Dr. Doolittle to the rescue
by Janine Adams
We're moving this month from Brooklyn, N.Y. (where I've been feeling somewhat like a fish out of water for the past four years) to our former home in St. Louis. When we moved to New York, it was stressful for the dogs, particularly high-strung Kramer. He started wigging out when the boxes were being packed and didn't settle down until they were unpacked in our new apartment.
Since then, the stakes have risen. Kramer was diagnosed with Addison's disease nine months ago, which means that his adrenal glands don't function fully (or much at all). He's doing really well with his medication, but under times of stress, he can't rely on his adrenal glands to kick in and supply the cortisol that his body needs. So we feel we owe it to him to make this move as stress-free as we can.
I'm doing my part by not packing boxes until as late as possible. Some people might call that procrastination. I prefer to think of it as looking out for the welfare of my dog.
Despite Kramer's medical challenges (Scout's too-she's doing really well since having her cancerous tumor removed two months ago, but I worry about the stress of the move on her system), I'm much more sanguine about the move than I was four years ago. And that's because I have a secret weapon: telepathic animal communication.
When we still lived in St. Louis, I heard about animal communicators-people who are paid money to communicate telepathically with animals and report back what the animals have to say. But my knee-jerk reaction was that it just another elaborate plan to bilk people of their money. I figured you had to be crazy to fork over $35 to $50 (or more) per half hour to have someone read your pet's mind.
But something happened while we were in New York. I got to know people via the Internet who used an animal communicator. These were people I trusted and didn't think to be nuts. And they had some pretty incredible things to report. What's more, the communicator they were using, Ginny Debbink, was someone I knew and trusted before I knew she was an animal communicator. Once my mind opened up a crack, I figured it would be fun to try. And, boy, was I right.
In our first communication session Kramer and Scout-particularly Scout-explained some of the motivations for their behavior. Mysteries were solved. Why do they bark and lunge at Rottweilers and other big, black dogs? It's out of fear (trying to keep them away), not aggressive hatred.
I asked Scout why she insisted upon barking in the face of virtually every new dog she met in Brooklyn. The explanation was simple: "All dogs in Brooklyn are ugly," she told me. "They think they can walk right up to me and I have to tell them the rules." This session made very clear what I should have already known, that Scout has an extremely high sense of self-esteem. This has played out again and again throughout subsequent communication sessions, with various communicators.
That first session opened a whole new world to me. I wrote an article about animal communication for Pets: part of the family magazine. After it was published, I was asked by Howell Book House to write a book on the subject. So I got to spend months talking with about a dozen animal communicators and scores of their clients. I attended workshops on how to communicate telepathically with animals (which we're all able to do). And I got paid for it!
My book, You Can Talk to Your Animals: Animal Communicators Tell You How, was published a year ago and is doing quite well (it's in a second printing). It's been rewarding career-wise, but the real value of my foray into animal communication has been in how it's helped me with Kramer and Scout and brought us closer together.
When you have an animal communication session, you can't help but see your animals as more complete beings. You get access to their private motivations. You get to learn the things they've always wanted to tell you. For example, Kramer wanted me to know that we don't need any more animals in our house. Two dogs and two people are the perfect ratio, he said. I promised him we wouldn't add a dog to the house. Scout's parting comments at our first session were a little more selfish. She told me, "You don't spend enough time in the kitchen. And I like chicken."
That was 1998. A year later, I started a home-prepared diet for the dogs (which I make in the kitchen) and I feed Scout plenty of chicken. I guess we know who's calling the shots around here.
So as I face down this move-I'm looking at a hellish month coming up-I do feel that animal communication will make it a lot easier on the dogs, which of course makes it easier on me. We've already had an appointment with Sharon Callahan, the animal communicator we use most often these days. I explained to the dogs that we're moving back to our old house in St. Louis. So they know what's up and they even can picture where we'll be. I'm not afraid that they won't understand the flurry of activity going on around them and the mounting piles of boxes. Kramer and Scout know the score and they're actually excited about the move.
They're right to be excited. We're going to miss our friends in New York, human and canine; we'll miss our daily off-leash romps in beautiful Prospect Park; we'll miss our wonderful veterinarians and our mini-trips to New England. But we're to a place where the living is easier, if perhaps less exciting. We're going home.
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