Beyond Obedience: Training with Awareness for You & Your Dog

by April Frost and Rondi Lightmark

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New York: Three Rivers/Crown/Random House (Orig. Harmony Books in 1998). 355pp 3 resources, 2pp Bibliography $13.00

April Frost is an animal communicator who comes from a place of deep love and respect for animals. She relates to each as an individual, and works with each by communicating and explaining - as well as using the clear and consistent behavioral approaches common to animal trainers. She advises people to explore what is right in their unique relationship with their animal companions, taking into account their own personality and that of their animal.

Frost has excellent suggestions and discussion on basics of training for the habits that will enable dogs and people to get along comfortably together.

In addition to offering training to people and animals, Frost has dedicated much of her life to helping animals in need. She describes a remarkable rescue of 13 malnourished dogs out of larger pack that had run wild all of its life in a pen, never having known a positive relationship with humans. The dogs were wounded physically and scarred emotionally. Here are a few paragraphs about her approaches in healing them:

Every dog had some kind of wound or infection: lacerations, punctures, and tears. I treated these with herbal medicines made from plants that I grow in my gardens or gather in the wild: tinctures of oat straw, chamomile, and Saint-John's-wort for depression and to support the central nervous system; herbal poultices; infused oils and salves containing rosemary, plantain, flaxseed, burdock, or calendula to treat the wounds. We treated their ear mites daily with olive oil infused with garlic, rosemary, and rue. And I used homeopathic remedies: aconite for stress, staphysagria for rapid healing of incision-type wounds, Ledum for punctures.

Some of the dogs were running a fever from their infections. I had long been interested in the use of colored light to stimulate sensory reactions and the immune system, and I used it here because it is simple and noninvasive. I hung droplights with colored bulbs on the crates, flooding the interiors with colored light. The color of the bulb and the length of time varied from dog to dog; I gave the feverish ones regular doses of blue light. I gave every dog a color bath in green light - a color that balances and stabilizes the energy of the system - for at least ten minutes a day. Stoff, who had been pulled from beneath the shed, was exposed to red light for ten minutes a day to build up his vitality; then he received ten minutes of green light for balance. (p. 81)

One evening as I was sitting in prayer and meditation, an inspiration came to me. Reiki practitioners work mentally with certain sacred Japanese symbols to help them access and direct healing power. Now I created a new symbol of my own and filled it with all of my love and hope for these dogs, until my whole being was energized with a sense of power and conviction. I projected the symbol like a shining gift to each dog in the room.

The change in the atmosphere was almost immediate.

I could feel that the love I had sent out through the symbol was being returned. It was coming from the dogs. The sensation was so intense that I could feel wave after wave of gratitude wash over me. We had finally found a common ground, and it was not of the physical world but of a brilliant, unifying spiritual reality. Love had conquered the fear. As I began to realize the full impact of my discovery, I wept with joy.

I continued to use my symbol every evening and saw that it was a powerful tool. I had discovered a level of communication that they were willing to accept; we had reached a new dimension of awareness. Some time was still to pass, however, before I saw the results manifest in the visible world. Now if only one of the leaders would spontaneously approach us in friendship and trust. I knew that such a positive example would ripple through the rest of the pack. (p. 83-84)

Frost brings us great wisdom in this book, suggesting many ways in which we can learn to appreciate and care for the animals we choose or who choose us as companions in this great adventure we call life. Dogs are very much in the present, and can help us find our own sense of the now that opens into spiritual awareness. 

Talking to your animal mentally, explaining the messages you want to convey, is very potent in training them to understand ways of behaving that will help the two of you get along well. Establishing intuitive and psychic communications with animals also provides another avenue for opening into spiritual dimensions.

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