"Only animals make me believe in God now.
So little between spirit and skin
Any gesture so entirely themselves."
–Mark Doty

I don't know why I decided to take my shoes off and wade into the small seasonal irrigation ditch along the north side of my cabin. The rocks are slippery near the end of summer, having a whole season to grow a lovely brown slime all over their faces, extending a warm invitation for you to fall flat on your face should you be enticed by their siren call. But the dogs looked eager for some new adventure, and had already trotted ankle-deep into the middle of the stream.

I pulled off my blue moccasins and stepped out into the stream, whispering, "Good dogs, good dogs. Let's go, come on..." For balance, I held my arms out like wings, and walked slowly upstream; bending my head this way and that to avoid the tangle of willow limbs weaving a green canopy of dappled light over the shallow water. It was in the golden, shifting spots of light puddled like honey drops along the sandy bank that I first saw the mourning dove. My eyes fell on him and stayed there, mental chatter coming on fast: "What's this? Oh, oh...wings stretched out like that. So still. Oh, goodness, he's dead."

But the tiny black jewel of his round eye denied that. It was clear and bright, and fixed on me. I told the dogs to go ahead, and splashed awkwardly over to where he lay fully outstretched, his tail feathers soaking in the water. When I lifted him, he never protested, hardly even moved. His body was cold, chest scarcely rising, and he had that terrible lightness sick birds get when they are close to death. Through the rose-beige feathers of his breast, I could feel his keel bone, and little else. The poor fellow was thin as a twig. Too weak to fight, he rested like a potato in my palm and made no protest when I folded his wings against his body and put him inside my shirt.

They always seem to come to me to die, these birds I find along roadsides, under windows, or panting rapidly in snow banks. I used to feel awful about it, wanting to give them back their lives, when all they seemed to ask of me was a safe place to expire. In my cabin, I found a small box, lined it with tissues, and placed the dove inside. His head dropped listlessly to the side. My old antique gas stove has a warm pilot light, and I set the dove there while I made up a concoction of raw egg, warm water, and Rescue Remedy. When I poured it down his throat with an eyedropper, he actually rallied his forces and reached forward to chug down one dropper full, then another and another. By the time I turned the lights out and went to bed that night, he had glugged down several more droppers full, plus a few gravel-sized balls of mushy wheat bread that I rolled up and pushed down his gullet with a toothpick. At least, he would not die hungry and thirsty on my watch.

When the sun came up bright the next morning, I could not have been more surprised to find him still alive, with his head held smartly between his bony shoulders. And the next morning, it was the same, and the next. The dove had graduated by that time from the small cardboard box to a blue plastic cat carrier, lined with a towel and scattered with leaves and grasses. Now, when I reached in to catch him for his daily forced feedings, he fought me off and snorted half of a very indignant "coo." I told him that if he wanted to avoid my intrusions, he would just have to start eating for himself, and on the next morning, he did, moving his head rapidly up and down over a pile of seeds and scratch, like a finger tapping a typewriter key.

On the sixteenth day of his stay with me, I carried the mourning dove in both hands to my backyard, near the place where I had found him. His breast against my palm was smooth and well-fleshed. His beak jabbed against my hand in righteous protest. When I opened my hands to the sky, he exploded upward with a flash of feathers and never looked back. Not once. And I headed for the house with a grin the size of a pumpkin plastered on my face, and a delightful tickle in my chest.

I have cared for injured animals, and for injured people in my life. As a hospice volunteer, I sometimes ushered people across that same threshold I believed awaited my mourning dove. Both humankind and animal kind have taught me lessons about love and compassion through service, but the quality—the taste---of those lessons has been markedly different. If I were to condense that difference into one word, it would perhaps be innocence. Animals have brought their teachings to me with a unique quality of clarity and simplicity not often found in human-to-human interactions, and I attribute that crystal-clearness to the innocence they bring to our encounters with them. What people bring me in relationship is unique and profound and necessary, and wholly different in many ways from what I experience with the animals in my life. This is why we were intended for relationship with animals, nature, and humankind. Their gifts are all different, but equal in importance in our lives, and we cannot be fully human if we miss out on any one of them. Each carries a special piece of our soul that it alone can carry. The voice of nature, the voice of animals, the voice of humans vibrates a unique strand of our heartstrings. For our hearts to sing fully, we need all of its music available to us.

This is the gift animals bring. This is the gift my dove brought to my life: this incomparable innocence that strums that one special chamber of my heart into life. May each and every heart reach out for that kind of learning, that magical kind of teaching that only animals can bring, and in the reaching, may each heart soar on doves’ wings.

Susan Chernak McElroy is a teacher and master storyteller, and author of the classic New York Times Bestseller, "Animals as Teachers and Healers: True Stories and Reflections." Her pioneering work remains an impassioned and original voice in the literature on animal-human relationships, and her writings are published in more than twenty countries worldwide. Susan's books, lectures, audiotapes, and workshops explore our emotional, biological, and sacred relationships with animals and wild nature. A long term-survivor of advanced cancer, Susan speaks from a rich body of lived experience, reminding us that our evolutionary journey toward becoming more fully human beings has included thousands of years of intimate connection with animals and the living Earth. Her website is www.SusanChernakMcelroy.com and her newly released book "All My Relations" is available in all major book stores.