Their Nurturing Nature

It’s not easy to explain. Your car and your heart rate are speeding dangerously as you race to close a crucial deal, when the mental image of your golden retriever intrudes.

She has stopped to smell the daisies in your neighbor’s garden while on her morning walk. What dignified ecstasy she exhibits as she sniffs. What total immersion in bliss. What a way to make you suddenly lighten the pressure on the gas pedal, breathe deeply and stop stressing out.

This is nothing you can discuss with so-called normal people. They would label you eccentric, or worse. Even those with beloved pets of their own might think you loony if you said that dogs, cats, pigs, horses--the entire four-footed and feathered menagerie--can serve as teachers and healers in the lives of humans like you.

At least that’s the way it’s been for Susan Chernak McElroy, who was told as a child that she would outgrow her “babyish” love for animals. And who was called “flaky” as an adult by relatives who mocked her succession of low-paying jobs, most of which involved menial animal care.

It wasn’t until McElroy was in her mid-30s, found to have cancer of the head and neck, and given only two years to live that the tall, slim, former Californian mentally rewound the footage of her life, looking for meaningful threads. Her attachment to animals was obvious. Her love of writing, which she’d done only in private diaries and humane society newsletters, came next. She decided to combine the two in an attempt to make the rest of her life--however long that might be--a legacy of which she could be proud.

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It has been nine years since then. These days the exceedingly healthy-looking author is touring the country with her dog, Arrow, to promote “Animals as Teachers and Healers” (Ballantine).

The book does not extol animal heroics of the type we are likely to see on the evening news. Nor does it tout the adorably outrageous antics of our whiskered, Garfield-like friends. McElroy’s mission was different, she said the other day at the Universal City Hilton, where she arrived without Arrow, who had been skunked the night before and taken to the vet to be deodorized.

“I wrote the book to show that wisdom often comes in silence, from observation and openness to the world around us,” said McElroy, 44. “It is in these small, quiet moments, often with animals, that earth-shattering things happen. You know cancer came with a big bang into my life. But healing has occurred in whispers.”

And so her book is filled with parables of a delicate, philosophical nature. It is culled from real-life stories told to her by others who have found wisdom or help from contact with animal friends. The premise is simple, McElroy said, quoting from an author mentioned in her book: “Animals are not our brethren, our underlings or our possessions. They are not like us in any way. They are other nations,” caught with us “in the net of life and time. . . .”

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There’s the tale of Sammi the cat, who’d always lived in a country house surrounded by lush terrain. “Sammi took pride in leaving small field mice at our door each morning, and looked forward to my lavish praise,” Sammi’s human housemate, Susan Huskins, told the author.

Then adversity struck. Huskins was forced to move to a very small apartment, where there were no fields and very few trees in which Sammi could play. Huskins worried that the cat would be distressed, would find no suitable offerings for their morning ritual.

“When I finally let Sammi out solo, she greeted me at the door the following morning, as was her habit, just as proud as she could be. When I looked down, there at my feet were two small pine cones. I was absolutely amazed. Sammi continued to bring pine cones to my door, and then bask in my praise, each morning until the day she died.”

If you don’t understand the moral in that story, don’t bother to read McElroy’s book. Because the story of the 13-year-old girl who entered into an abusive relationship with an older man is equally abstract.

On their second Christmas together, the man bought the girl a skinny, haggard mare named Annie. The mare was all the girl could call her own. She spent her time nurturing and caring for the horse, bringing Annie back to shining health, giving her the love she would have liked for herself. When the man came into the barn one day and treated the mare roughly, the girl finally had the courage to stand up to him. He knocked her to the ground. The mare charged the man, knocking him against the wall, then went and nuzzled the girl, as if to check for injuries.

From that moment on, lives changed.

The girl, proud to have finally stood up to her abuser, was even prouder that the mare had stood up for her. Girl and mare left the man. They became an accomplished riding team. The girl found maturity and self-confidence from her connection with the mare. The mare? Who knows. But it was clear each had healed the other.

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Those are the kinds of stories McElroy loves to tell. They are the kinds through which she has learned and lived. And now they are earning her money.

She is working on a second book, which has to do with animals and atonement, she said.

“So many people have told me of the tremendous guilt they feel about the animals in their lives. They carelessly left a gate open and the beloved dog was killed. Or they were too busy to pay attention and didn’t see that their pet was very sick until it was too late. So I’m doing a chapter on what that is about, how do we come to peace with such moments in our lives.”

How do we?

“One of the things people can do is make an internal pact with whatever being, person or animal they feel guilty over. And in this pact, you say what you will do for atonement. If the animal is gone, it can be as simple as saying, ‘Since I didn’t hear what you had to say as a dog, and you died because I didn’t get that you were sick, I’m going to promise you that for the rest of my life I’m going to listen better to everyone in my life--people and animals.’ When you make such a vow, you have a positive mission rather than beating yourself up. You are doing something good in that animal’s name.”

McElroy is not totally animal-centric, she said. Since her battle with cancer, for example, she has met and married the human love of her life, and together they live on an Oregon farm with the dog, a cockatoo, some Indian runner ducks, three cats and a flock of pet chickens.

Yes, McElroy does eat meat. And chicken. And she doesn’t believe that everyone has to tune in to the animal wavelength.

“Whatever avenue brings passion to your life, or enchants you, that is the avenue through which your messengers will come. It could be art or music or some kind of sport--you will know because the healing messages will somehow appear in a way that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see them.

“In my case, I find I can learn more about life and God from a dragonfly than I could from a priest. In my life, animals always make sense, they can be depended upon to do what they are meant to do. That isn’t always the case with humans.”