Do animals have spirits? YES. All beings with the capacity for empathy and emotion have spirits, including animals.
Throughout my life, I have experienced the empathy of animals, from elephant families in South Africa, to my own pet family here at home. Animals are unique in that they show unconditional love and caring, unless trained or conditioned otherwise by man or altered by disease or the need for survival. Even taking the need for survival into account, animals still show signs of community and concern for their own on an instinctual level. Pack order and dominance are also part of some species’ nature, but minus the characteristic of sadism and willful inflicting of abuse and cruelty that humans are capable of. Animals live in harmony with nature, whereas man does not; there is a beauty in the natural world and the many species which are necessary to earth’s survival. This innocence on a spiritual level is a gift from God and the universe, and unfortunately something humans have learned to override throughout our evolution and introduction into the industrial age.
Each animal I have been privileged to parent has left an important mark on my life and my heart. Some I have had for nearly two decades, while others have been taken from my world prematurely through fatal genetic deficiencies or tragedies outside of our control. One such animal was our dog, Frijoles.
Ian found Frijoles at the Humane Society, and alerted me immediately and said we were the parents of a new ten month old puppy. He was a Mexican Hairless, who had been subjected to unimaginable cruelty by his previous owners. We welcomed him into our home, to give him a life of love that he was previously denied, and were blessed by his sweet disposition and joyful quirks. Even though he was tormented by human sadism before he entered our world, he showed us nothing but love and trust—a gift of purity and beauty we treasured and will never forget.
We had only lived in the home we own in western Washington state for about six months when we adopted Frijoles. He was the first new pet we welcomed into our lives in this house, and we were overjoyed to have this delightful being as our newest “kid”. He settled in quite quickly, and got along amazingly well with our adult dog, Bruce. Frijoles was meek and polite, and had a smile that melted our hearts with love.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, the abuse Frijoles had been exposed to had damaged the portion in his brain which regulated heat. Mexican Hairless breeds run temperatures a bit hotter than furred dogs, due to their need to keep warm without the layer of fur all other breeds have as part of their genetic code. We discovered Frijoles’ heat intolerance during the first summer we encountered in the old bungalow we had recently purchased. Due to climate change affecting even northern states such as Washington, that summer was brutally hot, with temperatures into the triple digits (Fahrenheit) for about ten days in a row. The old bungalow we bought was built in the 1950’s, and lacked central air conditioning, as such was not needed at the time. But nothing could have prepared us for the internal temperatures within the home from topping 100 degrees F, leaving us scrambling to try to mitigate this dangerous environmental escalation as quickly as possible.
Due to the deadly heatwave which was inflicting human casualties across the region, we experienced a casualty of our own: Frijoles. With every hardware store sold out of portable A/C units due to this environmental emergency, we had to rely on a house filled with pedestal fans and the air conditioning in our Jeep for relief, which was vastly insufficient. To say the least, this was a horrific and brutal time for us, and caused the sudden death of Frijoles by heat stroke. We tried everything to save him: wrapping him in chilled towels to try to lower his body temperature, and blasting him with cold air from the Jeep while trying to get him to an emergency vet for treatment. We failed, and Frijoles passed away in my husband’s arms, filling our world with sudden and traumatic grief. Upon later discussion with our vet (and Ian’s employer—he is a veterinary technician), we learned there was absolutely no way Frijoles could have survived this heatwave; he was already damaged by the infliction of unregulated heat for extended periods of time by his previous owners, who had left him outside and unsheltered during extreme weather events. It appeared he had already suffered a heat stroke in the past, which made this one a terminal event. We were devastated.
We tried to get through the next couple of days, having lost a beloved member of our own family to this heatwave which was claiming a rising number of human lives in the state and beyond, while grappling with the loss of a truly beautiful soul we had only been allowed by God to love for three months. Almost as soon as his smile entered our world, it was gone, and nothing could soothe the pain of this untimely tragedy. The only silver lining we could even try to accept was that for the previous season, Frijoles was in a home filled with the love and compassion he was denied during the first ten months of his life. But that still couldn’t quell the pain of grief which consumed our hearts.
A couple of nights after Frijoles left us, Ian was coming back to the house after checking the mailbox in the stifling heat. As he neared where our Jeep was parked in the carport, he heard a rustling off to the driver’s side of the vehicle, coming from the bushes beside the concrete platform, sprinkled with brittle leaves which had fallen from the trees above due to the extended temperatures. It was the spirit of Frijoles, next to the car in which he had lost his life as we tried in vain to get him to an emergency veterinary hospital for treatment. He was confused and unsure of why he was outside alone, in the dark. Ian immediately went over to where he was, speaking softly and reassuringly to him, calling our beloved baby to him with his abilities as a medium.
Frijoles came to Ian, his tiny spirit entering my husband’s body. Ian entered a trance state for a moment as he welcomed the sweet soul within him, and then crossed him over in an act of unconditional love and compassion. Our security camera captured the spirit of our beloved Frijoles as he drifted out of my husband’s body through his mouth, and across the rainbow bridge to be with my husband, Jeep, and all of our other pets who have left this world to wait for us on the other side.
The video below is physical evidence of an animal spirit caught on camera. For those who may be skeptics, Ian was not vaping or consuming any tobacco products (he quit all use of such vices back when I met him in 2019 and we married). Other than the use of sage and incense for spiritual purposes, no other smoking of a nicotine or cannabis nature is allowed on our property due to my asthma, and Ian’s allergies. This was a paranormal moment our security camera caught as it happened, and which I am sharing with you now.
Rest in peace, Frijoles. We miss you, and love you.