Do animals flag me down on the street? Are they just waiting everywhere to ambush me and have a conversation?
I get asked a LOT if I walk around hearing voices or what animals are thinking all the time?
The answer is a simple NO. Dr. Doolittle I am not.
For one thing, this generally isn’t how animal communication works. But for another . . . well . . . do you walk around hearing what’s going on in people’s heads all the time? I doubt it.
Granted, it’s pretty easy to tell when a dog, for instance — even one you don’t know — is happy or sad, shy or scared. But having a telepathic conversation with him is a different matter and for most of us communicators involves shifting into a certain mode where we can see, hear, and feel what is coming from him.
It’s kind of like scanning over channels on a radio until you tune in to one clearly through the proper frequency. Turning that radio dial or tuning into your psychic powers is a conscious process. People with this skill or gift usually are able to manage it and receive information when they choose to. And to block it out the rest of the time. If they didn’t, they’d end up in said looney bin.
So no, I don’t go around wielding my psychic “tuning fork” all the time.
But the other, more important, issue here is ethics. And yes, there are many that need to be considered when one does animal communication.
Penelope Smith, one of the most famous animal communicators in the world, over the course of many years of practicing and teaching, came up with a comprehensive list of ethical considerations that are good to keep in mind for anyone communicating with nonhuman animals. The one that is relevant here is:
“Unless someone is in great immediate danger, I provide assistance through telepathic communication with nonhuman animals only where requested, so as to honor individual choice and privacy.”
It’s that simple, really. So, for instance, if someone calls me and asks me to talk to a “problem dog” in her neighborhood, I let her know that doing so is totally “off limits,” or out of ethical bounds for me unless that dog’s person contacts me and asks me for assistance. As a parallel you might think of someone calling a psychiatrist and asking him to intervene in a domestic dispute your neighbors are having. It just isn’t done that way, and it isn’t fair or respectful of individual free will and privacy.
When things get out of hand, yes, then you can step in. If child or animal abuse is going on, it’s fine to do whatever needs to be done to get the subject out of harm’s way.
I happen to like this policy and uphold it in my practice and teach it to my students. But some animal communicators disagree vehemently, feeling that any animal at any time should be able to talk to whomever they want, and that it is the responsibility of an animal communicator to “be there” for them 24/7, carte blanche.
Whichever way one believes, the most important thing of all is to proceed with integrity and respect. There are always exceptions, but I truly believe most animal communicators do just that. If not, it bites them in the butt and they go out of business!
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