Any experiences of this?

[Flobo]

Join our free community today.

Connect with other like-minded dog lovers!

Login or Register

I was changing the paper in Goose's cage the other day and came across an article on animals seemingly saying goodbye before they die and I thought it was interesting. A couple of weeks ago I visited an elderly dog client of mine to say goodbye...whilst spending time with him and his family my friend had said it was really odd because over the last 3 nights he had gone and spent a night with her son, then the next night with her daughter, then back to her and her husband, like he was saying goodbye. When I turned up to see him, he managed a small tail wag, which he hadn't done for a few days...I've known him since he was a pup and he would of been 14 this year...it was heart breaking but comforting too as he did seem to be ready and seemingly knew it was his time...the weekend before he'd had a wonderful walk too, then just stopped eating...

I'll attach the full article if anyone is interested or has had a similar experience. Many years ago I used to work on a unit where we cared for the elderly through to end of life and experienced this phenomena several times...

https://sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Experiences-of-Dying-Animals_Parallels-With-End-of-Life-Experiences-in-Humans.pdf

 

[JudyN]

This is me with my scientific, sceptical brain on...

The lead author of the article is Rupert Sheldrake, who has a lot of theories that are classed as pseudoscience, and don't have any evidence to back them up. His theory of morphic resonance posits that what we think of as immutable laws of nature are actually just natural objects having memory, and 'remembering' what to do out of habit. So if rats in London learn a new. clever trick, rats in New York will somehow pick up on this and learn the trick faster than they would otherwise, thanks to a 'morphic field'. This even applies to physical objects - light presumably remembers how fast it is supposed to go. So I would take anything he's written with a huge pinch of salt.

Some animals do seem to understand the concept of death, but I'm not sure they understand their own mortality. I suspect that your client's dog felt in need of comfort because of his ailments, and wanted to be close to all of his loved ones. And this could also be 'confirmation bias' - it only felt that he was saying goodbye after the event. Humans are very good at seeing patterns and ascribing causes.

Having said all that, I haven't read the article and looked at the validity of the studies it's based on - and I could be wrong, it has been known!

 

[Flobo]

Yes, can see what you're saying, I like the idea though!Comfort is comfort and I do feel animals are a lot more aware than we give them credit for.
Science isn't a strong point or need of mine though tbf!...
I do believe that just because you can't explain/prove something scientifically and absolutely, it doesn't necessarily mean it is not so... but then I practise Reiki and believe in the existence of other beings in the universe, sooooo(not helping myself here am I??)
I do think it is an interesting topic none the less, a lot of the article is people recounting their experiences.