My dog and I have a song. I just didn’t know that until the dog psychic tells me. “It’s ‘Disco Queen,’” she says. “From ABBA or whatever.”
“‘Dancing Queen’?” The embroidered crest on the psychic’s jacket is a yin-yang symbol, but one dot is a paw and the other is a human foot.
“‘Dancing Queen.’” She nods. “Yeah, that one.”
We’re in a wall tent on Takhini Hot Springs Road just outside Whitehorse. The psychic, also known as Susanne Aichele, offers a grab bag of New Age-y services including holistic health coaching, intuitive healing and the chance to “connect with your furry friend on a deeper level,” which is why I’m here.
I regularly stare into the googly eyes of my six-year-old Yukon Special and ask her: “What’s your optimal weekly mileage when we run? Do you know how much I love you? What was your life like before I adopted you?”
Disco never responds, and although I typically think everything is a grift, I’ll suspend disbelief when it comes to my dog. Maybe she will commune with this woman, who’s now telling me that Disco feels like dancing when she sees me practicing self-care.
That’s cute, but it leads to a deeper conversation about how she grounds my anxiety. “It’s a lot of work for her,” the psychic says. Perhaps sensing my panic, she assures me that nothing’s wrong—my emotionally exhausted dog just asked her to mention it.
I’d side-eye Disco to confirm this, but my animal is absent from our animal-communication session. Earlier, the psychic asked me to bring a picture instead. “Have one ready,” her email read. “It will be epic.” I’ve gamed the system by also wearing a T-shirt with five photos of Disco on it, a warranted violation of the rules given the $111 price tag of our half-hour session, which starts with what every dog owner wants to hear: “She thinks you’re amazingly beautiful. She’s really excited about being with you.” Same, girl.
But then the session veers into therapy for problems I don’t have. The psychic suggests I’m an adrenaline junkie into skydiving and walking cliff edges. When I say I must gorge on Ativan to even consider getting on a plane—forget about jumping out of one—and my fear of heights extends to cliffs, she pivots. She means walking the edge metaphorically.
The psychic tells me that Disco, like all rescues, won’t share any information about her life before me because it doesn’t exist for her anymore. She only knows the present, a place she wishes I’d spend more time. I feel called out. I often think about how much my mind wanders when we’re out on long runs and how I want to focus more on feeling like we’re a couple of wolves, just enjoying each other’s company in the mountains.
The psychic says Disco is fine with her weekly mileage, but she needs a job beyond running. Evidently, my dog is envious when she sees me working, partly because she thinks I get to boss people around and she likes the idea (which does track with her personality).
When I say I enrolled her in an online trick class, the psychic shakes her head. Disco thinks those games are geeky. I need to put her in agility classes. I wait for the psychic to tell me she sells agility classes. Instead, she clears Disco’s energy. (“Is it OK to clear yours, too?” she asks and I say sure. For $111, I’ll take a bonus energy clearing.) She holds her right hand out, palm up, and circles the left in the air like she’s wafting cooking smells while I think about how the session is like a horoscope. It’s not science, but your brain pulls on the threads it already knew were there.
I don’t believe a stranger can read my dog’s mind, especially without meeting her. But grift or not, by the time our 30 minutes is up, I’ve decided to enroll Disco in agility classes, be more focused on her during our runs and probably buy an ABBA record.
