I’m sitting in a circle of women (and one man) in a living room lined with overstuffed chairs, small porcelain replicas of cats and dogs, and flowered wall-paper. A golden retriever sleeps at my feet, and a tabby cat wanders the room looking for friendly laps. The instructor begins the Becoming an Animal Communicator workshop with the obligatory sharing question – What made you sign up for this course?
“I recently met a woman who says she’s an animal communicator,” I begin. “Intrigued but too shy to ask what that even meant, I felt myself wishing I too could talk to animals and hear what they have to say back,” I share. I think it would be amazing to be able to talk to the elephants, cheetah, and zebra on the groups I lead for my work as an African Safari Specialist. But I can’t imagine how to do it.
“Truthfully, it seemed like the woman I met was part of a cult. I’m here purely out of curiosity,” I tell the class. I’m completely clear that entrance to this cult of animal communicators belongs to a chosen few. And I’m not one of the lucky ones.
Carol, our teacher, doesn’t resemble what I imagine a professional animal communicator looks like. She is middle-aged, and petite with no spiritual or otherwise woo woo aura about her.
“Anyone can do this,” she repeats several times. “We all have this inside of us, we just need to reconnect to it.”
After guiding the class through a couple of exercises to learn to listen to, and trust our instincts, and get out of our heads, Carol leads us in a visualization to a golden beam of light.
“This light is what we will use to communicate with the animal in the photo you are each holding,” she says. I had given a photo of my dog Zia to a participant named Kristie, and she had given me a copy of a photo of her dog Ollie.
I stare at the black and white image of my ‘client’ Ollie, having no knowledge of him except gender, name and that he had recently died.
“Just write in your journal, without questioning anything that comes to mind,” Carol had instructed us.
For a few minutes I stare into Ollie’s eyes but nothing comes to my mind. I focus on blocking out my surroundings, looking as deeply as I can into Ollies’ eyes looking back at me, until I have the sensation of being inside a capsule that holds only Ollie and me.
Then I begin writing:
I miss morning time sitting on the blue sofa watching TV; I had a food bowl with little pictures of bones all over it; and I wore a red collar. Tell her it’s Ok to get another dog now.
Images and statements like these flow into my mind’s eye. I don’t question anything, I just write everything as it comes to me.
Thirty minutes later Kristie and I sit across from each other reporting on what we had written down. The purpose is to get validation, or not, about what each of us had received from the other’s animal companion.
“It felt like Ollie was there next to me,” I say, and begin with the blue sofa. I tell Kristi everything in my notes without making excuses or qualifying any of it although I’m nervous that what I’ve written is a list of nonsensical made-up statements.
Is Animal Communication Real?
Kristie confirms each of the things I read from my notes and starts crying.
I complete three different readings with different owners and pets. Each time I’m watching the animal in it’s surroundings, behaving, and giving messages that are unique to each reading. My mind searches to make sense of these experiences. How is it possible to get this information from dogs and owners I’ve never met before this moment? Is it luck that I happen to get things correct? Only after getting validation in each reading I begin to understand this couldn’t be lucky guesses. Something is happening that my rational mind can’t make sense of.
During a break in a private moment Carol tells me she rarely sees someone in her beginning classes able to be as accurate as I am with my readings.
“Maybe because you spend so much time in Africa and grew up with so many animals your abilities are still intact,” she says. “You should do this for a living,” she adds.
The following day I call Carol, confused. “I feel like I’m in a trance, I’m not sure what happened to me, but I feel strange. Like I’m in a dream.”
In her down to earth, this is all normal sensibility, she validates my ability, guides me out of my altered state and presents a clearer picture of what working as an animal communicator would mean.
The following weekend Ollie comes back into my mind’s eye with more messages I need to tell Kristie. Within a few months I have many referrals from Kristie posting about her experience with me on social media. And Carol and I co-design and teach a class together that includs a section on communicating with wild animals.
I have since studied with some of the top animal communicators across the globe and have come to understand that what the animal and I are using to connect is a Universal language. It’s the way animals communicate all the time. Their defaut. But for us humans it’s our least familiar way. We are born knowing it, but loose our ability (and belief in it) as we become acculturated.
Yet still, years later, before each session I have with an animal, I question my ability. I worry whether it will work this time, and whether I am making up the information that comes to me.
It’s only when the owner validates what I learned in my session with their human companion that I once again allow myself to trust the process and know that YES this is Real! I’m told my doubt in the process is common and will fade over time.
When I tell people I’m an animal communicator I often get a strange look. I’m assuming they think I’m part of some woo-woo cult. And that’s just fine with me.
Want more about becoming an animal communicator?
– Read about a session I did with a chicken named Chaz.
– Schedule a session for your animal companion.