I went to a pet psychic

And all I got was content and the usual crushing despair

We weren’t off to a good start. The Pet Psychic was ten minutes late and when she called she asked if I was getting a ‘love and relationships reading’.

We ironed it out - I wasn’t Emily who needed advice on love, I was Emily with the Dead Dog.

I was already wondering what the hell I was doing. I’d not told my husband that I’d just spent our real actual money on trying to talk to our dearly departed dog. Never mind that dogs can’t talk.

The Pet Psychic made this clear by the way. She’d be using an intermediary. My dog’s Spirit Guide would commune with the Pet Psychic and then let me know what was going on. She told me this after she said my dog was eight, after I said my dog was eight. After I said my dog was eight, the number eight came through very clearly.

Not from my dog mind you. She didn’t know she was eight. But my dog’s Spirit Guide knew.

I know what you’re thinking. I know it’s foolish. I don’t believe it obviously. But when she said my sweet girl had a Spirit Guide I was suddenly warm all over. Not in a ‘visited by a spirit way’. Not like that.

Just, I was grateful I guess. Even if it isn’t true.

I don’t know where my dog is. I don’t want her to be alone if she’s somewhere. Because she was a nervous dog. She was afraid of everything. She was afraid of plastic bags and cyclists and wind. She was a dog that lived in Wellington who was afraid of wind.

What if it’s windy where she is?

If she’s somewhere, is someone feeding her? Maybe she doesn't need food now because she's dead. Is someone patting her ears because she loves it when you pat her ears. Surely she still needs love?

The Pet Psychic (who I think actually prefers the term Animal Communicator) told me my sweet scared girl is visiting me. She pops home a lot, she said. Can I sense her?

I can. But possibly not in the way she thinks. How can I explain it so you know I’m not desperately gullible?

I am not the best driver and when I accidentally cut someone off or do something stupid on the road I yell ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!’ and there’s no way the other driver can hear me. But I hope they can and I hope they know I’m sorry. And it’s in that way I can sense her.

I can sense her like a phantom limb. She was always here and now she’s not. And it hurts.

I sense her in the way you repeatedly bump into the couch after you move it because your body still thinks it’s in its old place.

The Pet Psychic didn’t mean this and in any case I didn’t tell her that’s what I meant. She told me that when I sense my dear dog visiting me, I should invite her fully into the realm of the living. I should imagine what she would say to me. And in that way we can talk.

But dogs can’t talk.

Did that stop me when she was alive from telling her a thousand times a day she’s a beautiful angel and that I love her? No. Did it stop me covering her ears when I said ‘Actually I think she farted’ to guests to spare her embarrassment? No.

So I guess it doesn’t really matter.

She told me to imagine a beautiful meadow, with wild flowers and big trees. I could meet my girl and her Spirit Guide there.

Photo by Wyron A

The first thing my dog said to me through the Pet Psychic came almost twenty minutes into the reading and I was utterly desperate for it. But when it came I just felt like my soft open wound of grief had been ripped into again.

“Let me see what’s she saying,” the Pet Psychic said.

“She really misses you,” she said.

“I’m feeling like she wasn’t ready to go,” she said.

I seized on this in the desperate way you see people do on psychic TV shows. When they say “I’m hearing a name starting with P” and some sobbing wretch that you just want to hug says: “My husband’s name was John but his third middle name was Peter!”.

“It was sudden!” I yelped.

She asked the Spirit Guide who somehow also seemed to have some kind of understanding of general veterinary practice what had happened and for some time we talked about her death. Back and forth she wondered about the cause.

I wondered what my therapist would say if she knew I saw a Pet Psychic.

In the end she said it was all decided anyway so her death didn’t really matter. And that much I absolutely believe is true. Since she died I have stopped trying to work out the why of it all. Because why not me? Everyone has traumatic horrible shit happen to them. Losing your dog horribly is small fry. It was just my turn again for bad shit.

She was always going to have a quick exit from this life, the Pet Psychic said. “It is exactly what was set out for her and for you and your family”.

I waited in the silence and then she began to fill it with talk of ‘deep soul connections’ and how we might get ‘a completely different dog but with her soul’.

And then I said in a truly pitiful voice: “Does she forgive me?”.

“Absolutely everyone asks me that,” the Pet Psychic said. “And yes she does. She felt an immense sense of peace. She’s grateful. You released her from the pain she was in”.

My vet had already told me this. He had called specifically to remind me that I’d made the right decision. He said it again in a card he sent with my dog’s ashes.

I sobbed down the phone anyway.

“She’s still at your place doing the same things she used to do,” the Pet Psychic said. And I so want this magical thinking to be true.

“She says ‘that was my job, looking after everyone’. She was like a mother dog watching over her family.”

I cried quietly through the Pet Psychic talking about a favourite toy my dog didn’t have. As an absolute people-pleaser I tried to invent a toy, but the truth was that my dog was afraid of the first soft toys we bought her.

The Pet Psychic talked about the politics of greyhound racing and horse racing. I snapped back into the present when she mentioned Winston Peters and Shane Jones, mentally cursing the fact that even in psychic visions these assholes still annoy me. When she said horses tell her they don’t like being ridden I took notes because despite the empty feeling growing in my gut I knew it was good content for the group chat.

Her dog started barking. Not because my dead dog’s spirit was in her house, but because the rubbish truck had gone past. My dog never barked. Do you know how lucky you are to get a dog that never barks?

She told me my dog’s favourite memory was cuddling me on the bed and I believed that.

If my dog could talk I think she would say she liked our cuddles on my bed.

I thanked her genuinely and hung up.

I looked at my empty bed. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to imagine her on the bed. I tried to imagine her tight in a ball, pretending she wasn’t a 30kg plus greyhound. I tried to imagine her collar tinkling, tried to imagine her sighing, tried to imagine her honey coloured ears, tried to imagine the way she would bump into my arm for my pats.

I opened my eyes and looked at the bed.

It was still empty.

She was still gone.