The word “animal” comes from the Latin, anima, which means life principle, breath, air, soul, living being.
Human and nonhuman animals have in common that they are a combination of body and spirit—biological forms animated by spiritual beings or essences. Many people have a hard time accepting the spiritual aspect of animals because they carry established notions that animals are objects or less than human—robotic creatures with blind instincts and no thoughts or feelings, or power of choice. They may use these attitudes to justify or excuse cruel or insensitive treatment of other animals.
For many humans, the issue is clouded in that they regard themselves as merely bodies, or genetic products, without awareness of their basic spiritual essence. This can foster disrespect and inhumane actions toward other people as well. It becomes difficult or even impossible for people with this viewpoint to recognize the spiritual nature of other forms of life.
The proof of the spiritual nature of human and nonhuman creatures alike is that when you address them accordingly, with respect and helpfulness, you can improve the condition of the whole being. In my work, a key element is recognizing the individual animal as a spiritual being who is inhabiting or enlivening a particular form. By using this perspective in communication and counseling, upsets and behavior problems are resolved, illnesses and injuries are more readily healed, and the individual becomes more alive, aware, and happy. This would not be possible if I took a completely behaviorist stance, regarding the animal as a complex of automatic or instinctual behaviors with little or no intelligence. Dealing with all aspects of their being—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—yields fuller understanding and helpfulness toward all creatures.
As an animal communication specialist, I devote my attention to the subject of living beings, particularly the ones that have four legs and fur or two legs with feathers or other physical features distinct from those of Homo sapiens. Thousands of private consultations with animals and their human companions, in person and at a distance, have helped to handle upsets and behavior problems, aid recovery from illness and injury (with the help of needed veterinary care), improve communication and understanding, and set guidelines for nutritional counseling and body energy balancing. My lectures and courses focus on helping people to regain their own ability to communicate with animals.
THE INBORN ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE
People often want to know when I started communicating with animals and how I gained, or learned, I had the ability to understand what animals are thinking and feeling.
As a child, I loved animals, as most children do. I loved touching them and watching them and being close to them. I was able to feel what they felt and understand what their needs were on a very intuitive basis; I could “be” them. Later on, I would talk to them aloud or by thought, and experience answers from them mentally. It was very natural. I knew that they loved me, as I did them, and that they could talk to me and think for themselves.
All beings have the inborn ability to communicate with and understand each other. All or most young children can experience mental or telepathic communication with others of any species. It’s the main way, along with physical gesture, that they communicate before they learn language.
However, when children learn to speak, they tend to inhibit their ability to communicate directly through thought and feeling since the speaking ability is most validated and encouraged by adults, and gets the most attention. So the telepathic ability begins to fade as any function can when it is not used. In addition, parents and other adults often invalidate a child for any statement like “the dog told me she has a tummy ache.” This is made light of as “imagination”—or punished as lying or exaggeration. Although this practice is gradually changing as many people throughout the world learn how to recover their telepathic perception, most children still learn quickly that the ability to listen to and to receive thoughts and feelings from animals is not desirable and in fact does not exist. They soon suppress the ability, or it disappears, as you cannot retain an ability that you don’t believe exists or is impossible.
Children may then cease to regard their fellow animals as thinking and feeling beings. Compounding this is adult failure to teach children how to handle animals gently and learn their physical needs. If children mistreat animals, they further separate themselves from wanting to know or understand their spiritual connection with animals. Even when they are very young, children may start making fun of anyone who might mention a mental or spiritual experience beyond what is rigidly accepted as “normal.” They emulate what they learn from adults as acceptable beliefs and behavior.
Later in life, some fortunate individuals will open up to the fact that mental and spiritual qualities or dimensions beyond the ordinary do indeed exist. They can begin again to experience these qualities by following the successful methods practiced by others throughout the ages in order to recognize and regain innate mental, intuitive, or telepathic communication abilities.
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I never lost the ability to communicate with animals. When adults or other children invalidated my experiences of telepathically receiving messages from animals, I decided that it was best to keep these things to myself. Some of my mother’s favorite expressions about me were that I had an “active imagination” and that I was “stubborn as a mule.” Perhaps both these qualities helped me to retain my telepathic communication capacity!
I did not want to lose the trust, warmth, and understanding I had with my animal friends, or to betray our mutual awareness of their intelligence and shared communication. This was too precious to me to let it be spoiled by others’ unawareness. So I continued to curl up with Fritzi, my cat, knowing that we understood each other; or I enjoyed Winkie, my parakeet, sitting on my glasses, delicately preening my eyebrows as I did my homework. I spent hours in the park quietly talking to birds and butterflies to get them to land on my hand. I let them know that I wouldn’t hurt them, and I was thrilled when they responded by getting close to me.
When I grew up and left home, I had no animal companions of my own for years because I was moving around or at college. So I didn’t pay much attention to my ability to communicate with animals. It stayed tucked under the surface, much as the knowledge of a foreign language might until you meet a person who speaks that language.
I studied the social sciences, hoping to learn more about understanding and helping to improve the condition of human beings, which has always been a basic purpose of mine. In 1971, I was again in the position to have animal companions. I had also acquired much desired knowledge and practical methodology to help the human mind and spirit by training and working as a counselor.
My ability to communicate with animals took on a new dimension. Besides being able to talk and listen to animals, I had acquired tools to help them. I found that the same techniques for helping people release past traumas, relieve emotional upsets, and handle problems and mental blocks helped animals also.
My first animal client was Peaches, a small, black and white female cat who was left with me when her person could no longer care for her. She was definitely a “scaredy-cat.” She would run and hide from people and was afraid of other cats in the neighborhood.
A few weeks after her arrival, she came in with a bloody bite on her back, where another cat had attacked her. I cleaned it and put on ointment, expecting it to heal with no problem. Peaches, however, had other ideas. As soon as it would scab over, she’d scratch it open. Bandages and soothing preparations were to no avail, as she was determined to get at that wound. The bloody area was no longer the original half-inch bite but now extended two or three inches, and the hair around the area was falling out. She looked gruesome, and my roommates were beginning to complain about doing something with that cat.
So, I sat with Peaches across from me on a chair and decided to counsel her as I would a human being in trouble. I asked her specific questions about the physical trauma and her feelings, and she answered me telepathically. She relayed to me many mental pictures of other cats scaring and attacking her. By facing up to these frightening incidents, she released a lot of emotional charge and felt much better.
We continued with our counseling session, and she discovered that keeping the wound there and making it worse was actually a solution to the problem she felt of being afraid of people and other animals. She had figured that if she made her body very ugly, people and cats would stay away from her. It was working, though making her life miserable in the process. When she uncovered and fully brought to her awareness this subconscious decision, she visibly became very peaceful and purred happily.
The remarkable results of this session were that, by the next day, her wound had scabbed over, and in about one week the hair had grown back so you couldn’t tell she had ever been hurt. Even more amazing was that Peaches was a changed individual. No longer did she run away when people entered the room, but instead she curled up on their laps and purred! The cats in the neighborhood no longer singled her out for attacks. She didn’t attract that anymore.
I learned that not only do animals think, feel, understand, and communicate, but also that the principles and methods used for alleviating human mental and emotional blocks—and increasing harmony in living—could bring incredible improvements to other species as well.
I did not immediately hang out a shingle as an “animal communication specialist.” My work as a human counselor and my own spiritual expansion continued. In 1976, I pursued an area of interest that I had long abandoned, the field of dance, and began to perform and teach dance as my main occupation. However, after doing successful animal consultations among friends, the word of this skill spread, and my work with animals became more than a sideline. In 1977, I officially became a professional animal communication specialist by charging fees for my services.
Dance was still my main focus until 1979, when I traveled and trained other instructors in my movement techniques and then wrote several books on dance and body movement.
As my emphasis shifted more to working with animals, and the results of my work became known, I was interviewed for hundreds of radio stations nationwide, appeared on television programs and in newspapers, and wrote articles for various publications. Since that time, I have consulted with thousands of animals and their people, and given many lectures and courses on communication with animals.
HOW ANIMALS COMMUNICATE
Popular psychology promotes some common but uninsightful notions about animal communication and intelligence: because most animals have less complexly structured brains than humans, they therefore have less intelligence and no real emotions or reasoning power, communicating in rudimentary ways, such as grunts, barks, whistles, and other body signals. These notions are changing as scientists continue to discover the complexity of meanings present in the sounds and gestures of creatures, from bees to birds to apes. Many are beginning to observe, with less human-centered bias, the intricate and demonstrably intelligent behavioral responses of animals. There is, of course, much more to learn from the animals themselves by direct telepathic communication, the universal language. That will come with increased observation skills and awareness.
Intelligence, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is the ability to learn or understand from experience, or the ability to respond quickly and successfully to a new situation. Using this definition, I’m sure you can think of many examples of animal intelligence, such as incidents of cats or dogs who have traveled thousands of miles to find the people who left them behind when they moved, or the resourcefulness of rats, raccoons, coyotes, and other wild animals in surviving among human habitation when people have taken over their natural environment.
It does not make sense to measure animal intelligence by the often-assumed standard of how closely an animal can resemble human behavior. Animals have different genetic makeups and physical capacities. Their responses vary according to their type of body, environment, and experience.
One of the main physical differences enabling humans to accomplish many tasks, and to express their intelligence in ways that other members of the animal kingdom cannot, is extremely flexible, highly developed hands and nervous systems, which allow a wide range of manipulative ability. The fact that animals cannot write letters or play the guitar does not mean they are not intelligent.
Are humans considered less intelligent because they cannot fly like birds or run as fast as cheetahs? These are the result of body differences, not mental capacity. The same spiritual being inhabiting a human body and using it to design and build houses would create a nest of leaves and twigs if dwelling in a bird’s body. She or he would still be the same intelligent being but would be using a different body according to its physical capacities.
While the human body may enable more complex or varied ways to express intelligence, the complexity and diversity of other creatures’ expression are also amazing. Differences among species are clearly present, but this doesn’t necessarily imply superiority or inferiority. We are all different, which makes life so interesting.
Beings develop and use their bodies according to their genetic capacities and the situations with which they are faced. Some do it more successfully or intelligently than others. Most domesticated animals have mastered the art of living with humans so well that they fit among, influence, and, in some cases, control human activity.
Individual animals differ from each other in levels of intelligence, sensitivity, and ability to communicate well, as do individual human beings. Some are more aware and more interested than others, and it’s easier to engage in communication with them.
Some are really into being a dog, cat, or horse, for example, following the body’s impulses and genetic heritage closely. Others set their own individual style in addition to how their bodies naturally tend. They are willing and able to control their body impulses and adapt to the situation in which they live, such as being more like the people around them.
Most animals are willing to come into a closer relationship if they are understood as they are and approached from their level of awareness. In some cases, they are more perceptive or aware than the humans who attempt to understand them.
Animals obviously communicate through physical action, but they also communicate through direct thought, feeling, intention, and mental pictures, both among each other and with humans. People receive the telepathic messages to the degree that they are listening, can tune in, or are perceptive to them.
While I often use physical contact to help establish rapport and to assist animals in distress, I communicate mainly telepathically or by direct thought and feeling transmission, silently or accompanied by spoken words. Though many animals understand words, owing to familiarity with human language, they innately get your intentions, emotions, images, or thoughts behind the words, even if the words themselves aren’t totally understood. Since animals are not forced into the idea that words or symbols are the only or ultimate way to communicate, they do not lose their innate telepathic sensitivity and ability as most humans do.
When they communicate their thoughts and feelings to me, I get what they mean and usually translate their communication into words instantly, as that’s what I and other humans are accustomed to. When they’re describing a scene or something that happened to them, I see the scene from their viewpoint, mentally perceiving and feeling the sights, sounds, emotions, and other senses as they experienced them. If you’ve ever had the experience of knowing what some other person is thinking, perhaps even saying aloud the same thought simultaneously, or really getting another person’s mental pictures or feelings, you’ll get the idea of how I communicate with animals regularly and how you can, too.
Animals do understand what you say or think to them, assuming you have their attention and they want to listen (just like anyone else). One of the ways some animals get away with not having to do what you want is by pretending they don’t understand. Often humans perpetuate this by considering that their dog (cat, bird, horse, tortoise) is dumb, doesn’t understand anything, or can’t really feel like they do. Some people even name their animal companions “Dodo” or “Dimwit,” or some other insult to their intelligence. Many animals, like many children, play the game you expect from them and act dumb. Then they don’t have to be responsive to your demands.
The interesting thing is that the more you respect animals’ intelligence, talk to them conversationally, include them in your life, and regard them as friends, the more intelligent and warm responses you’ll usually get. Beings of all kinds tend to flower when they are showered with warmth and understanding from others.
I observed an interesting example of this at a boarding school I visited. There I met an Irish wolfhound, whom I immediately perceived as being very knowing and perceptive about what was going on in the area. However, the consensus from the people around was that he was stupid and could do little right. This was evidenced, I was told, by his slow response to doing anything anyone told him, and the way he stubbornly ambled into the school and lounged on the rugs and cozy furniture, even though any smart dog would know from the number of people who reprimanded him that such actions weren’t okay.
When they told me in his presence that he was really stupid, he flashed me with the thoughts, “Don’t let them know what I’m doing—it’s my game.” (Note that these words are my translation of the dog’s concept. Sometimes animals will transmit verbal phrases that they have picked up, but most of the time the words are an approximation in human language of the thought and feeling sent.) I laughed, as this dog was very much in control of what people thought of him and the life he was leading, doing only what he wanted to, watching everyone around him, observing and learning from their activities.
Despite his warning, I felt it my duty to clear up this invalidation of his mental capacity, so I explained that he was very intelligent, and knew exactly what was going on and what people told him. He was a little angry with me for telling on him, since people might expect more of him, but I couldn’t bear the lie of his dumbness to be perpetuated. I communicated further with him later, when he was willing to talk, and he decided it might be a nice thing to be more responsive to people, making their lives more cheerful.
I still chuckle when I think of how he had everyone fooled—and that’s not intelligent?
Of course, nonhuman animals, like humans, can misunderstand a communication and not know what you are trying to say to them, especially if you are unclear on what you want from them. They can be distracted by what is occurring, particularly by things attractive to their biological needs, like food smells or other animals. You have to get their attention and communicate within the realm of their experience.
Asking cats to play a piano concerto will probably not make sense to them, so they will not respond well to your request. You also need to like and respect animals, and allow them to be the way they are—living beings who have their own desires and choices and are influenced by their particular genetic inheritance in varying degrees, as we all are.
You can learn from your own animal friends, who usually ask from you only those things that are within your ability to provide. They like and accept you as you are. They generally love your attempts to communicate with them and really appreciate your affection and understanding.
People often ask what kind of animal is the most intelligent or advanced. It’s hard to make a general statement, as different bodies have different functions. What would be considered intelligent in operating one kind of body would not be intelligent in handling another. More complex bodies with more highly developed brains seem to have more choices programmed into their “computers,” although I have experienced “advanced” communications from “lower” forms, such as insects—similar to J. Allen Boone’s experience with a fly he called Freddy in his book (which I highly recommend) Kinship with All Life.
What animals do with the limitations of their type of body program varies among individuals of any species. In general, the larger animals, and those who most easily demonstrate a willingness to communicate with humans and learn their ways, are often considered more flexible, responsive, or intelligent—e.g., whales, dolphins, elephants, apes, horses, dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals. However, one can also find very intelligent or wise beings in less complex forms on the body scale. For example, people have been amazed at the brightness and intensity of communication from members of my animal family, such as a box turtle, Marla, an anole lizard, Ginko, or a guinea pig, Cinnamon.
No two whales, dogs, or cats are exactly alike in intelligence, communication level, or emotional response. Also, different people’s ability to perceive animals as fellow beings and to relate with them in an intelligent way might yield very different assessments. Some animals that were considered slow or stupid by some people, I have found to be wonderful to talk to, with many fine qualities that their people missed.
The great thing is that we can all learn from each other. Individual people can demonstrate their own intelligence through their willingness to observe, learn about, and understand animals better. People simply vary in their willingness.