Addressing Loss Of A Pet With Compassion

Have you lost a furry friend recently? Are you struggling with grief? Listen to Dr. Jan Schwartz, talk about her journey of helping her dog heal from illness and enjoy its last remaining days. In this conversation we talk about miracles, grief, and community.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Giselle.

We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world.

Today we'll be talking about dealing with grief with compassion.

Today's guest is Dr.

Jan Schwartz who is the president of Forensic Fraud Research,

Inc.

She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association,

Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences,

And is a certified homeland protection professional with the National Sheriffs Association.

Her book,

Last Summer with Oscar,

Became an international bestseller.

Her new book,

Authentic Intelligence,

How to Use Your Emotional,

Mental,

And Spiritual Gifts to Create the Life and World You Want,

Is bound to gain the same recognition and accolades.

Please join me in welcoming Jan.

Hi,

Jan.

Good morning,

Giselle.

A warm hello to you and to all of your listeners.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I just want to start by sharing a little bit about how I sort of ended up finding your story.

In particular,

I was going through my own journey of my own dog having seizures.

There was a couple of times where my dog,

We thought we're going to lose him just because his seizures were really,

Really bad.

I kind of resigned myself to his eventual passing just because of how bad the seizures had gotten.

Then I set the intention for something that would help me not only ease his passing,

But actually restore him to the level of wellness that I knew he could get to,

But I didn't know how.

Very interestingly,

I didn't even know how you and I kind of connected,

But we started chatting about your book,

Authentic Intelligence.

Through conversation,

It came out that you had written this other book called Last Summer with Oscar.

When you look at your credentials,

It's so amazing that somebody who's so involved in fraud would end up sort of in this kind of journey that is more spiritual.

I wanted to start the podcast by letting the audience know a little bit about what actually led you to write Last Summer with Oscar.

How did perhaps your perspective shift from focusing on forensic fraud to maybe opening up to there being something else?

My husband and I returned home from a vacation,

A holiday.

When we went to pick up the dogs from this wonderful kennel,

They said to me,

We're so sorry,

But Oscar didn't eat.

I was very concerned wondering why they hadn't contacted us and these kinds of things.

Rather than focusing on that,

I immediately drew my attention to Oscar and his eyes flashed at me with fear when he leaped out of the kennel and I put them into the car.

Needless to say,

The next day,

My husband and I were at the vet.

The vet was disturbed by the dramatic weight loss because Oscar was not able to eat.

My husband is a retired surgeon,

So he was there examining the x-rays and saw that cancer had taken over Oscar's body and came out to tell me with the vet that things didn't look good.

I was devastated.

I was just overwhelmed with sorrow and grief.

The immediate thought is,

What can we do to help him?

The vet said,

Well,

He will die because he won't be able to eat the kind of cancer he has.

This is the challenge.

They don't feel like eating and there is great depression with it.

He said there's chemotherapy,

But we had heard many times from others that had faced a similar diagnosis.

In this case,

The likelihood of it being hemangiosarcoma,

Which is the worst kind of cancer,

One that a dog can be perfectly healthy one minute,

And then it's such a fast-spreading cancer,

It just becomes a pervasive illness.

We were in that boat and the vet said,

Well,

You can do chemotherapy.

We knew that there were severe stories of pain with that.

To put our dog with such a gentle,

Loving spirit through that,

My husband and I immediately said,

No,

We're going to celebrate.

Every day with this dog,

We are going to treasure it.

We're going to find the wherewithal and the strength to endure the grief,

The sorrow,

The frustration of not him eating and all this.

We just pledged from that moment on together that we were going to somehow find a way to keep Oscar eating and being very much strong individual people.

We each found our path doing that.

I stepped into this since my work is an intelligence-gathering person to keep our country and our allies that I'm working with for the betterment of the world.

I began to view it from an intelligence-gathering effort,

Except this time,

I was the student.

Here,

This dog,

With the role of attentiveness,

Was the attention was on him always.

He taught me that because his eyes,

Just as his eyes had flashed to me,

Of fear and vulnerability,

And he was scared.

He was then teaching me focus,

Attentiveness,

And I had dreams that supported all of the stages of adapting to this world.

Also,

I want to say that Winston,

Oscar's litter mate,

And his faithful companion,

They were two devoted brothers.

Winston knew something was seriously wrong,

Too.

Winston was hypersensitive about being mindful about Oscar.

We were all focusing on this dog,

And he felt the love.

The progression of being his student,

And he was the teacher,

Was one where I felt so many times I was in the presence of divine wisdom,

And that my job,

I was being trained to notice things that I could immediately see would change the path of the day,

The week,

And so on.

It is through all of that that Oscar would suddenly,

Here he was,

Unable to do anything.

On one particular night,

May I share with you how he really got upset?

We had been in the habit of taking a three-mile walk in our incorporated village.

The work that I do keeps me riding or working at all hours of the day,

So to walk late at night was not an uncommon thing for me to do.

This was one of those nights,

And Oscar came to me.

He was excited,

And he was wagging his tail.

Of course,

I was going to stop everything.

You know I would.

Winston was,

Oh my goodness,

So Oscar wanted to take a walk.

Up to then,

We had been holding into our hearts what the vet had said.

There wasn't much of a chance for Oscar to be around with us for maybe even as short as two weeks.

For this to happen was,

What?

What is this?

It was an electrifying moment.

I'm so glad I followed it because it changed the course of everything.

It was on this walk that Oscar pulled me.

He was always walking on my right,

And Winston was on my left.

They were protecting me from all angles.

Oscar pulled me into this very,

Very unmaintained stretch of bushes.

You know how it is in corners and streets we have.

Winston,

Of course,

Followed because what could be something very exciting there,

Some good smells.

To my great surprise,

Oscar came out,

And his face was covered with tiny green leaves.

He went back in,

And I heard him inhaling these leaves.

The best way for me to explain is when we go to the zoo,

We see anteaters.

We see how those anteaters.

This was what Oscar was doing with,

As I found out,

With these little seedlings.

I don't want to get ahead of myself,

But that's what started.

He was very excited,

Had energy for the rest of the walk,

And here we were doing a three-mile walk.

Now,

From a dog that was not eating to this,

This was such a dramatic change that I felt I was entering into a project,

An adventure.

These are how I discuss my investigations and cases.

Okay,

They're adventures,

They're projects.

I said,

This is unlike anything.

This is electrifying for good.

There is something I have to really,

Really be focused on paying attention to this dog because this dog has information that I need to pay attention to for others and for us.

So I then,

In seeing that happen,

It was two nights later,

Oscar wanted to go again.

I said to my husband,

Richard,

Something's going on here.

It was the same response coming back.

He said,

Well,

Just don't get your hopes up.

You know how he's trying to protect me,

You know how it is.

We're watching like that.

I said,

No,

I'm going to call in some tree experts.

I want to study this.

I'm going to take,

So I did.

I brought in people and I said,

Here's where he goes.

And we parted the bushes and lo and behold,

Here we saw these,

The leaves were missing from these branches.

And they said,

Well,

It's some sort of an elm and there are 400 varieties.

So no one,

No one would pin it down.

And I said,

All right,

Well,

Let me,

Let me see about this.

So on the third walk or so with Oscar,

One of the subsequent walks,

I,

I,

We were going into a different direction and the wind came and the branch of a tree swept down near us.

And here were these leaves.

And I tell you,

Giselle,

All of a sudden Oscar's head perked up,

Like,

There it is,

There it is.

And he wanted,

He was following the branch as it then lifted up.

And so I thought,

Okay,

I'm going to get one of these leaves.

I'm going to look around.

And on our way back home from the walk,

I saw that there was a big tree in the front of our house that had these leaves.

There was another tree in our front yard.

And I said,

What is going on?

And as I walked the dogs around our front yard,

Here were little shoots of this.

And I began to research and came to find out that the Slippery Elm tree was the source of this,

This joy,

This healing,

This miraculous response of our dog coming to life,

Renewing himself.

And then began my research into Slippery Elm.

And Giselle,

This,

This,

This tree we have,

This is the largest,

The oldest tree in,

In our neighborhood.

And it is perhaps 175 years old.

And the trunk of the Slippery Elm in itself is spellbinding.

It,

It wraps and it has this beauty in that.

But what I learned was that this tree,

The Slippery Elm tree has been over harvested by the drunk,

Drug companies for years.

And how they do it is underneath this bark is this white strip and it's a sap.

It's a white strip of sap.

And historically,

This is so significant for Americans because there were two weeks as we learned in sixth grade in American history that George Washington and the troops did not have any food.

And how did they stay alive?

Well,

I learned that a Native American soldier taught them that the bark,

How to remove the bark from the Slippery Elm.

Right.

And they stripped the sap off,

Cut it and chopped it into gruel,

Added it and made,

Put water on it,

Hot water on it.

And it became like a porridge,

Like an oatmeal.

And the nutritional quality of this oatmeal,

We call it oatmeal,

Of this Slippery Elm porridge was what sustained them.

And now what we know,

The drug companies found out about that and Native Americans have relied on herbal and all sorts of natural resources for their healing.

Anyway,

So I found out that it historically was this and that a tea had been made and maybe you have heard about Nurse Case from Canada.

And she had this tea.

So your country too,

She had met with a Native American medicine man because she had an illness and he provided her with this tea and taught her how to make it.

And so here Nurse Case,

C-A-I-S-S-E,

Began working with medical doctors who were treating cancer patients that had no hope,

That they were at the end of the line of their health and they were willing to try something that would give them a chance to keep living.

And these doctors were very courageous because this was stepping away from the way the pharmaceutical industry was doing things.

So you see how progress was made.

Some people were stepping out because they wanted to try something that had been helping the Native Americans for years to live.

And so her tea,

Yasiak tea,

And here,

What is so amazing in the spirit of sharing good knowledge that benefits all,

This tea,

I learned that the remedy,

That this tea,

That the formula for it was even available online for no charge.

That's how this research went,

Where the goodness of others that had brought about this.

And here it was being given to me because Oscar had led me to this discovery.

And so I wrote this book wanting to share this information and so much more.

Yeah,

Thank you for sharing that.

I think you said so many great things.

The first thing I want to say is that it has also been my experience that the earth will give you what you need.

Like we're so interconnected with the land that people don't realize that.

Around our house,

There were times when our kids would suffer from tummy aches.

And what was naturally growing outside was chamomile.

We didn't know what it was.

And so there's lots of times where what we've needed was actually in the land around us,

But we just didn't have that awareness.

It was when we started gardening that we were like,

Oh my gosh,

This is chamomile.

One of the things that surprised me the most about your journey as per your book was that you didn't intend to heal Oscar.

Your intention really was to spend as many days as possible with the most joy and the most presence and give your dog the happiest time possible.

But it ended up that he ended up being healed from his cancer.

That probably was a shocking experience.

Or was that something you expected from the journey?

No,

I value your question.

And it's a mighty one.

Because you see,

This was a very active adventure.

There were no days off.

We were up and down when someone has cancer and when a pet has cancer.

And especially the way we were going about doing it,

We were attentive to his needs.

And one of the moments,

And I certainly was not thinking healing at all,

I just wanted to remain together with him in a connectedness,

In a closeness,

And to surround him with what I call warmest love.

I'm a deeply spiritual person.

And so I know that warmest love was shining upon me,

Giving me the strength for this journey.

And Giselle,

I was doing my other projects.

I would be doing this and I would have to give a keynote speech.

I would have to take a test for certification of this,

That or whatever,

Because I was trained to be a family psychologist.

And I had to,

The more evidence that I was discovering in white-collar organized crime,

I had to keep growing with that.

So I was,

Boy,

I was overextended to say the least,

But I was fueled.

And I was being surrounded with warmest love.

And I put a capsule around Oscar Winston and Richard,

We were all in that capsule of warmest love.

But there were moments that,

What do we do now?

This was not something that you could control,

Okay?

Many of us feel like the best way we can stay safe in life is we have to control things more.

Well,

This adventure,

There was no control.

You were in a state of trusting that you were going to be led by an animal to the next thing.

And one thing I want to tell you that I,

As the seasons,

Oscar became ill in summer,

And the book is broken up into four main chapters of seasonal chapters,

Summer,

And then fall,

And then winter,

And spring.

And so when we transitioned to fall,

I was noticing,

As we all do in what season we're in right now,

The leaves are falling off.

And I thought,

What is this going to be like when there are no more leaves for Oscar to take in?

And for Winston,

What are we going to experience?

How I decided to handle that was to stay focused on the patient,

On the subject,

And that was Oscar.

And he was fine until one night.

And he and Winston were in a state of such confusion,

Because where they always found slip around was here.

And then they had backup places and patches in our backyard,

That miraculously started to come.

But every when we came back from the walk,

There was nothing there.

And so I came down to my office right where I am now,

And sat at my computer to start checking things that I needed to do.

And interestingly,

Oscar came down,

Sat beside me,

Did not lie down.

He didn't lay down.

He didn't lie down.

He was looking at me with these eyes,

I know you're going to find out what to do next.

And he was the patient.

I stopped everything,

Began to look miraculously,

I found information about an extraordinary tree called the Graviola tree from the Amazon rainforest,

And the history of the usefulness of the Graviola tree extract for the world.

And the information of the scientific studies that the National Cancer Institute,

For some reason,

Did not decide to further or follow the path of continued research,

So that it would be get the information would be utilized in a way for humanity,

It was just abruptly stopped.

I read about that.

And I said,

What is this?

What has happened?

And then I looked further.

And what had happened were the drug companies tried to replicate this,

The genetic components of the Graviola tree extract,

Because the Amazon rainforest has protection over the rainforest and products.

And so,

Interestingly,

They were unable to replicate the properties.

So I knew that the important thing was getting a hold of this product immediately.

So I overnighted the product to our door,

You would do the same thing for yours,

And I bet many listeners would do the same.

And what I'm about to tell you is that it was there,

FedEx was perfect,

Right there in time,

And Oscar was waiting with me at the door,

He was that in tune.

And if what I'm about to tell you is we went through,

We followed the recommended administration of these capsules,

And it was called Gravizon,

That's what the product was called.

And if we had begun the journey with Gravizon,

And used Slippery Elm,

We would have had an even stronger result.

But the adventure was meant to be this way.

And it was meant so that I could say to others,

That Gravizon is even stronger in kicking off a recovery,

Or a healing process.

And how he was restored from this,

And how he felt about himself was extraordinary.

But then,

The journey wasn't just to have two remedies,

We ended up discovering six remedies,

Because hemangiosarcoma is a very multifaceted,

Has a multifaceted treatment process.

And red clover proved to be,

Thanks to a friend's suggestion,

Proved to provide a miraculous result in just days,

Where a tumor in Oscar's mouth reduced to,

I would say,

Maybe reduced by 80%,

So that he was able to swallow and eat past it.

So the book is filled with discoveries for those people who enjoy mysteries and adventures.

And the vets,

You can imagine,

We had two vets that were involved in this.

They were so,

So supportive.

And they had a sensitivity about,

Let's just let Oscar be our teacher.

Not giving advice,

Just learning from Oscar.

One of the things you mentioned just now,

Which I think is really important for our listeners to understand,

Is that this is a journey.

This was a journey that had a lot of ups and downs.

Like sometimes things would work,

And sometimes they didn't.

Like sometimes he would eat the tuna,

And sometimes he wouldn't.

One of the things that struck me the most was how compassionate you were with yourself and with your dog throughout the journey,

Because that was a challenging journey.

There were so many ups and downs,

And you were so committed to ensuring that both dogs had the best experience,

Especially Oscar.

Was it a conscious choice,

Or was it just naturally something to do with how you manage those difficult moments,

That you kind of use an inner kindness for yourself as well as for your loved ones?

Well,

That's a tough subject.

I have been born with,

Excuse me,

A capacity to love that may be viewed by others who don't yet know me as something is,

How did this happen?

When her life has not been easy,

The love comes from the light that I draw in,

And that light,

No matter what,

Is always,

Always refueling me.

I had the best examples of this creative way of loving,

And maybe we now can think of this as an implementation of what I call authentic intelligence,

But I had the most extraordinary elementary teachers who fueled me with creativity and who nurtured my inquiring thoughts with balancing out the mental pursuit with supporting me as I was understanding the subject,

And also giving me the role model of the love that was mine for the taking,

Because like all of us,

I'm one of God's children,

But in my case,

This was personal because of them,

My teachers.

I viewed God really as my parent,

As my father,

And so that puts me in a completely different position as I take on any project,

Where my ability to persevere,

The depth of my commitment is one where the standard that I bring to it is one that has been imprinted on me.

It's imprinted on all of us.

It's just that I personally drew it in saying that God is my father.

I'm a child of God,

So this is how it happens.

This is how I need to do it.

This is how I will know how to do it,

So offering to Oscar,

And yes,

If I may apply a little bit of the underpinning of authentic intelligence,

How to use your mental,

Emotional,

And spiritual gifts to create the life and world you want.

What I was doing throughout this journey was,

If we were to think of three interrelated circles,

The top circle on the left is mental intelligence.

The circle beside it is emotional intelligence or EQ.

Okay,

Mental intelligence is IQ.

Emotional intelligence is EQ,

And then there's a third intelligence that's the third interrelated circle,

And that's spiritual intelligence.

Some people haven't heard of this.

I've been finding out about that lately,

And there's a lot of interest in learning more about it,

But we call that SQ.

There is an area common to all three circles,

And that is my sense of knowing,

Has been my sense of knowing.

That's what was fueling me and has fueled me on a life that sometimes I refer to myself as a real-life Cinderella,

So it is maybe that's understood.

Maybe it isn't,

But maybe some would say she just perseveres.

She's someone who just never,

Ever lets anyone write the ending to her story.

Okay,

There are different ways of perhaps describing me,

But above all,

I'm someone who taps into that knowing.

I tap into that authentic intelligence,

And in my new book,

This is what my message is,

Is that this is our way to find our answers,

To step out of our brokenness,

To step away from our anguish and just say,

Okay,

Wait a minute.

Within me are three interrelated circles,

So what am I doing with my mental intelligence?

You see,

My ideas are that we need to feed these intelligences.

There is a desperate need.

We have this treasure of three intelligences that has to be fed.

We can't just let it go stagnant.

They're yearning for stimulation,

So if we feed mental intelligence with tasks like reading books or listening to books perhaps or pondering pertinent quotes,

There's a whole assortment,

And we're probably pretty familiar with mental intelligence.

I don't want to get away too far from your question,

But emotional intelligence has very,

Very specific ways.

It's about reading others and ourselves,

And the emotional intelligence involves self-regulation.

That answers to you.

It was my job to regulate myself and my sorrow with Oscar and Winston.

It's about self-awareness.

It's about motivating yourself.

It's about developing empathy and about increasing one's social experiences so that we have a higher level,

A higher ability to handle things,

And then spiritual intelligence is the soul's intelligence.

It's our source of creativity,

And that we could talk about all of those things more,

But this was,

I was going between the circles,

And that has been how I lived my life.

Authentic intelligence in action happens when we see people being able to persevere and carry on being genuine about the difficulty,

But not letting ourselves be stuck there in getting support from one of the other circles.

You notice how I was constantly going back to mental intelligence where I was researching,

And then I was being honest with Oscar and Winston,

And I remember writing,

Excuse me,

And I was up under this,

The top of the hill in the backyard,

And I sat beside Oscar and just cried and sobbed and said,

I want you to know I am feeling so helpless,

And so I'm open about I'm real about this,

And I am a private person too,

But in this book,

I really am a very private person,

And as I've shared with you in a separate occasion,

Doing these podcasts and coming out like this,

I'm stepping out of the shadows because when you're in the intelligence-gathering world,

You know,

You don't look,

You don't want to be discovered.

There's too many security incidents that happen,

But this is a time,

This is a time there is an urgency in our broken world for us to learn a new way to connect,

To focus on competing with ourselves and connecting with others,

Our focus on the three circles so that we can tap into our knowing and draw upon that because goodness,

Every family,

Every person that's listening has something going on that they want to feel supported on,

And I care.

I understand that the burden can feel enormous,

But as human beings,

We can offer something more than just coldness and a separateness,

And we can share authentically because we're wired to be authentic human beings.

I hope I answered your question to some degree.

Of course,

I mean,

I think speaking of the three circles you had mentioned,

It was really that spiritual aspect of yourself that led you to listen to Oscar to begin with,

Because it's so easy to ignore,

Like,

You know,

Your dog constantly asking you to go and do things,

But I think it was you tapping into that knowing in the intuition that you're supposed to be the student in this particular way,

And considering all the accolades in your role to put yourself in a position of a student to a dog is really quite astonishing,

Especially,

You know,

Since it's your dog,

Right?

It was,

But it also truly felt like an honor.

It was my honor to be beside him,

And the goodness of this journey and the changes and the courage of this dog.

We would be going for a walk,

And the police would be coming by,

And they'd go,

Go Oscar,

And other people were saying,

Hey,

You know,

Here's this for Oscar,

And Giselle,

I have to tell you,

My husband has his own creative way of showing love to dogs,

And in this case,

Oh,

Everyone has heard about Chick-fil-A.

You have Chick-fil-A's perhaps up there,

Right?

Okay,

Are they perhaps an international wonderful sandwich?

Anyway,

Our local Chick-fil-A got to know Oscar because my husband would go through the drive-thru just to keep Oscar eating,

And he would say,

I need two plain Chick-fil-A sandwiches for Oscar,

For my dog Oscar,

Or our dog Oscar,

Or something like this,

And they would say,

Excuse me,

And he would say,

Our dog Oscar is very sick with cancer.

We're trying to keep him eating,

So I need to come home with two sandwiches.

We're hoping that he will eat it,

So Oscar got,

This became a game,

And so he got to know dogs are very smart,

You know.

They know when we come home.

They know when we leave.

They know the sound of the different cars and this sort of a thing,

So Richard was,

You know,

It was midday.

He was,

He was leaving.

Oscar knew what this was,

So Oscar would move into this one room we call our son room,

And it had this doggie door,

So Oscar would then hear Richard come home going through the garage and with the car,

And Oscar would be out the doggie door waiting to meet Richard at the side door for his piece of Chick-fil-A sandwich,

Because he needed to gain weight,

And Winston,

Our precious Mr.

Winston,

Was on the chubby side,

So he couldn't participate in these things,

So this is a silliness that people with two dogs,

Three dogs,

They understand that it's a juggling when one is sick,

And I'm,

You know,

With families,

It's,

It's the same.

It's just part of the,

So the journey was definitely up and down,

And these moments refueled us with the joy,

And so it,

We were never stuck on sorrow,

Because right after that came another discovery.

Yeah,

And one of the things I also saw is that Oscar's legacy was one of community,

Too,

Like you were talking about all the different people that came together and rallied together,

Even if it was just for support,

And I think that goes to show you how community can come together with each other,

And what's really happening in our society is that we've lost that sense of community.

We've lost that sense of togetherness.

There seems to be this separation between ourselves and other people,

Even a separation from ourselves,

I would say,

And you were talking about that we lacked connection to community with each other,

And in your journey with Oscar,

It was such a beautiful reminder to me about the importance of community and coming together and helping each other through our experiences,

And all that work really did extend Oscar's life,

Right,

And the magic was,

So you know,

Oscar did eventually end up passing,

And I think that's where still holding on to the grief with compassion and love and joy is what you talk about throughout the book,

Which is very,

Very important,

Enabling you to still enjoy the time you had,

But he didn't die of cancer,

Right?

Can you talk a little bit about the kind of miracle that you experienced?

Yes,

My husband Richard and I had always said that as time went by,

And we saw how unique this adventure was,

We began to think that there may be an outcome to it that might be something that would be significant for some entity,

And there came a time when Oscar looked at me,

And he was extremely feeble,

He was no longer able to walk,

He was very thin,

And he looked at me and the eyes conveyed,

I can't do this anymore,

And I immediately cradled him in my arms and said,

It's okay,

Sweetheart,

You don't have to anymore,

And our vets were poised for this moment,

And they were in two different locations so that they could be,

However we could put Oscar in a peaceful place after all that he had courageously gone through,

And here we had found these six remedies,

And we had just had two weeks,

I believe it was two weeks where he was living,

Eating,

He was eating all three meals,

It was clear that he was,

He had,

It was all had come together,

That was our knowing that the remedies were helping him because he wanted to eat,

He had an appetite,

So when the moment came,

It ended up that this one that Dr.

Pearson was available,

And we had privately spoken to him that would he,

Would he consider testing Oscar's tissues for malignancy,

Would,

Did he believe enough in us,

And he was such an open-minded veteran vet,

I mean,

He just said,

Absolutely,

I have been on this journey with you,

I am just as curious as you are what happened,

And the other vet,

Dr.

Heller,

Wasn't available,

And he was with us in,

In his spirit at the time,

But when Oscar's,

When Oscar passed away in our arms in,

In Dr.

Pearson's office,

His tissues were then tested,

And when the results came in,

Dr.

Pearson wanted to meet with us in person,

I love that,

That,

That was such a respectful gesture,

And he looked at us and said,

There's no malignancy anywhere,

And then,

Because this was,

This was back in 11,

2012,

I'm trying to think of when I wrote this story,

But you know,

So it's now 12 years later,

So life is a little bit different,

And people are much more open to these situations,

But at the time,

This was a rather dramatic result,

It was,

And when I put the book together,

And fortunately,

A,

The American,

Anyway,

The ACFE,

American College of Forensic Examiners Institute,

Published the book for me quickly to get the information out,

So that was a gift,

And why it was a gift is there was a veterinary conference coming up,

And Dr.

Heller stood up,

Held the book,

Just like this,

And he said,

This book is something that you need to read,

Because I lived through this journey with this dog,

And he had many things to say about it,

And so did Dr.

Heller,

But it's because of the interest from veterinary science that it started selling books,

And,

And interesting connections came,

You know,

When the book launched in 2013,

It was a little bit about a year later when we finally made a formal book launch of it,

But then people on Facebook began to read it,

And passed it on to,

To their boss,

Or their friend,

Or,

Or,

And there is a story that is quite unbelievable,

One person who is in the intelligence field in the United Kingdom passed the book on to his book,

To his boss,

Who passed it on to his boss,

Who passed it on to his boss,

And she was a revered queen,

So I will just phrase it that way,

And there were outreaches to me,

And linked in to verify my authenticity,

So I guess what I'm saying,

And,

And importantly,

This is what I would like the takeaway to be,

Or one of the takeaways to be,

Giselle,

Is how are we to know when we're tackling some experience,

What the outcome is going to be,

Or its significance for someone else,

So if we keep feeding our intelligences,

Our treasure of intelligences,

We're going to create,

We're going to be drawn to adventures that are going to yield outcomes that can help someone else,

Versus a life of simply feeding our own ego,

Okay,

It's very easy to do that today,

There's so many ways,

It's a distinctly different path,

And it's always our choice,

And I'm not saying that we can't,

I love movies,

Yes,

I use my phone,

I'm on Facebook,

I love LinkedIn,

And I'm not so good on Twitter,

I haven't figured that out yet,

Not enough time to do that,

I'm just a regular person about all of this,

It's just that what I have found is that tapping into our knowing and creating these adventures,

Once you start it,

You want to return there,

It's a better situation,

It's a much more rewarding outcome than simply taking care of our basic ego needs,

So we're all on this journey,

I wish the best for you,

For your listeners,

For every living being on this earth,

And we have the choice of how we can do it,

Because this is how we were wired to be,

And we don't have to remain broken,

We can work on healing by focusing on the three circles and getting ourselves into our sense of knowing,

And we'll be quite surprised at the change in our life.

Mm-hmm,

I fully agree.

One thing I was thinking about was that this journey you're talking about,

And the journey you went through with Oscar,

And all the other journeys you continued to go on,

Take a level of faith,

A level of faith and trust,

And I think if you're willing to do that,

You're willing to show up for whatever showed up,

And there's a level of courage to that as well,

What is one thing that people can do to help them kind of embark on that journey of really stepping up into their knowing?

Yes,

I fully understand.

What I can tell you is that such a moment when people are overcome with fear may be a time of experiencing profound rejection or profound worries about financial loss or something,

And I would not be talking about this had I not walked through those moments where I have experienced profound rejection,

And what fueled me,

First of all,

You know,

We have to,

When we suffer at the hands of an event or what someone's choice or what has happened or something not working out,

Just putting it that way.

We work to come to grips with it and to take ownership of what our role is in that,

And understanding the facts and the details that came together to make that happen,

But once we get to that point,

For me,

What fueled me like that was,

I just said to myself,

And I wrote these things down,

I wrote down these phrases and put them on the bathroom mirror,

And I put them in my drawers when I'd be pulling out my sweatshirt or my jeans or something,

And I would come across it,

And these things,

And I put them all over the place where I would see them,

But one that works to this day constantly is never,

Ever let anyone or anything write the ending to your story.

Life is hard.

Life is brutal.

This is a living experience today of such a competitiveness.

We have such a fight between light and darkness,

And for those of us who work to expose wrongdoing,

Whether it's profound corruption,

Profound patterns of money laundering through the most respectable places and so on and so forth,

Or exposing sexual abuse and having people see the entity that was supposed to be protecting children fail us so,

And then knowing the years of healing that every one of the people who have suffered,

They are so deserving and entitled to be brought into that capsule of warmest love,

And I tell you this,

Giselle,

The world is not doing enough for the victims of the sexual abuse,

But my point is that we have so much that we can do by just immediately stepping out of just going after power or becoming number one by focusing on,

Okay,

Mental intelligence,

Emotional intelligence,

Spiritual intelligence,

Focusing there,

Getting into the knowing,

Getting to the source of the help and the healing.

For me,

Never,

Ever let anyone write the ending to your story.

Another phrase that activated me like that was,

If it is to be,

It is up to me,

And I put together a whole list of things that I would come across and I would see,

For example,

And since I'm an authentic person here being interviewed,

I will say to you,

Guess what I said when I was coming down to my office today?

Here is the statement for today.

What came to me,

And I think you're just a wonderful hostess and I can be so real and share these things with you,

But I said as I was coming down,

I can do this,

I can do this well,

And that put me,

It centered me,

Okay,

And that was not putting me into fueling my ego,

It was centering me,

I was reading myself,

I was in my EQ zone,

I was centering myself,

Saying,

Now I am,

I'm in a place now where I can work out of all three circles,

And those are some of the ways that I hope will be able to help other people as they step forward on their healing,

Because we are always on our way to wholeness,

We're always moving there,

No matter what has happened,

No matter what we've been through,

Someone,

Some entity can surround you and draw you into a capsule of the warmest love,

And you can heal,

And that is my sincere promise.

Beautiful.

Thank you so much for that.

It made me think,

It's interesting,

Because in all my interviews,

I usually set an intention as well,

That I might ask the right questions,

May I honour the person that is showing up,

And then,

You know,

May I usually get led to probably the best questions I can ask,

And hopefully that gets me good interviews.

We're wrapping it up,

I wanted to ask a couple of more questions.

The first one is,

What is your definition of unconditional love?

It would be an energy,

An effervescent,

Electrifying,

Always,

Never on empty love.

Always being fueled,

Never on empty.

I love that.

Well,

That's beautiful.

Thank you so much,

Jan,

For being on the podcast and for sharing your wisdom with us,

And your lovely discussion about your journey with Oscar,

And thank you everyone who tuned in for another episode of the Loving Compassion Podcast with Giselle.

See you soon.