Goatieodeo, the goat I’ve been caring for here on Orcas, (he didn’t really have an owner) didn’t show up for his grain last week. I found him under a cedar tree in the woods he’d lived his life in on the adjoining property. The timing was ironic as I had found someone who really wanted to give him a great home among lots of other animals on her stupendous farm. She planned to come meet him that very day. 

It’s a few weeks short of a year since my beloved horse left his beautiful body behind. This means a year ago, I was having a lot of intimate conversations with him about his approaching journey, our impending separation, and how and where we could still be together in our hearts.

How Forest the Fish Helped Me Realize the Unnamed God. One day last week I drove up to our local post office. In front of me on a telephone pole was a hand-scrawled sign “My goldfish Forrest needs a new home.” I took down the phone number, hoping the little guy was still available to come and live with the other 150 or so fish in my backyard pool/converted fishpond.

Chances are, your beloved furry soul mate pet knew before you did that the time to say goodbye was approaching. That doesn’t make it any easier of course. Our pets absorb our thoughts, feelings and emotions in ways we as humans are just beginning to understand. It is quite possible that your thoughts about your pet’s old age, sickness, injury, etc are getting in the way of them being able to let go.

There’s been several times in the twelve years I’ve been with my horse Tiger where either I was injured, or he was. Consequently, our relationship found new ways to deepen beyond our magical rides through the coastal tundra outside of Inverness, where Tiger lives.

 It was a clear, crisp but warm morning in the early spring. Sunbeams sliced through the woods at an angle, displaying a myriad of light rays which made the forest floor look mottled and dappled.

Tiger transitioned into his spirit body on Friday, Dec. 16th, after a very long and heroic fight with laminitis in his RF hoof. He made it clear to us that he was ready - after 4 years of being a willing patient, he’d systematically rejected every intervention, one by one.

When I first heard the term “Animal Chaplaincy” my heart jumped. Though the term felt so familiar to me, a life-long animal lover and steward of the earth, I needed to know more about what Animal Chaplaincy actually embraced. I started off on a journey to find out. Luck was with me, as my advisor in my Masters of Divinity program agreed to let me formally study Animal Chaplaincy as an Independent Study project. Below is an excerpt  from my report, along with some stories sharing some of my Animal Chaplaincy experiences. 

One early spring day I rode Tiger around the mountain counter-clockwise; up the hill out of the ranch, down the back of the little mountain into very wet area above the creek where nettles and thistles stand 6 feet high.

The day my chaplaincy supervisor at San Quentin State Prison asked me to coordinate a program that would bring animals into the prison was a happy day indeed. Animal chaplaincy has been a focus my entire life, though it was only after my formal chaplaincy training began several years ago that I heard the term animal chaplain. My excitement did not match the obstacles that met us in this endeavor. Starting a program in San Quentin is not something that happens overnight.