for a long time, sharing it with people who quietly showed up for training. I did it when I needed to, and very little of that is public.

Until Grace had her stroke and the goddess showed up.

In more recent years, Grace and I had just played together, enjoying a quiet life. As I tended her those last five days, turning her every two hours, cuddling and feeding and cleaning her, I was glad we’d had a lifetime where we’d done some of our planetary work and a lot of goofing off. It felt good. One night as I cuddled her in bed, I whistled the little tune I called her Pied Piper song, because every time I whistled it she’d come running, even at times when she clearly didn’t want to, but couldn’t shake off the urge. (It was weirdly cute and scary at the same time.) That night, unable to walk or really move much, I whistled the tune and Grace’s face softened, she peered close at me, and reached out her left front leg to me, the only leg she could really control. It’s a picture I hope stays with me for a long time.

And then the goddess showed up.

Grace’s Choice—the Earthquake and the Hurricane

This goddess, Con Ni (yes I know her real name, but she likes this one), arrived on Tuesday, September 20, to tell me that Grace and I had one last job to do for the planet before her death, work Grace had already agreed to before Con Ni came to me. A good thing, that, because I’m not as altruistic as you’d think.

I’ll say it again, humans can and do affect planetary forces.

It happens in two ways. The first way is something we all do: if we say we “hate” rain or “hate” hurricanes or whatever, we actually send energy at what we hate and impede it in its work (it’s an energy block). That’s why I tell people to bless a hurricane on its way, or the rainstorm, or even the sunshine. It has work to do that I can explain later, but simply helps the planet maintain itself. We mess things up by interfering.

The other way humans affect planetary forces is if they have the “magic” or “intuitive ability” or whatever you call it to actually change them. Yes, change the course of a hurricane or the force of an earthquake. There aren’t many of these people out there—my guidance forces tell me about 50 planet-wide—and, yes, I’m one of them. Earth events that are affected like this are manipulated by humans. That is bad.

I refuse to do that, for reasons I will explain later, and have in old blog posts. Essentially the planet is conscious and has these things planned or, like us, has accidents, but for the most part it’s a far more complicated system than most people realize. If we change the course of a hurricane it changes the one coming along behind it, and that could be and has been catastrophic, even in our recent past. So mostly I go around and “whack” people who mess with earth events. Yes, I can be ornery, especially in the planet’s defense. (And, yes, people yell at me when I whack them and I don’t care.)

I especially interfere with those who do it on a massive scale, including at another government’s direction (we Americans are really clueless).

I will put myself on the line for that kind of work, and have, but I would never willingly put one of my kids on the line for it. Because it isn’t my choice, and I’m selfish and want them safe.

Which is why the goddess Con Ni went first to Grace. When she came to me she said the last work Grace had to do in her body was her choice, but it would drain her. It was to help me work with a manipulated earthquake directed at the Seattle area in the following two weeks, and would register somewhere between 8.0 and 9.0. This would have crippled the Pacific Northwest economy, not to mention cause widespread suffering and destruction.

Nevertheless I would never have volunteered Grace for this work; not for anything would I have asked her or allowed her to die to prevent the quake. I would have let the earthquake happen if I couldn’t find another way to work with it without endangering her. But Grace refused that option, so we tackled it together. (Yes, I’m selfish, but my work with souls makes me think that “volunteering” others to suffer or die for something, however massive an event, actually makes things worse.)

On our last night together Grace and I worked with the earthquake and dismantled it and the people behind it. For me that involved going into the quake and pulling out “red threads” that were shifting the earth while Grace amplified the energy frequency to support me. I felt pretty confident that it would not come at that magnitude, and it did not. However, since it was already set in motion, disturbed earth forces did result in smaller earthquakes, including one in Japan the next day.

We stopped the earthquake, and the next morning, September 21, Grace looked up at me and said she was done. We spent the day together, and said goodbye that evening.

Grace has been with my dad at his Way Station for Dead Things on the Other Side ever since. She was so drained from her illness and the stroke (and brain tumor) and our work that she slept in the sun for a long time, and is still hanging out on the porch at my dad’s cabin, sunning herself and watching birds.

And Ollie and I are alone together, carving out a new life in our family of two.

But that wasn’t the end of Grace’s story. Because Hurricane Matthew happened.

Hurricane Matthew and Grace the Cat

Hurricane Matthew marching through the Caribbean and up the east coast was not a natural hurricane any more than the earthquake Grace and I altered. It had the same red energy threads and the same nasty people forcing it to their will. When I went to work with it, as Grace joined me from the afterlife, I saw that the manipulation would propel it well beyond anything we’ve seen as a Category 5, and it would go far inland.

Now hurricanes are cleansing forces, meant to clear the water and land in their path. They are not evil and not killers, although things do die and become damaged in their path. Hurricanes are the planet’s weather defense system; it is because I talk with hurricanes that I know we are not facing global warming but an ice age.

Hurricane Matthew had a job to do and was being manipulated. After talking with it, Grace amplified energy and I went in and removed the red threads. About twenty minutes later the eyewall started to disintegrate. While I don’t know everything, I assume that it was reverting to what it was created to be, and not what it was forced to be. Still powerful, but not America-eating.

In death, as in life, Grace the Cat served the planet. I am proud of her. It doesn’t make losing her any easier. It simply means that like all souls, her soul chose a body to do specific things. She chose to come here and play, and to team with me to work with the planet.

Soul Purpose

Not all of us have complicated jobs like Grace the Cat, my dogs, or even me. We all have one job—to grow our souls, and to have fun doing it (if we can, I have to admit, my life hasn’t been a lot of fun lately).

The choices animals make when they choose a new soul experience, whether in spirit or in a new body, can offer growth opportunities beyond anything we can conceive. My kids in animal bodies healed past life issues while playing in their animal bodies and accepting jobs that are mind-boggling. Murphy was ambassador to the dragon kingdom—did you even know dragons were real? Because of her, dragons are back in the world again, real physical beings who guard the portals between earth dimensions. Stunning, right? And Alki, the same soul as Murphy, worked with multi-dimensional beings. The same soul, two bodies in the same household at the same time. That soul back again as my year-old dog, Ollie, with the multi-dimensionals waiting in the wings for him to grow up. (Right now he barks at them, which makes me laugh.)

And Grace the Cat, the energy amplifier who died a hero.

So, what is your soul purpose? Where does it take you, and why?

Not all of us are going to do the strange work that I do with the planet. But all of us have jobs to do that are equally important, that only we can do. Sometimes the jobs find us, sometimes we fall over them, sometimes we miss them. But we all have them.

What is yours?

© 2016 Robyn M Fritz