Reading a Dog’s Paw

I was noticing when I went into the boutique pet store in my neighborhood that, in spite of the recession, people were spending a lot of money on expensive items for their cats in my neck of the woods. I proposed to the owner that she host a workshop on reading cats’ paws the day after my reading for Opening Palms at the bookstore up the block.

Good thing she said no. When I got home, I practiced. Even though my cats have been with me for eleven and twelve years respectively, neither one would sit still long enough. Now dogs — that is another story.

At the next festival I worked at over the summer, I happened to have a customer who brought her dog into my booth. I knew that bringing a pet to the festival was controversial because my friend, another traveling vendor, had wheedled hers in, bending the rules of a strict organization. You know the type. She argued that she had been on the road so long that she simply did not have the correct papers to get her little sweetie into a kennel. So he stuck with her in her pull-along camper.

So how did my customer happen to smuggle in this little dog? I asked her.

She was giving a dog obedience workshop, she explained. Knowing the no-pet rule at the festival, I asked her if anyone came. She said no, sadly enough. So I read her palms, she paid me, and then I asked if she would like me to read her dog’s free of charge because I was just beginning to try animals.

She perked up.

First of all, I noticed the most interesting formation. If you have been reading my column, you will know that the thumb represents the ego’s development. And in this dog, and in every other dog I have looked at there is no thumb, just a little itty bitty stump that comes up to about where the base of the pointer finger begins.

Amazing, truly…. Because when you look at a dog’s paw, you really see how a dog can have no sense of self, and can get defined by the self of the caretaker. The human they attach to becomes the thumb.

I also noticed, while this dog’s owner was talking, that its talent finger or toe was a little short and turned in on itself. I held the second toe from the end out straight and asked if her dog had any special talents. She said chasing airplanes and barking which she didn’t let him do too much in the park since she did not want to compromise his reputation as the most obedient dog in the country for his size. I suggested she let him develop his talents a bit. She smiled and said she guessed it wouldn’t hurt if chasing airplanes made him happy, which it obviously did.

So a good palm reading — if the reader combines information from palm reading, paw-reading and intuitive systems — can help align a relationship between a pet and owner where values might conflict.