If you ever have done work with recognizing your Spirit Animal Allies, you know that it can sometimes be an awkward, if not terrifying friend, to accept is on your team.
I had heard tale of panther and bear people hunted and haunted in their dreams before they realized that the power they were so fearing... was their own, just trying to snuggle!
Somehow I was more comfortable with the concept of a fierce scary ally, or even the intensity of a very beautiful majestic animal medicine revealing itself to me, than the DOG.
Golden Retriever to be exact.
Honestly, having received shark, rattlesnake, bear, hummingbird, hawk, octopus, dove, spider... I was pretty judgey about animals like the frog, the chipmunk and... the dog.
Like: squish, squeak, yawn!
Even the rat or the cockroach seemed more noble for their grossness and shock factor, than the ho hum simple loyalty of a dog. Of course this is simply the phenomenon of wanting what you don’t have.
Bottom line is, The way I can recognize when I’m being initiated into one of MY spirit animals is by the level of intensity beyond logic or reason.
Years ago, a fast and still lasting friend recognized the dog in me by saying I was dogged.
Funny, because while it was a welcome fondly-expressed reframe of what I had been accused of in my family of “not knowing when to quit” and in the last “real” job I ever had of bein —oh God— a bull dog! 😆 or bulldozer... it wasn’t until THIS YEAR that I even literally faced the dog in dogged.
