How To Keep Your Heart Open When You Lose a Pet

By Lissa Rankin

Guest writer for Wake Up World

I was only seven when my parents hired a chimney sweep to wipe out the cobwebs on our brick flue. They didn’t expect him to stumble into a nest of four baby squirrels so tiny they had veiny, bluish, hairless skin and fused eyes. The chimney sweep brought the nest of baby squirrels into our house, but my mother insisted we must put them back, that maybe their mother would return for them, and that if she didn’t, perhaps it was God’s will for them to die.

I was having none of that. I had heard that animals will often reject their young if they have been touched by human hands, and since these baby squirrels bore the scent of the chimney sweep, I was unwilling to take a chance. I was a second-grader on a mission.

A Girl On A Mission

I insisted my parents take me to the veterinarian, so I could learn how to rescue those little baby squirrels. The veterinarian taught me to create a makeshift incubator by filling an aquarium with polyester fiberfill and shining a light on the little babies. Then he taught me how to feed them canned dog’s milk with an eye dropper every two hours and how to wipe their little genitals with a warm washcloth to mimic how their mother would lick them to make them go to the bathroom. He warned me that they probably wouldn’t survive, even if I did everything perfectly, but he praised me for caring about them and suggested that maybe I should get good grades in school so I could become a doctor or a veterinarian one day. I decided, in that moment, that I would.

CONTINUE READING:

Recommended reading from Lissa Rankin:

• Relationships on the Spiritual Path
• The “Space Between Stories”
• How to Make Your Body Ripe for Miracles
• Are You “Spiritual But Not Religious?”
• A Lesson In Empathy
• 9 Practical Tips to Help You Find Your Calling
• 10 Fun Ways to Reduce Your Cortisol Levels
• 6 Stories To Make You Believe In The Power Of The Mind To Heal You
• 7 Tips For Finding Your Tribe
• 10 Surprising Things That Trigger “Fight-Or-Flight”
• 8 Steps to Turn Conflict Into Spiritual Gold: A Practice

• [FACEBOOK]: http://www.facebook.com/joinwakeupworld (An interactive community of over 3,000,000)

  [PINTEREST]: http://pinterest.com/wakeupword/

  [TWITTER]:  http://twitter.com/joinwakeupworld

  [YOUTUBE]: http://www.youtube.com/joinwakeupworld          

  [GOOGLE PLUS]: https://plus.google.com/112452105795129310867/posts

  [WEBSITE]: http://wakeup-world.com