What It's Like

The question that I'm asked most often is "what's talking to an animal actually like?" People want to know how it feels to talk to another creature who doesn't speak English - or "speak" at all in the way we understand. If you talk to different communicators you will quickly discover that we all "hear" a bit differently. Often this is due to each person having particular strengths in their own way of connecting with the world. Some of us hear words quite literally and clearly, others have sensations or feelings, others are visual and get complex pictures. I find I get a combination of these, depending on the information being given, and it seems the animal knows what I need to understand what they are trying to say. While visualization has always come easily to me, sometimes understanding what a cat or dog is trying to show me isn't so easy, since their perspective is quite different from mine. I most often hear words - much like a conversation with a human. Combined with these will come sensations, feelings in my body based on what the animal is saying. Sometimes its an emotion like joy, sadness, anger, sometimes a physical feeling like pain, stiffness, tingling, etc. There have been smells and sounds, and there have been tactile sensations. For example, a human once asked me to find out where in the house was her dog's favorite place to sleep, as they were moving some furniture and wanted him to be comfortable. I saw the color blue, and felt something soft and furry against my face. Sure enough, he had a cushion with a blue fake fur cover. It was actually being washed and he was annoyed it had disappeared and wanted to be sure it would be in the new decorating scheme!

Talking to me must be for them a bit like speaking to someone who is just learning a language you have spoken all your life. A bit like me trying to use my pitiful college German, dictionary in hand. Sometimes they deliver concepts all in one bunch, or speak in rapid-fire words and picture, and I have to pick through and try to sort it out, asking for clarification and to slooow it down. A wonderful communicator I know always say "give it to me like I'm a kindergardener". While this can be challenging, especially when talking to a human at the same time and trying to translate between the two, plus connect to the animal, the three-way conversation style of session does give the owner a chance to get a feeling for what it's like to talk to their animal directly. As I go back and forth, they hear me translate their animal's sense of humor, irony, sadness, etc and they can see that often when they ask a question the animal is answering even before the words are all out of their mouth. Or, if they ask me to tell their animal something such as that they love them, the animal will often reply with, "yes, I know that already." This helps us really get that our animals are communicating with us all the time, and we with them. Also, if an animal tells me something that makes no sense, in describing it to the human companion we can often determine together what to ask for clarification. A blue furry bed, for example, meant nothing to me but that owner knew right away what I was being shown.

The most important piece is to know that everyone has the ability to talk to the animals in their lives - domestic, wild, or somewhere in between. For me, I choose to spend more time learning the language than some of us do, but that's ok - by partnering with animals and their human friends we can all get an idea of what it's like to talk to the animals, and to feel closer to our furry family members.