Help Your Pet Step Into Their Inner Hero and Overcome Anything

By Shannon Cutts.

It’s a nearly universal experience – “gotcha day.” We meet our pet and make a decision. Into that decision, we pour our whole heart – all of our hopes and dreams for the life we want to give our pet and also the heartfelt role we hope to play in their life.

And sure, you may have known going in that you were tackling some tough challenges taking on this particular animal. Maybe they came to you with health issues, behavioral obstacles, high sensitivity, trauma history, something else.

But your heart didn’t care. It only heard “YES” and – unbeknownst to you – projected a whole story forward, complete with happy ending.

This is about the point in our life with our pet when things can get dicey.

Why? Because the heart cannot tell the difference between “now” and “later.” Your heart sees the whole soul picture of your soul agreement with your pet – now and in the moment of ultimate transformation – and trusts in that outcome completely.

But your conscious 3-D mind cannot access any of this vision. All it has to work with is the evidence of what is happening right now in your life with your pet.

So here is where your mind can get impatient and untrusting as it starts asking why “later” hasn’t happened already. Why is the transformation taking so long? What has gone wrong, whose fault is it and how can we fix it so that the transformation happens right now?

This is what we are going to talk about in this article.

Through your heart connection, you have tapped into your pet’s highest soul potential – the very best version of who they can be. You can already see that so clearly with your heart eyes. In your heart, their healing and transformation has already taken place.

But in your normal regular 3-D reality, your pet’s transformation is only just beginning. It will take time, care, and patience, because your pet’s body and neurology cannot make big leaps safely. It can only take small consistent steps towards a bigger, brighter goal.

This is what I call your pet’s “hero’s journey.” It might take a few weeks, or a few months, or even a few years for your pet to fully step into their inner hero and reclaim their full soul potential.

In the interim, what they need from you, their champion and pet parent, is to hold space for that happen – no matter what it takes or how long it takes.

So let’s talk about how to do that.

The Hero’s Journey, Pet Edition

Most of us are familiar with Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is everywhere in our culture and lives. It is what keeps us hooked to television series and movies, novels, podcasts and even social media.

The hero’s journey begins with a very relatable character – somebody just like you, me, or your pet. A challenge crops up. The “hero” – in this case, your pet – goes through a process to accept the challenge and tackle the lesson.

Along the way, the hero encounters a mentor – someone I call their “believing eyes” who sees both the situational struggle and the soul behind that struggle. This mentor supports them without doing the work for them or taking the hero’s progress (or lack thereof) personally.

Ultimately, the hero arrives at a type of personal triumph, but not always in the form of a Hallmark happy ending. At the conclusion of the hero’s journey, there can be knowledge gained, limitations overcome, increased connection to self and others, a rise of empathy and compassion.

These types of outcomes are what Joseph Campbell called “the reward.”

So if your pet is the hero and you are the mentor, how can you help your pet claim their reward?

Your role as your pet’s “believing eyes”

Now that you have a clearer understanding of what I mean by helping your pet step into their inner hero in their own life adventure, let’s unpack your role as mentor, coach, cheerleader, believing eyes for your pet.

We already talked about how, when you first met your pet, your heart and soul automatically registered a recognition. This was your soul agreement together activating (if you want to read more about that experience, you will also enjoy this article).

However, once the euphoria of “gotcha day” passes, a different kind of daily reality can set in. We tend to take off our soul glasses and put on our day-to-day glasses, which put us into a space of seeing our pet through very different eyes.

Suddenly, the reality of their fragile health or volatile behavior or inability to tolerate being left alone is front and center in our awareness.

As we begin to see our pet through the perspective of what they are struggling with, as a victim of their past, their body condition, their temperament, what has happened to them rather than who they truly are as a being, our ability to believe they can change diminishes….and their own ability to believe in the same for themselves diminishes.

This is a dangerous, slippery slope. Why?

Because it takes your pet’s personal power away. It recasts them as a victim of life rather than a hero in life.

We can also find ourselves hard at work assigning blame for why our pet is in the situation they are in – blame to a breeder, a previous owner, a veterinarian, our human family members, other pets, even ourselves.

This further disempowers our pet from fully stepping into the role of hero in their own life story.

As pet parents, we also take our pet’s progress (or lack thereof) oh so personally. It becomes more about us than about them.

If your pet isn’t making fast enough progress with a health protocol, a behavioral training course, a socialization program, even a series of animal communication conversations, you are quite likely to blame yourself at some point along the way.

Your self-blame further erodes your pet’s personal power and agency as you recast yourself as the hero and your pet as the helpless, hapless victim you have set out to save.

What is needed instead?

Your pet needs to you to hold space for them by returning to that initial heart recognition that drew you together in the first place.

You might not have personal lived experience recovering from physical trauma, heartworms, separation anxiety, abandonment, but you do have experience with struggle itself. You know what it is like and what it takes to tackle something hard, refuse to give up, and eventually to overcome the struggle and break through into triumph.

If you can do it, your pet can do it too.

This is the role Joseph Campbell calls the mentor and I call being your pet’s “believing eyes” (credit to my own mentor Sonia Choquette for the term “believing eyes”).

How to realign with your vision to help your pet step into their highest and best self

Now you understand the two types of wildly contrasting visions we can have for the pet we love as we are supporting them through a life challenge.

1. The soul vision – our heart’s clear and present recognition of who they truly are, what they are truly capable of, their role as our P.E.T. (Partner, Empathic friend, Teacher) and fellow adventurer through life. Here, we see our pet as hero and ourselves as their supporter – believing eyes.

2. The 3-D vision – our mind’s fear and worry that our pet’s life is too much for them, they are not strong enough to handle what life has thrown at them, it is our job to save them and even tackle the challenge for them. Here, we see our pet as victim and ourselves as rescuer – savior, even.

How can you stay firmly anchored in your soul vision for your pet, supporting them as mentor without reducing them to a victim who doesn’t have what it takes to overcome the struggles they have chosen to tackle in their own life?

In a word: INTENTION.

By setting an intention, you anchor your ATTENTION back to your initial soul vision.

What I mean by this –

You literally train your attention to flow towards anything that gives you MORE evidence that:

• your pet IS in fact a hero in their own life
• they ARE making progress
• they DO have what it takes to reach the reward that awaits them
• their personal power IS completely intact
• they have willingly CHOSEN this set of struggles to learn and to serve
• they already have everything they need (including your believing eyes) to triumph

Can you already perceive how this perspective feels so much better than viewing your pet as a helpless victim and yourself as their sole source of hope and guidance?

Setting your intention also helps focus a particular part of your brain, the Reticular Activating System (RAS), to notice new potential resources that can benefit your pet, you, and you both.

If you’ve ever heard the saying “where attention goes, energy flows” – this is how you put that into action to support your pet.

How to set your intention for your pet’s triumph

Setting your intention for your pet on their hero’s journey through struggle is as simple as stating the facts.

What are the facts?

The facts are what your heart already knows to be true about who your pet is at the soul level – a statement of recognition of the hero living within them.

Here are three ways you can tap into your intention for your pet’s highest and best good.

1. Who did you meet when you and your pet first connected with each other?

Who were you meeting? Who did your heart say “yes” to? What inside you resonated with your pet so deeply? Why did you feel so strongly that you and your pet belong together?

2. Who were you being in that first moment when you said YES to your pet?

How did your pet make YOU feel? Who did they see when they looked at you? What did you know to be true about your power to be their mentor, parent, believing eyes?

3. What did you know in your heart about what your pet is capable of on their own journey?

What felt true to you about their journey before you met, their potential as an embodied soul, their role as a teacher in your life, the highest and best outcome for their completed life story?

For additional support, here are some examples of intentions that you can use as a guide:

• My pet is healthy, happy, calm and content, living their best life with me.
• My pet is slim and trim and fully supported to feel nourished in body, mind, heart and soul.
• My pet is at ease in their own company knowing they are safe in their forever home.

When you come up with your intention for your pet’s highest and best potential, please post it in the comments here – you never know how sharing your vision might help other pet parents to craft their own intentions with more clarity and joy.

What it really looks like to support your pet through anything

Setting your intention activates what I call the “destination” on the GPS map of your life with your pet. Right now you are at point A. You want to get to point Z.

Point Z is your intention.

You will use your intention as a navigational tool to get from point A to point B, then point C, point D, and so forth….until you get all the way to point Z.

Your intention will help you tap into what feels good, true, right, as a next step in your pet’s ongoing hero’s journey.

Here is how this works:

• What feels intriguing, hopeful, lighter, refreshing, empowering, full of potential – these are signs that you are interacting with something that could move you from point A to B.

• What feels heavy, dull, scary, counter-intuitive, confusing, dense, overwhelming – these are signs that you are interacting with something that may potentially prevent you from moving forward or might even move you backward.

What to expect as you continue to support your pet on their hero’s journey

The other aspect to consider as you keep taking one step and the next to support your pet and serve as their mentor and believing eyes is where you go when their progress seems to slow or stall.

Do you beat yourself up, rushing out into the world of too-much-information to ask everyone else what to do, worry, spiral into a dark place emotionally, make a bunch of appointments, or tell yourself you “should” be doing better or that other pet parents could do it better?

Or do you take a few deep breaths, re-anchor to your intention, gently inquire within to ask what additional information is available right now that you have not yet perceived, directly ask for inner help and guidance from your pet’s soul, and then wait with expectant confidence that the next step is even now being revealed?

How you navigate through your own hero’s journey while supporting your pet through their hero’s journey is the direct activation of your soul agreement together and a powerful recognition of their vital role in your life as your P.E.T. – Partner, Empathic friend, Teacher.

Through your pet choosing to show up in your life bearing the gift of the exact struggles they are now working through, you in turn receive the opportunity to learn, grow, and become stronger, wiser, lighter and freer.

In truth, you are on a shared hero’s journey together.

Shannon Cutts is a professional animal intuitive, Reiki Master and animal communication teacher with Animal Love Languages. One of her favorite things to do is support pet parents to help pets live their best lives. Access a wealth of free supportive tools addressing pet anxiety, trauma, sensitivity and more at https://www.animallovelanguages.com/freetools