I didn't start out wanting to work with people. As a kid, I hated people touching my hair, getting too close, too much in my space. So I went into veterinary medicine instead.

Turns out every animal comes with a person attached. The other vets noticed before I did: "Here, Brenda, you're good with people." Maybe I wasn't as bad with people as I thought.

I opened the first Doggy Daycare Center on the East Coast, and every afternoon at pickup I was counseling owners more than I was managing dogs. That's what sent me back to school for a master's in spiritual psychology, originally just to help myself. I wasn't happy. I came back wanting to bring the counseling piece in on purpose instead of by accident.

My first coaching business was called Sirus Life Coaching, after Canis Major (the Greater Dog) star. Sessions were the client, their dog, and me, in an empty room. I listened to the dog and coached the person. Later I did the same work with horses. Eventually I dropped the animals altogether and started coaching people directly.

The animals were never really the point. It was a buffer, and buffers let people avoid the actual work. I used to tell clients the reason they had to do the work was for their animal's sake. It usually took them a while to realize it was really for their own.

I also ran an aggressive-dog behavior program at a clinic for a while, and the pattern was always the same. A dog gets labeled aggressive, and it's rarely about the dog. "This dog is projecting your fear," I'd tell the owner, "and what we have to do is work on you." Most people put the dog down before they'd work on themselves.

That's the thread running from veterinary medicine to dog training to Human Design: nothing is a coincidence.

Whatever keeps showing up in your life is your mirror. The question was never what's wrong with the dog. It's what you want to do about what it's showing you.