Nika, Tyler, and the humans left behind

Nika and Noah at the dog beach

Two days  before we recorded our episode with animal communicator Heather Bristol, Heather gave Trish a reading about Nika’s death. Jon Posey, our producer, asked if I could record a tribute to Nika, who was initially Megan’s dog and eventually became the family dog. She lived sometimes in Orlando with Megan and the dogs she cared for as a dog sitter, and sometimes here in South Florida with us, Nigel, and the cats. During the pandemic, she moved down here with us and we kidded (sort of) that she was in retirement.

As I said in my tribute at the end of Heather’s episode, Nika was very much a human friend. That’s how we all felt about her, but it was especially true for me because the day she got so sick, neither Rob nor Megan were at the emergency clinic with me. Megan was in Orlando and Rob just had a knee replacement surgery and couldn’t walk. It was just me and Nika in that room at the end. And she did a very human thing. I brought my face down close to hers and she touched her nose to mine, as if in a final good-bye, I love you, thank you, and I felt my heart breaking.

Jon  heard the tribute, of course, as he put together the episode. The day after he posted it, he called to tell me he knew exactly how I felt. That he’d been in that place with his dog, Tyler.

This was the Instagram photo Jon posted after Tyler’s death and said he just had lost his best friend. Now take a look at the words under the picture.

“Of my friend, I can only say this: Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most…human.”

Captain Kirk said this of Spock – half-human, half-vulcan – after he died.

Jon also was in a room with Tyler when he was euthanized. Tyler had been sick for awhile and in care of a vet, but when the end came, Jon was there. The epitaph he used was exactly how I felt in the moment Nika touched her nose to mine. Very much a synchronicity, through empathy. I know what you’re feeling. I’ve been there.

Dogs and our love for them connects us as human beings.

Jon also included this photo, which was the last walk he and Tyler took together. It may  be oddly precognitive.