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It’s Not About the Dog, redux

May 22nd, 2013 by Katie

I go through entire periods when I have to tell people, this isn’t about your dog, it’s about you.  Sometimes, I get a scenario where it’s both. The dog does have a difficulty–often behavioral–and it interlocks in some way with an issue the human struggles with. Suddenly the pet reading becomes a relationship reading, and my challenge is to help the human understand that they have a part in the play. After all, they called me so I could help their pet change, but what happened?  What do you mean, it’s not about the dog?

Most people can hear me when I say, this is about your life.  Some can’t.  But it’s so common for a pet to call a family’s attention to their own stuff, that it’s worth heeding the words of the incomparable man-dog Cesar Millan.  From his article in the Huffington Post:

Any relationship with a dog needs to be grounded in reality .  .  .  Before you start looking for a dog — or when you start looking at the causes of your dog’s problems — you have to look at yourself first.

And: .  .  .  are there any emotional issues going on? Any family tension can upset a calm assertive balance, and a dog will pick up on such things.

He talks about how hard it can be for some people to understand this.  I think it’s really a reflection of a greater truth: that we attract into our lives what we are teaching and what we need to learn.

Our family members, friends, coworkers and pets all have something to show us, but maybe we really are all one.  Maybe each of these characters is a part of us in need of recognition.

For the full article:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cesar-millan/it-isnt-always-about-the-_b_2541801.html

 

 

 

 


 


 

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Animal Communication: How to Name a Cat

Dec 6th, 2012 by Katie

Writer and catologist Anne Rivers Siddons once plucked an enormously fat, stray, “clown-masked” cat out of a parking lot in her hometown, prompting a discussion of cat naming that I’ve never forgotten.  Proving the theory that some things simply name themselves, and from John Chancellor Makes Me Cry:

He was startling to look at, and to this day I get a small, fresh shock when he comes rolling into a room.  He is not a handsome cat.  He is magnificently obese in the Charles Laughton manner.  He has dainty feet and a truly unfortunate, short, ropy, possumlike tail.  His fur is a sort of rough Scotty brindle, so short and spiky that it separates into miniature, serrated Elizabethan ruffs around his short neck when he moves his cantaloupe-shaped head.  The fur sits on thick loose, skin that you can move around, with the result that he looks like something in an ill-fitting cat suit, but we can’t find the zipper.  His face is pretty and poignant, like a Rouault clown. From behind, when he is trotting along on his short, bowed legs and little mincing feet, with his belly swinging, he looks like Babe Ruth trotting around the bases.

I was instantly in his thrall.

Siddons and her beleaguered husband appropriated the enthusiastic stray, and then:

Duo ou Les deux frangins 1948, from www.rouault.org

.  .  .  I have a theory that if you name a newly acquired animal, be he gift or derelict, right away, you have made him yours, and that only a heartless brute would wrest him away from  you and take him to the Humane Society .  .  .  I have, over the years, collected a few names that I consider especially appropriate for the sort of cats we get around here–huge, massive, and epically unadorable-and I trotted them out.  ”Wabash?”  I ventured.  ”You know, as in Wabash Cannonball.’  Chairman Meow?  Rasputin?”

“Not right,” said Heyward, regarding the depths of his martini as if the name lay there somewhere.  ”Try some more.”

“Well, we’ve never used Piedmont.  Palooka looks right, but  .  .  .  Cromwell, maybe.  That weird round head.  Bismarck?  That head was just made for one of those iron helmets with the thing on top of it.”

“No,”  said Heyward.  ”Crossroads.  His name has got to be Crossroads and I have no idea why.”

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Animal Communication Invests in Filters

Nov 27th, 2012 by Katie

As a clairvoyant, I have information coming in all day, every day.  A lot of it is emotion.  People think they feel their feelings in a vacuum but in reality all that stuff goes somewhere and I’m here to tell you, it’s everywhere.

Nothing rings my bells like being in a crowd:  all those messy feelings drifting around. The worst possible place is the cafeteria at my daughter’s elementary school and this makes perfect sense: kids live almost entirely in their emotional bodies until they are teens. Their feelings aren’t submerged like adults’ are, so the cafeteria is a riot of unrestrained feeling.

Then there are community gatherings–indoor or outdoor, being outside doesn’t necessarily dilute the energies–rock concerts, the company Christmas party, big sporting events and so forth. The common thread is mobs of people, but you can become overwhelmed with random emotional energy when you’re alone. It’s all about managing one’s space.

Just a month ago I learned a new tool, something they didn’t teach in school. Filters. It was introduced in casual conversation, a tool my intuitive friend had just learned.

Huh, I thought. I gotta remember that.

So a couple days later I asked to have filters around my space, that let in only information that was relevant to my life and that was useful. I noticed a difference immediately, a new kind of clarity. Information came in faster.

I realized I’d been sifting through piles of clutter to get to what I needed. Random stuff I didn’t have any use for, but I never knew it was there. It made a lifelong, constant background hum, how could I have known until it was gone?

Filters. A faster way to get to Point B.

 

 

 

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Animal Communication Interprets the World

Nov 15th, 2012 by Katie

Be careful how you interpret the world–it is like that.  Erich Heller

I’ve been thinking a lot about animals and the concepts of innocence and helplessness. Many of us extend ourselves to homeless pets and there’s a certain amount of powerless language involved.

After all, they were “abandoned”. We learn that they were “neglected”, or “abused”.  We “rescue” them. Even if we adopt a loving, carefree dog from the pound it’s easy to ask ourselves, darkly, “What kind of person gives up such a nice animal?”  As if there’s a sub-group of characters whose whole deal is to wander around collecting puppies and treated them poorly.

There are all kinds of reasons that people have to give up pets and why can’t some of them be good?  Our newest cat’s paperwork was matter of fact but it told me her previous person “saw” her.  That she was loved.  That she was an easy cat and circumstances prevented them from keeping her.

As we soon discovered, Gem had licked herself bald in areas and it had been going on since before she was relinquished.  Her fur has filled in and I think, that household was under a lot of stress.  Gem needed to find a new home and may in fact have facilitated that move by making it clear she was unhappy.

Again, there’s the idea that pets have some power over their own lives, which is a theme I examine again and again.

My husband once worked within the wildlife activist community. I happened to notice a sub-group that appeared to believe that humanity was out to destroy nature and even though it was a losing battle, the activists were going to educate the entire planet.  One human at a time.

It wasn’t possible to make small talk about  .  .  .  I don’t know, anything, without the conversation turning to all the terrible choices they assumed I–or anyone for that matter–was making, every day. You couldn’t talk about new babies or the weather without being reminded that we’re all doomed.

Of course these were pretty extreme characters but that was who I had to learn it from. There are calm, balanced animal activists but they had nothing to teach me.

Soon I recognized myself. Even though I felt helpless to intercede and I kept my thoughts to myself, I realized that I too saw the animal kingdom as powerless. Then I began to see the trouble with that mindset: you never run out of Tragic animals! They dart out in front of your car. Your next-door neighbor has one. If you’re really good at this, you have one.

They show up in the paper, busily failing to thrive at the zoo. They show up over there, half-dead in the mouth of a certain badly-behaved dog. DID YOU HEAR? HE WASN’T ON A LEASH. They panic from the bottom of your window well, but only after 5:00 on a Friday.  They forget to migrate.

You glance out the window, just in time to see a crippled animal lurching past. You don’t even have to try; if there’s a way for the Troubled and Tragic to die on your front lawn, they will find it. How do I know? Because when you’re chronically anxious about (fill in the blank), the Universe serves it up everywhere.

Now it wasn’t automatic and it wasn’t easy, but I began to think differently. I regained my sense of humor. I don’t see animals suffering everywhere like I used to. I can visit pets up for adoption and see their power and potential. I can work with clients whose pets are dying, and it’s natural and appropriate instead of an emergency.

You can’t communicate with animals if you can’t be relaxed and neutral–you’ll spend half your time trying to clear your own pain out of the conversation.

 

 

 

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Jock Starts Talking

Nov 14th, 2012 by Katie

He was pretty easy but after awhile he began to talk.  It wasn’t exactly talking, it was a soft growl. Someone decided he was just communicating and it sure didn’t seem like a threat so things went on like that. I didn’t see him very often so it was of no consequence to me until later.

After awhile his person noticed he was doing that soft growling thing all the time. He did it with his head down in a submissive posture, but still.  Some people would get into his space and give him all kinds of energy when he did it and soon he did it more and more, in response to their coaxing.

After five years or so I began to spend more time with the family. Jock was always glad to see me and I would give him a good scritch, but as usual he growled and one day I decided I’d had enough, Katrina or no.

Hey man, I told him, if you growl at me I’m not going to pet you. I stood up and then I walked away.  He stayed where he was.   He seemed uncertain.

Every time I saw him he’d do the same thing.  Mostly people let him growl or even encouraged him so I knew I was in the minority but I kept after it.  One growl and I was done. Forget it, I’d say. I don’t pet dogs who growl at me.

In the meantime I was also interacting with his dog “sister”, a tiny bichon frise. “Jenny”.  Jenny had some dominance issues and would claim my lap or my foot and soon I was telling her to knock it off, too. She was deeply offended at my reprimands but I noticed she too was always happy to see me come in and I figured, I could either let these characters push me around or we could have a mutually happy relationship.

It took a couple of months before I noticed a difference.  Today I am greeted fondly by both the dogs but I am neither growled at nor dominated. Leaving everyone to enjoy the relationship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Katrina Dog Tells His Story

Nov 10th, 2012 by Katie

He was big and red, short hair, one blue eye and one brown.  Plucked from the flood in New Orleans in August of 2005, Jock was athletic and impressive. Truly, he viewed like a veterinary anatomy lesson, the week they studied the musculature.

He came to Colorado in a big truck with a bunch of other characters; he was up for adoption in Boulder when my friend came upon him and soon he had a new home.

Shortly thereafter he told me his story:  his person in New Orleans was a young man who owned a salvage yard.  The man had a wife, a couple of kids and another dog that was smaller and black. Jock was meant to be a guard dog but he didn’t have the temperament for it: too congenial. Still, they kept him and he and the little dog became friends.

They had lived outdoors, in a biggish chain-link enclosure outside a modest, worn, one-story white house. Built in the 40′s or 50′s and the roof was green. When the water came Jock jumped onto the roof of a dog house but the little black dog drowned, pretty quick.  Jock missed him but in his dog way he got the magnitude of what was happening all around him; he told me lots of things died. Many people walked away from their pets in New Orleans and to Jock at least, this was unremarkable.

They found him in a tree.  He’d managed to swim a ways after the water cleared his enclosure. There was no shortage of trees in the neighborhood; he showed me how in his lumbering way he came upon a horizontal branch above the water then found there was another branch below the water line that he used to heave himself onto the branch.  If the tree had been smaller it wouldn’t have worked.

Who saved him?  He told me, there was a boat.  They had to coax and then force him; he wasn’t happy about any of it, not even them.  Two men in it and he heard them talking about what they’d seen.  They were happy to rescue him but he said they were sad. One of them kept crying.  

He showed me that they weren’t with a rescue organization.  Just two guys in a boat, trying to help.

Next Up: Jock Starts Talking

 

 

 

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When It Doesn’t Look Like Help

Nov 9th, 2012 by Katie

Here’s an example of how pets help us in not-so-obvious ways.

In my early days I was hired to help a woman with her dog. It seemed Rover had suddenly begun to lick at himself and as time went on his fur began to thin until finally he was bald in spots.

Food was replaced, tests were taken, blood was studied and behavior was modified, all to no avail. The vet signed off and the client found herself stranded. Then she found me and I did my thing in accordance with a groovy new, improved protocol.

The protocol might have been groovy but I hadn’t yet learned to ask up front:  who’s energy is this, yours or your person’s? The dog, for his part, was not inspired to direct my attention anywhere but to him. Dutifully he gave me a ton of material to work with and we probably healed something but we sure didn’t heal that damn licking.

He made a temporary improvement and within a couple of weeks he was right back at it.  He might’ve even picked up the pace. Disappointment all around but it seemed we’d exhausted our options and everyone went reluctantly back to their lives.

Some time later I came across the client’s mom. The dog, she said, had made a miraculous improvement. Here’s what happened:

Just after our last meeting, the balding dog so distressed the client and her mom that one of them took it upon herself to meditate about it. That inspiration led almost immediately to a discussion of events from some 30 years earlier–a situation from her childhood the client had always wondered about but didn’t know how to bring up.

Her mom explained why things had had to happen that way, the client understood, forgiveness was granted and the dog, well he knocked it off with the licking. He began to fill back in and today Rover is his sleek, glossy, bossy self.

Right, it’s probably a coincidence. But I’ve come to find out this kind of thing is pretty common so I’m gonna come right out and say it: if you ignore your emotions, maybe they’re tenacious enough to get your attention some other way. Isn’t that right, Rover?

 


 


 

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Henri que le chat français déprimé célèbre tout sanctifie Ève

Nov 8th, 2012 by Katie

Henri does not care for your pagan ritual.

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Animal Communication and an Avalanche of Sugar

Nov 6th, 2012 by Katie

I said I’d review some books about animal communication/psychic development and discuss them on my site.  So yesterday I trotted off to the library and began to read.

Okay, here’s where you’re going to see my prejudices come out.  No sooner had I opened the book and there it was:  ”the Animal Communicator New Age Love” phenomenon that makes me squirm. It’s not in every book but I’ve been around the block a few times and there’s nothing unusual about this presentation.

It’s a whole genre that features talented people who understand energy and can apply it expertly in practical ways, but for some reason it takes the form of a Animals as Innocent Angel Babies Who Heal Us with their Unconditional Etc. that reads like a pound of sugar with a side of tragic. I don’t have any patience for this because it makes pets out to be helpless as a group.

I’ve seen enough turds on the carpet, OCD behavior and exasperated clients to tell you, there’s more method and less innocence than you might think.  Like us, our pets are spirits in bodies and they vary wildly, one to the other.  They’re capable of coming up with solutions to problems and they can be very, very creative. Helpless they are not.

Well, back to our story.  The first page, a chorus of angels warbled away while sunbeams erupted. Everywhere I looked I saw innocent animals in various states of disrepair and emotional breakdown.  The neophyte psychic kept doubling over as he or she absorbed the emotional agony of the hapless pet.  But then (s)he righted her/himself, triumphant while still managing to be very, very sad!  (S)he’d discovered his/her Purpose and so held the sword aloft and declared undying devotion to the cause!  Was that a Native American flute I heard? I wanted to lie down and we weren’t past the Forward.

But skimming through the book there were so many jewels, so much value; clearly this person knew what (s)he was doing and I felt reprimanded.

It reminds me forcibly that we’re coming at this work from different angles. All animal communicators are pet lovers and as a group we get the importance of having animals in our lives beyond just the companion part.  Each of us knows how to access a pet’s thoughts and I had best be patient because some of these characters apparently are pretty famous. *burst of trumpets* At least that’s what it says on their websites.

It’s just that  .  .  .  hm.  At one time communicating with animals was almost unheard of and then, subject to ridicule.  This is no longer the case.  But then, as now, there’s always been a “seriousness” factor: is animal communication real? If it is, won’t it work in adjunct with veterinary science, pet training and pet pharmaceuticals? Or is it just a sweet little hobby?  There are people trying to substantiate it with some success so can we show some respect?

Now, I’m sure I’m projecting my own fear of being dismissed as inconsequential. But in my opinion, some of the least understood and hardest working companion animals in the business are actively helping their people by pulling stunts like this.

So can we stop with the sunsets and shooting stars and all the helplessness?  Can we get down to: can an animal communicator figure out why your cat keeps marking your damn purse?  ’Cause that girl has an agenda and she’s trying to get your attention. That’s not helpless; it’s pretty effective.  Don’t you think?

 

 

 

 

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Animal Communication and Psychic Development

Oct 30th, 2012 by Katie

Clients are asking how to do what I do.  Sometimes I say, you already know how.

We all do; I believe that what I call clairvoyance is just another sense, along with hearing, seeing, touch, smell and taste.  It’s not accepted as “normal” in this country, although I’m pretty sure that’s changing fast.

On the other hand, you do have to know where to start.  I have a few recommendations:

1)  Check to see if there’s a clairvoyant program in your area.  I studied at Psychic Horizons in Boulder, Colorado and I can’t recommend them enough. They were the ones who taught me to manage my own energy before I look at someone else’s.  If you’re not clear, you won’t give a clear reading.  For that matter, your motives for reading change when you manage yourself first.

I liked the community setting because the instructors saw where the students were and what they needed to grow.  I learned more about myself in my year at PH than I did in ten years on my own, by recognizing my doubts and demons and working with them instead of going into fear.  They taught me to embrace the learning curve.

In our culture we celebrate the expert and the very, very self-confident as if there’s an elite group of geniuses that just spring up out of the soil. Very few people talk about the learning curve but it seems to me it’s always lurking, whatever your skill. Knowing I don’t know everything helps me to slow down, be mindful, have humility. It motivates me.

2)  Look for animal communication or general clairvoyance classes in your area. Talk to the teacher or look at her website and trust your gut as to whether it’s a good fit. After all, you’re psychic, right?

3  Do some reading.  There are a ton of good books out there.  The one that most follows the protocols I learned in Boulder is Basic Psychic Development, by John Friedlander and Gloria Hemsher.  It’s easy to read and loaded with practical tools for everyday use.  I also like You Are Psychic, by Debra Lynne Katz.  Her way of “seeing” is a little different and reminds me that once you have the basics down you’re free to experience the unseen world in ways that work best for you.

There are a fast-growing number of other books that are more specific, books that talk about communicating with dogs and horses and so on.  We’ll look at some of those in a future post.

 

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