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 wallpaper.  A golden retriever sleeps at my feet, and a tabby cat wanders the room looking for friendly laps. The instructor starts the beginners Becoming an Animal Communicator workshop with the obligatory question – What made you sign up for this course?

“I recently met a woman who says she’s an animal communicator,” I say. “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 think it would be amazing to be able to talk to the elephants, cheetahs, and zebras in the groups I lead for my work as an African Safari Specialist. But I can’t imagine how to become an animal communicator.

“Truthfully, it seemed like the woman I met was part of a cult. I’m here purely out of curiosity,” I tell the others in 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/ meditation through a meadow 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 his gender and name, and that he had recently died.

“Just write in your journal, without questioning anything, whatever comes to mind as you look at the photo you are holding,” Carol had instructed us.

For a few minutes, I stare into Ollie’s eyes staring back at me from the photo. I focus on blocking out my surroundings, looking as deeply as I can into Ollie’s eyes, until I have the sensation of being inside a capsule that holds only Ollie and me. I send him my beam of light.

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.

Kristie confirms each of the things I read from my notes and starts crying. I’m shocked.

That afternoon, I completed other readings from photos with three different owners and pets. Each time I’m watching (in my mind’s eye) the animal in its surroundings, behaving, and giving messages that are unique to them.

My mind searches to make sense of what’s happening. 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 accurate messages?

Only after getting validation from each reading do I begin to understand that 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, the teacher, tells me she rarely sees someone in her beginning classes able to be as accurate as I am with my readings. Have I actually tapped into the innate ability we all have to become an animal communicator?

“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 feelings, guides me out of my altered state, and presents a clearer picture of what working as an animal communicator would mean.

I have since studied with some of the top animal communicators across the globe and co-designed and taught a couple of classes with Carol that include a section on communicating with wild animals.

I’ve 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 default. But for us humans, it’s our least familiar way. We are born knowing it, but lose our ability (and belief in it) as we become acculturated. Training helps us remember.

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 from their animal companion that I allow myself to trust the process.

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.

– Read my post about a session I did with a chicken named Butter.

– Schedule a session for your animal companion.

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