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The Reikist
I Hid The Suitcase
A dog, a pet camera, and the day I understood that leaving has two sides.
I hid the suitcase
I always dreaded leaving him. I shortened trips. I skipped vacations altogether and eventually only traveled when work made me, because I could not bear to leave him. I am fairly sure he felt the same way.
Alaska
Then I was in remote Alaska, and I had paid an exorbitant amount for wifi out there for exactly one reason. So I could see the dog I had reluctantly left at home.
I watched my landlord feed him. Jambi was fine. Well cared for, in his own home, surrounded by his toys.
Twenty minutes later my phone alerted me. He was howling.
He was sitting in the middle of the floor, among all those toys, and he was howling.
Not barking at something outside. The other sound. The one a dog makes when the person he loves is gone.
I talked to him through the speaker. I threw him treats through the camera. Then I sat there and cried, because it was not enough. Even when someone holds the phone up to his face and he hears my voice, it is still not enough. It has never been enough.
I did everything I could think of. I have even had pet sitters sleep in the bed with him. All of it was aimed at lessening his suffering. It never occurred to me that I could do something about my own. The guilt. The dread. The nagging worry that follows you onto the plane.
What I understand now
Here is what I understand now that I did not understand then.
Dogs are social animals who read their group constantly. A door closing when they cannot follow is not a small event. To an animal with no sense of when you are coming back, or whether you are coming back, it is simply loss, repeated every time it happens.
The part almost nobody tells you is that the dread is anticipatory. Your dog is not upset about being alone yet. Your dog is upset about the signals that alone is coming. The keys. The shoes. The particular bag. By the time the door opens, the hard part has already happened.
That is why I hid the suitcase. I did not have the language for it back then, but I had the instinct exactly right. The suitcase was the wound. Hiding it was the only treatment I knew.
The other part nobody tells you is that the reading goes both ways. Jambi did not only see the suitcase. He saw me around the suitcase. The guilt, the bracing, the too-long goodbye, the leaving that was rehearsed for days before it happened. Animals read the people they love with an accuracy we rarely give them credit for, and an anxious departure is legible to a dog long before the door ever moves.
The person is not standing outside the problem. The person is half of it. Nobody ever addresses that half.
What I found
A few years later I found something that is enough. More than enough. I would even call it priceless.
I found a way to keep the connection while we are apart, and I found it through Reiki.
You may not know what Reiki is. Picture a soccer player who takes a kick to the shin. He sits down on the grass, puts both hands over it, closes his eyes, and tips his head back toward the sky.
Hands on what hurts. Stillness. The world goes quiet.
Most of us already know how to do that. Reiki is the trained version, held on purpose.
Animals are far better at it than we are. They carry no story about whether it is working. They simply accept it, and allow it to take them into the same state deep sleep brings us, where the body knows what to do, guided by an intelligence far beyond our own.
The Shared Connection Method™
So I built it for both of us. A way to stay connected even while I am gone.
Then I realized it was not just for me.
You can start enjoying your trips again. You can feel less anxious about leaving. You can stop hiding the suitcase.
Forty-five minutes, live over Zoom. Your animal stays home. You join from wherever you are, a hotel, a spa, a conference room between meetings. I hold the space for both of you at once, in real time.
I call it the Shared Connection Method™.
Today, a woman in Tokyo and her dog at home on the couch can share the same forty-five minutes together, connected and in peace.
It began with one dog's howl and my search for a way to stay connected when we were apart. Over time, I understood it was about much more than separation. It was about connection itself.
Looking back on my years with horses, I can see what this would have given me as a rider, trainer, and rehabilitator. The bond was already there. This would have deepened it.
The same is true for anyone who shares their life with an animal.
It can bring comfort during a separation. It can deepen trust, presence, and partnership. It can nurture the quiet companionship of a cat asleep in the same room, or simply enrich the relationship you have with any animal you love.
Every relationship is unique. Connection is what they all have in common.
Carrie K Kelley is a Reiki Master and Animal Reiki Practitioner, certified in 2016, with over thirty years in animal care. She practices traditional Japanese Usui Reiki and is the founder of Vitalis Light. Reiki is offered as a complementary practice, always alongside veterinary care, never as a replacement for it.
First published July 2026