What Animals Say About Enduring Trauma and Abuse from Humans

Here on Let's Talk to Animals, the animals are the real podcast hosts. In this episode, we begin by unpacking a listener's question. If animals are perfect souls, why would they agree to come here to Earth and endure trauma, abuse, hoarding and abandonment at the hands of imperfect humans? 

As an animal communicator and animal communication teacher, I always bring your questions straight to the animals for their response. Learn what the animals shared with me about:

🌟What it's like to come into a body and the challenges it holds
🌟Why a perfect animal would sign up to live with an imperfect human
🌟How animals can help other animals by going through tough times
🌟A contemplation to take judgment and condemnation out of the equation
🌟And so much more....

😳 Do you have a rescued pet who is suffering from anxiety? Get your free copy of Anxious No More: Pet Anxiety Guide

Chapters

• 0:00 The Animals' Choice
• 13:07 Animal Souls and Evolutionary Lessons
• 24:52 Animals' Willing Sacrifice for Humanity
• 33:25 Reflections on Animal Communication and Empathy

Transcript

Shannon Cutts: 0:00

Welcome to Let's Talk to Animals, the podcast all species can enjoy together. My name is Shannon Cutts. I'm your friendly neighborhood host and guide. I am a professional animal sensitive and intuitive, Reiki master practitioner for pets and their people, and an animal communication teacher. In this episode of the we are going to take a deep dive into one of the thorniest and most difficult issues that companion animals in our world face. Trauma, abuse, hoarding, rehoming, abandonment. What do the animals have to say about this? How do they feel about having these types of experiences at the hands of our species? And why would animals who have total free will to choose their incarnation, to choose their bodies, to choose their circumstances, to choose their experiences in life? Why would they ever choose to live with humans who put them through such difficult circumstances? That is the question on the table today, and it is a tough one and it is a deep one, and so we will tread with care and with empathy, which means to feel as if, or to suffer with, and with compassion, which means to take passionate action on behalf of, to inform ourselves, to understand these issues, these very human issues, from the animal's point of view, and to hopefully equip ourselves to ease the trauma that often occurs when a rescue animal has been through these types of experiences and then chooses us and joins our family.

Shannon Cutts: 1:52

So I want to open up today's episode in a rather unique way by sharing a question that came through to me recently and a little bit about the response that I offered in answering this question. So I got a question that said Hi Shannon, I started to listen to your podcast about pets choosing their humans and it got me thinking. Why would a pet choose a human who inflicts immense pain, both physically and emotionally, on them? Humans who need to pay back a karmic debt might need to experience pain in another incarnation because they wrought pain on a human in a previous life. But animals, in my opinion, are perfect. So why would they decide they needed to experience a difficult incarnation? It doesn't make sense to me.

Shannon Cutts: 2:42

My cat asked me why he was surrendered to an animal shelter when he didn't know what he had done wrong. The rescue told me he had been surrendered because the owners thought he was too bossy. I told him they were blankety blanks who didn't deserve him and I wouldn't change anything about him. This is a tough one, right? So many of you, I know, are living with animals who have gone through situations like this in similar circumstances. Others of you may be sharing your family with rescued animals from hoarding situations or animals that have been rescued off the streets, either in your home country or elsewhere around the world. You may be sharing your home and your family with animals who have been victims of multiple rehomings, like this listener describes, animals who are enduring the fallout from not ever feeling wanted, not ever feeling like they belonged, not ever knowing with certainty that they will get their needs met. In fact, I had a communication with a dog just this morning who was dealing with resource guarding issues, and when I tuned in with her she said she just didn't understand what family meant. She had never felt wanted, she had never felt certain of anything in her life, and so she didn't really understand that there was a different way to be, and we spent quite some time working with her trauma and I'm eagerly looking forward to hearing the outcome.

Shannon Cutts: 4:19

But I want to share a portion of my reply to this listener who asks about perfect animals choosing wildly imperfect humans, and I said this is exactly why I love animal communication so much it prompts us to enter into these deep contemplations and really form our own perceptions. Even more importantly, I find it prompts us to ask the animals for their insights, to invite them to teach us and guide us through just such thorny issues as these. The issue you raise is particularly nuanced, so I'm happy to share some reflections of my own. When I regard a word such as perfect, I then ask myself what perfection might look like and act like. Let's say I am perfect, which I am so not, but just as an example, if I was perfect, I would hope to be perfect in empathy, in compassion, in gratitude for the abundance in my life, in self-care and service to others. And, as perfect me, I would hope that the empathy I feel propels me to compassionate action on behalf of those who are struggling to live well, to not harm others, to not harm themselves, to find abundance and gratitude, whether they appreciate my efforts or not, or choose to change their lives or not. So, as perfect me, I might choose to incarnate into close company with someone who is angry, bitter, terrified, someone who might even potentially harm me because of their own inner darkness. Why would I do this? Because there is a chance my presence in their life might soften them, open their heart, ease their suffering, encourage growth. There are stories of these exact types of transformations that occur every day because an animal enters a suffering human's life. Then there are stories where the best outcome does not happen here on the earth plane, at least from what I've personally experienced thus far in life.

Shannon Cutts: 6:18

We all have free will. Opportunities may be presented to us to learn and grow, to better ourselves, and we also get to say yes or no to those opportunities. So the animal bears risk this perfect animal when they choose to enter the life of an imperfect human who might harm them. There is no guarantee their compassionate act will be recognized or accepted. There is yet another side to this many-sided coin, which is that when an animal is rescued from an abuse or neglect or other horrific situation, the animal's human rescuers get to be heroes. Their light shines brighter, their hearts grow in love and gratitude and perhaps future selfless acts. They uplift our species and often inspire others to do the same. Earth and again, this is only my perspective and is not meant to be taken as fact, but earth feels like a school to me. So in this school scenario, this school hypothesis, any soul who lives inside a body here is free to learn and grow, regardless of species. So, yes, there is perfection, but there is also continued evolution.

Shannon Cutts: 7:28

I have spoken with animals who come here only once or twice because it supports their work and service on the spirit side to experience a boots on the ground, earthly incarnation. Those animals typically go back to the spirit dimension and take with them greater empathy and compassion and are able to more effectively care for the animal souls who are returning from their earthly lives in need of healing and unconditional love. And then some animals incarnate over and over again here on earth, and there are many reasons for this as well. You also share a vitally important phrase in your email. In my opinion. You notice I use this throughout as well, and also share a vitally important phrase in your email, in my opinion. You notice I use this throughout as well, and I love this because it highlights another gift we all get to seek our own truth and form our own perspectives and opinions as we go through our earthly lives. It is both a gift and a sacred trust that we bear. The truth is, it is so impossibly hard to witness precious animals suffering on any level, and especially at the hands of our own species.

Shannon Cutts: 8:32

I've talked before on the podcast about how, for so many years I didn't even want to be a human. I used to wish I could just change species and pick a better, kinder one to join in with. But now I realize being a human means I can help the animals and share my light, and so I'm able to make some peace with it. I can't control what other humans choose to do there's that pesky free will again but I can be there to help the animals and also recognize that, like us, they have power and agency over their own life choices. To me, every one of us who comes here chooses knowingly to do so. We each understand what we are signing up for and why, and our reasons make sense to us in that moment of choice. We choose our own adventure, with full power and authority to do so regardless of species. So, then, my job and our job should you care to join me as animal communicators, becomes simple To ask the animals, listen to their stories, learn from them and share their stories as a form of light to heal the world. So that's where I from with wanting to share this episode with you.

Shannon Cutts: 9:42

I notice cycles in my weekly workload, if you will the types of pet parenting cases and animal guardianship cases that cross my path and right now we seem to be in a trauma cycle. I'm getting a lot of inquiries and requests for sessions around issues like resource guarding and biting and aggression and fights breaking out, and there are a lot of reasons for this. But the truth underneath, whatever the surface issue may present, as is that somebody's hurting, somebody's scared, somebody feels unwanted or uncertain in some way about getting their basic needs met, and if we trace that back far enough, we'll find what I call their origin story, the first time that they had an experience that triggered the behavior that we're now seeing, and often, as in the case of this morning's animal client, this is a behavior four years in the making. So we've had neurons firing and wiring together for three years as this dog was systematically left behind and kenneled again and again and again and then relinquished and rehomed, and we've got a neural pathway that's been carved deep over time. We also have an opportunity because this dog finally landed in the home of a woman who is deeply spiritually evolved and one of her first questions was what is our spiritual work to do together? What work did my new dog enter my life for us to do together?

Shannon Cutts: 12:27

And that is exactly why a perfect animal would incarnate in an imperfect world and spend time with imperfect humans, because they have the opportunity to be of service humans. Because they have the opportunity to be of service. And, let's be honest, our species needs a lot of light, especially right now. Of course. People have been saying that for years. If this truly is a school, which I believe that it is, then there's a lot of students at a lot of different stages of learning and growth and evolution. Some students are quite advanced, some students are just beginning their educational journey and they have a lot to learn.

Shannon Cutts: 13:08

And in the same way that animals who've been through trauma carve a neural pathway from the moment of their origin story all the way up until they enter our lives, and that pathway takes time to reroute and to detoxify from and to heal from and to close over, so too the human animals that are inflicting harm on animals. They have an origin story. It is said that when we're happy and healthy and all of our needs are met, we don't hurt each other. That's actually what Maslow's hierarchy of needs is all about taking a look at those basic physiological safety, shelter and sustenance needs all the way up to self-actualization, and there's quite a span of space in between those two. So when we're stuck at that lowest level, no matter what species we are, we're resource guarding too.

Shannon Cutts: 14:07

And yet, because animals come into this 3D earth plane and they vibrate at such a high pure frequency and they have such immense capacity for forgiveness immense capacity for forgiveness, for turning the other cheek, for unconditional acceptance, love and for service even those with the densest, darkest frequencies will naturally be drawn to keep company with them. In fact, this is where, from an animal communication perspective, this is where situations of hoarding arise. I just want more light, I want more light, I want more light, more light, more light, more animals, more animals, more animals. But there's resource guarding and that human has an origin story of not enough and a deep, deep neural pathway that says I seek the light, I want the light, but I don't have anything to give the light. Of course we all are seeking to feel better. That's a natural species indiscriminate position. If you watch seals resting on a warm, sunny rock out in the ocean bay and you notice how happy they are and they don't move for hours. But then, let's say, another seal comes and that seal wants the sunny spot for themselves and nips the sunning seal on his butt. Well, that hurts and you move.

Shannon Cutts: 15:37

So the truth is, at least in my world and over my five decades to date and with the animals I've spoken with in my years of practice thus far, what I am repeatedly aware of is that pain invites evolution, discomfort invites growth, and that is what I'm talking about when I'm responding to this listener question is that if, in truth, animals are perfect, I actually have a core experience that we are all perfect in our soul. But when we come here, we accept, or even I believe we architect incarnations, life journeys with milestones along the path, and that may require, in order for us to learn the lessons that we're here to learn and take that next step forward in our evolution. It may even require us self-limiting aspects of ourselves, maybe cutting off certain soul level tendencies towards empathy and compassion and this perfect, unconditional love, so that we are then able to have these experiences that will evolve us to the next level. And the same can be true of non-human animals who come here. And to highlight that, I can share some stories from my own practice.

Shannon Cutts: 16:57

I wake up in the morning and I never know who I'm going to meet on any given day. I might meet a garden sprite, I might meet an old soul, I might meet an animal who has incarnated into a physical 3D body for the very first time. And no matter how perfect we may all be in our soul essence, when we're fully and completely connected to source energy, when we're here in the 3D, it can take some practice navigating our way around. It can take some of life's hard knocks to help us acclimate to this type of environment, with this lower vibration frequency, with individuals of all different species around us all going through their own life lessons and with our soul assignment to evolve. It hasn't been my experience that we come into our incarnations again, regardless of species, with our entire life journey planned out and bullet pointed and sub bullet pointed and triple bullet pointed to perfection. And then you're going to turn left and then you're going to meet this person, and then a car is almost going to hit you and then you're going to be rescued, and then this it's more like a flowing river, with a few rest stops along the way, milestones, opportunities and those micro navigation adjustments that we make along the way. Well, those are up to us and, seen from this perspective, we really do live in a sliding doors type of world where, depending on what we choose, we may end up with an entirely different experience to get to that goal or that milestone. It's still bringing us to the same basic milestone or evolutionary opportunity, but the how of how we get there can look very different depending on what kinds of micro choices that we make along the way. One of my colleagues in the field describes this as landing in the wrong mailbox. So an animal may not intend to come here and end up in a hoarding situation or an abusive situation or a feral or a relinquishment situation. An animal might come here and even in their soul level perfection, be new to navigating this physical world in a 3D body and they may have some learning and growing to do to trust their instincts and their intuition to get a good read on a human's personality at such a baseline level in this type of state that anything is better than nothing, or they're so focused on that lowest level of just getting my safety and security and my food and water needs met that I'll go anywhere with anyone because I don't really understand how to meet my own needs in this body.

Shannon Cutts: 19:58

There's actually a really good movie that you can watch. It's one of those indie films and I absolutely adore it. It's called Unleashed. You can look it up. It comes on Netflix from time to time and you can find it on Amazon and it's an older movie and the basic premise is that a dog and a cat become humans due to a freak of astrology. They turn into humans and the dog and the cat both become men, grown men, and the cat's a little savvy, as you might expect. But the dog is clueless and you see him trying to navigate the lay of the land, now being in a human body. And you think of dogs. They pee anywhere, they poop anywhere, they will go, sniff butts, they'll do all kinds of different things, they'll eat anything they find Well, not all of them, but many of them. And that might work if you're a beautiful golden retriever or a labrador, but it doesn't work so well when you're suddenly a human being. People look at you funny and they might lock you up. So you can get a sense of it by watching that movie what a new animal might have to go through if they're new to having a physical 3D body and there can be a big margin for error in that and they can end up with some pretty unsavory human company if they're not aware of how things work.

Shannon Cutts: 21:24

Here, and returning to our discussion of soul lessons and soul evolution, we're looking back at this perfect animal. Well, again, why would a perfect animal choose to potentially not for certain, but potentially put themselves in harm's way simply because they're so innocent and they don't understand the concept of humans? That might harm them to learn and grow, and in many cases in the conversations that I've had, it is also to strengthen their ability to help from the spirit dimension, or the soul dimension, or that high vibration, light, energy dimension, however you want to frame it or perceive it. And I talked with a cat who had been feral, had been a stray cat and wandered in one day to my pet parent client's property, hung around for a couple of years. This was a male cat, a black and white cat, beautiful, small adult cat. And then one day something happened. And what he told me? He was climbing on a fence, an area of the fence, and it was rusty, and he had an accident and he passed out of his body and the pet parent was just beside herself. What did I do? What did I miss? What happened to you? Why couldn't you have stayed longer?

Shannon Cutts: 22:47

And when I tuned in with him, I was so extraordinarily surprised by what he shared with me. First of all, he said the same thing that so, so, so many animal clients have shared with me and I really need to do a whole episode just on this. But he shared that his assignment, if you will, or his adventure here on the earth plane. It wasn't about how much time, so, it wasn't about quantity, it was about quality and seeking out a certain type of experience. And he was perfectly well satisfied with the amount of time he had had. It had perfectly achieved his goals and, serendipitously, had introduced him to human kindness in a very profound way through the generosity of my pet parent client.

Shannon Cutts: 23:35

And when I asked him well, what was your assignment, what was your adventure, what was your goal or your intention when coming here? And he said well, I'm a mentor and a guide to other felines who regularly incarnate in cat bodies to keep company with humans, and I've never been in a body here. I am trying to empathize and be compassionate with these cats who are returning and some of them have pretty rough stories and I've never walked in their paws and I wanted to have an experience. So this is yet another perspective that we can try on for size and take a look at that sometimes, in order to be really good at our heart's calling, at our job, if you will, the job that our heart chooses for us that we say yes to, no matter what it may require of us along the way as we grow into it. Sometimes we are willing to go through really tough stuff in order to be of service to others, to be able to empathize, to feel with, to suffer as if, to be compassionate, to know what they need, which, of course, compassion again means to act with passion on behalf of.

Shannon Cutts: 24:53

So this beautiful little cat, who was only with his pet parent for two years, came into a 3D cat lifetime for a couple of years to experience what it's like to have paws on the ground here, and he had experienced quite a wide range in his two years. He had been a stray and a feral cat before he found my pet parent client and she took him in and he was always an outdoor cat even then, but she provided for him and offered him shelter from storms and snow and offered food supplementation for him. So he had a really good broad spectrum of experiences that cats regularly experience here, and he went out on a high note because he went out knowing that he was loved and missed and cared about In a very short amount of time. He got so much experience so that he could be of service. Because, just like and this, of course, is a bigger topic for another episode but just like, we humans have a guide who draws us up and out of our physical body when it's our time to transition and helps us make that frequency adjustment, because it's a lower, denser frequency.

Shannon Cutts: 26:11

Here on the earth plane we have these 3D bodies. They're really useful. They give us lots of bells and whistles that we can use to move about and navigate our world here, but once we lift out of them, we are suddenly almost weightless. We are vibrating at a much higher, lighter frequency and it can be disorienting, even for those who bop back and forth frequently. And these animals describe the spirit or the soul dimension as their vacation home and they know it well and they are not worried about moving back and forth. Everyone gets a guide when they're returning home, but for new animals in particular, it can be vital that that guide knows what they're going through, what it feels like to be so discombobulated as you suddenly don't have this body you've become very accustomed to navigating your world with, and now you're transitioning into a different dimension. I would imagine it's not unlike what the astronauts feel when suddenly they are weightless in space and then they have this transition period where they have to come back to Earth. And for astronauts that have spent longer periods of time either out doing research or on the International Space Station, I've read accounts where occasionally, when they come back, they're weak enough that they're wheelchair bound for a little while and they really have a longer convalescence before they regain their strength.

Shannon Cutts: 27:37

So when we think about it that way, wouldn't it make sense that an animal who feels called to serve as a light mentor for animals and this doesn't just mean shepherding them back and forth into and out of a physical incarnation, but also helping them chart out the course of what they want to learn, what they need to learn their choice of adventures, if you will, and the major milestones and helping them understand the implications of what they need to learn their choice of adventures, if you will, and the major milestones and helping them understand the implications of what they're choosing, what they might face along the way, as well as the opportunities and the payoffs. And he was telling me the whole experience was worth it. Just to meet this pet parent client of mine who was so kind and loving and he said now I understand why cats choose to spend time with humans. Before I didn't understand. So there is a carrot or a fish at the end of the stick.

Shannon Cutts: 28:31

Even for these animals, especially for these animals who've been in these types of abusive or traumatizing or even hoarding situations, there is free will, there is the opportunity for personal agency and there is the invitation to evolve and grow. And even when we regard animals as perfect I'm pet mom to four and all of my animals are perfect and anyone who thinks otherwise is thinking wrong, in my opinion, and I'm sure, as fellow pet parents, you're probably nodding your head right now when you're thinking of your animal family. In other words, we can see maybe we have some tweaks to make in certain areas, but we see all the way to their heart and soul and we know. We know who they are and they know who we are. And that's a beautiful partnership and it can be all the more appreciated if we've been through situations we've kept company with others other animals, other humans who are not kind to us, who maybe have trauma origin stories of their own. They're gridlocked in their own battle just to survive, let alone thrive, and they're evolving.

Shannon Cutts: 29:42

And coming here to this earth plane is always an invitation for evolution, and we may not ever really understand, unless, of course, we ask the animal directly, which is what I do. It's how I find out all this neat stuff and I hear all these cool stories and it gives me a bigger picture perspective. Oh, that's right, this earth plane, this 3D earth plane, that's not all there is. This isn't it. We are not the center of the universe. There is so much more out there that even when we transition, even when you and I lift up and out of our bodies and we transition back into that plane, we may still not be aware of all the nuances of what's available to our non-human animal companions.

Shannon Cutts: 30:26

There is a subset of animals and in fact it's the majority of animals alive on this planet today who do not choose to keep company with humans. And so the discussion of why perfect animals would willingly choose to endure trauma or difficulties at the hands of humans, it changes when we start talking with the wild animals here on this planet because they are not choosing to keep company with humans. In fact, what they are doing is holding space for humanity as a whole to up-level. They are coming here willingly, volunteering en masse to come here and to occupy areas where we are actively predating, we are deforesting, we are sucking the moisture out of the ground, we are mining for all we've got and we are destroying wild habitats and then being forced to live with the consequences of our own free will actions. And animals get caught in the crossfire and it's important for them as well as for us to have full awareness of their free will, of their free agency, because when we're aware that they have full choice, just like we do, there is profound respect and humility and gratitude that arises when we recognize their service to us and how we keep messing up again and again and again. And there may come a day for our planet when there isn't a single wild animal soul who is willing to volunteer to come here to give us yet another chance to mend our ways and to recognize that we are killing off our sustenance, our baseline, lifeline, needs, in the way that we are managing or mismanaging our planet itself and the resources available to all of us and that's a really tough topic and I'm not going down any kinds of environmental or political roads here, because those are topics for a different podcast with a different host. Let's just say it that way that groups of wild animals are still choosing, willingly, to come and be born here and live in the diminishing forests and the vanishing natural waterways and the disappearing open grassland areas that are being conscripted by miners and developers and loggers and other types of human activities, and recognize that they're coming here and it's like they're all wearing little warning, warning, warning tags saying wait.

Shannon Cutts: 33:26

Are you sure you want to do this? You want to think about it. I think about it again. You want to think about it again. You sure that you want to raise our home? You sure that you want to conscript our land? Are you sure that you want to think about it? You want to think about it again. You want to think about it again. You sure that you want to raise our home? You sure that you want to conscript our land? Are you sure that you want to suck our waterways dry? Are you sure you want to change our climate, a climate upon which we all depend, giving us the contrast that our species apparently needs in order to make informed decisions about what we do with this world that is not ours alone, but has always been, is now and will always be shared.

Shannon Cutts: 33:55

So those are my thoughts from this moment in time on why perfect animals, whether they are wild, feral, stray or bred from birth to be companions to humans. Why would they choose to live with us, especially when we're such works in progress? I have made so many mistakes with my own pets. My tortoise Malti, who's recovering from metabolic bone disease, is perhaps the most traumatic example of some of the mistakes that I've made. Trusting the wrong human veterinarians was a huge mistake I made. That cost her I won't even go into it and I live with that every single day. And I ask her why did you choose me? Why would you choose to live with me, knowing that this was very likely to happen to you? And when I ask her that question, she looks back at me and I feel such waves of love and I receive the image of myself learning to talk with animals. And I know that she chose me because I give her and her species a voice, I raise awareness of these types of issues and I take action to mend the broken places that I've created One of the examples of that and I just got a really sweet email from somebody who's actually making good use of this resource with her own young red-footed tortoise.

Shannon Cutts: 35:23

But I created the Redfoot Tortoise Care website with a super talented herpetologist and created an entire resource guide and a learning tool that's offered free If you have red-footed tortoises or know somebody who does. This entire learning guide is free from a master herpetologist because I didn't want any other tortoise and their person to go through what Malti and I had had to go through. And she said that's why I chose you. Of course it wasn't a given. It wasn't a given. There were so many sliding doors there. She actually ran away when she was one and I had the hunch. Even though I wasn't talking with animals yet, I had the intuitive hunch that she was trying to decide if she wanted to stay with me or go and be a wild tortoise. And when I asked that question of the animal communicator I was working with to locate her and bring her home, that came up. She said I am deciding. I'm not sure I want to go down this road. And I said well, that's fair. If you don't want to, then I will accept that, and that's that unconditional love. I had no intention of harming her and yet I did so.

Shannon Cutts: 36:28

There's also a deeper element. Whenever we look from the outside, looking into somebody else's situation, their choices, their worldview, their quality of life, who they're keeping company with, there's always an invitation also to look back at ourselves and say where do I see that behavior reflected in my own life? This is a very, very high spiritual discipline. It's very, very humbling to look at someone else who may be abusing or mistreating or hoarding animals and say where do I see that behavior in my own life? Why am I looking at this other being with judgment or condemnation? I'm not trying to say that that's what you're doing, but I know that I've been guilty of that in the past. And so when I look at someone else who's perpetrating such what I can only call just evil upon innocent beings, I first am tasked to look back at myself and say where have I perpetrated evil? Where have I done wrong? Where have I even intentioned the best and have been too wounded or traumatized myself to recognize that what I was giving was so far from that?

Shannon Cutts: 37:35

We don't know what another person or another animal's world is like until we ask. And that is why I do the work that I do and that is why I teach others how to communicate with animals, because the only way to develop true empathy and the only way to be able to act appropriately, passionately, on another's behalf is to take a walk in their shoes or paws or claws or wings or shell, to ask, to have that conversation, to develop that awareness through their eyes and ears and nose and mouth and skin and heart and soul, and then take a look back at ourselves and ask ourselves are you still judging, are you still condemning, or can you not see a reflection within your own life as well? And this is how we really up-level the ones that it is toughest to see the light in. Well, that's where we're called to try hardest to see the light, because without our ability to see into their soul and to still detect some light there, nothing will ever change for the animals we love. So I hope that this episode, while sobering and difficult to present, I've definitely found myself breathing a little more deeply and trying to stay centered, as I'm talking about such an emotional topic, and I appreciate you sticking with me. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Shannon Cutts: 39:03

This is an ongoing, evolving discussion. It's definitely a conversation here, never a monologue. I may learn something new tomorrow from the animals on this very topic and if and when I do, I will come back here and I will record a new episode and I will share it with you. But for now, this is what the animals have been able to teach me thus far and may just represent how far along I am. This is what I have the capacity to learn, so I welcome wisdom and insight with kindness and respect and I look forward to your thoughts and your questions. If there's anything else that you would like to know about or learn about along the lines of this topic, I can go to the animals and I can ask them and come back and unpack it with you. So let me know what's on your mind and what's in your heart. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Shannon Cutts: 39:58

If you enjoyed today's episode although enjoyed might not be the right word maybe if you appreciated it, or if you could feel like it enlightened you or maybe lifted some of that heaviness a little for you, please do take the time to leave a review or a comment or a question. Five stars would be amazing. It really helps our little podcast get known. There's lots of podcasts out there and I am grateful for every single one of you who listen to. Let's Talk to Animals, and I send you all my love. Okay, new episode coming in two weeks and until then, I look forward to seeing you back here again very soon. All my love. Bye for now.