Building Bridges

At some time or another, most humans who live with animals will say to themselves “I wonder what the dog is thinking” or “I wonder why the cat did that?” or even “I wonder why this bird keeps smacking up against my window?”  Usually we stop there, until some significant event happens. Then, that passing thought can become a need to know. This is when animal communication can build a bridge of understanding between humans and animals. As animal communicators, we have encountered a wide range of situations where we’ve had the privilege of helping to construct such a bridge of understanding.If you think about it, our companion animals and we are different species, with different body language, oral signals, sensory capacities, smells, and thought processes. As humans, we ask our companion animals to learn our signals and to live by rules that we have invented for our convenience. For example, if you want to ask a Labrador Retriever to play ball with you, do you get on the ground and “play bow” to invite her to do so? Probably not. Instead, you use words like “get the ball’, wave the ball, and smile. These are all human cues that the Lab has learned in order to be able to play ball with you.Let’s look at a couple of cases we’ve encountered that illustrate how animal communication helps bridge this species communication gap. We received a call from a person with a Chihuahua, whom we’ll call Buddy, who was marking in the house. Buddy had some medical issues, but none that his vet felt should be causing him to urinate in the house. It turned out that Buddy, a very small dog, was very concerned about other dogs coming into his house. He was making sure that all dogs knew it was his house. We explained to him that the house walls and doors defined the boundaries of his territory inside. If he wanted to keep other dogs out, then he needed to mark on the OUTSIDE of the house where dogs outside would get the message. With Animal Communication, his human came to understand why Buddy had been marking. And Buddy came to understand that for his marking to to be effective, he needed to do it outside. Buddy agreed to “think about” changing his behavior. Sure enough, within two days, he stopped marking in the house.Another case involved a retired racing Greyhound named Annie. In this case, her humans were Terri and I. Annie would begin to shake, pace, pant and drip from the nose at times for no apparent reason. Invariably, a few hours later, we would have a thunderstorm. What puzzled us was why she was apparently afraid of a storm that had not yet happened, and to human senses wasn’t anywhere near. So, the typical fear of loud noises, like thunder, wasn’t the problem. We asked Annie how she felt when she began behaving as described above. She showed us that her “skin hurt”, that she didn’t understand why it hurt, it just “happened”. That made her anxious. We asked Annie if there was a place in the house where her skin hurt less. She indicated the kitchen. We told her to go to the kitchen and lie down whenever her skin started to feel like that, and that she would feel better. We explained that her skin hurt because a storm was coming. We also reassured her that she was safe in the house. When she realized that being in the Kitchen really did help, her anxiety and pacing diminished significantly. Annie turned out to be a more accurate predictor of storms than the TV weather person!These are just a couple of examples of how animal communication has helped animals and humans understand one another. We find that when there is more understanding, mutual respect and love grows. When that happens, it’s a win-win for the whole family!