Day-to-Day Communication with Animals

People have often asked me about what my daily life communication with animals is like. I’ll answer some of their varied questions.

Do you talk aloud to your animal family or is it always silent telepathic communication?

I do what comes naturally and speak aloud when it flows out that way. I love saying my animal friends’ names, and chortling affectionately to them, including the varieties of names that come forth like Lila Lily Loo, Ziggy Wigs, or Pepito Sweeto Chiquito. I also love singing to them.

However, I often communicate silently with them. The communication is in whole packages of intention, feelings, images, including all the internal or extended telepathic senses that mirror the physical senses, and also thoughts expressed in silent words.

Animals understand my clearly expressed intentions, ideas, and sensory packages delivered silently. Likewise, they transmit their thoughts and feelings telepathically in return.

How do you connect with your animal family members to get their attention and start communicating?

We feel each other and are connected much of the time. However, sometimes their attention is focused elsewhere when I need to communicate something important to them.

Then I will do what comes naturally: speaking their name or touching them to focus their attention on me. They do the same with me when I’m not paying attention and they have something they want me to get. They meow, paw, woof, look intently at me, nudge, or peck (chickens). Then, after we have each other’s full attention, we communicate telepathically to fully understand each other’s needs of the moment.

How do they show they understand?

Often they sit quietly and we share a peaceful feeling of camaraderie. If I asked them to change their behavior, they show they understand by their actions. Or they may relate why they can’t or don’t want to do that right now, and it takes further discussion to come to mutual agreement.

Lila, my lovely torbie cat (combination of tortoise shell and tabby) sometimes loves to express herself passionately with love bites that hurt me. I explained why bites might be acceptable with cats, who have thicker skin and fur, but it doesn’t work well for my thinner, naked human skin. So, I just tell her, “no biting” and she immediately stops. In her exuberance, she gets carried away sometimes, so a quick reminder handles it.


I had to leave my long-haired Chihuahua, Pepito, at animal sitter Maureen’s house on November 27 when I could not take him with me on an overnight trip. This was his first time since I adopted him in December 2018 that he would be away from me overnight and for a full 24 hours. He already met and liked Maureen and her husband.

I explained what the situation would be like at Maureen’s house, with Pepito in a playpen in the living room, and other dogs in their own gated rooms. He would be safe and well-cared for. Their older black lab, Bandit, was the only dog who roamed free. I reassured Pepito that Bandit would not try to get into Pepito’s pen.

The night before I was due to go on my trip, Pepito let out a tiny howl in his sleep, sounding like a miniature wolf. When I checked on how he was doing, he told me he was having a dream where there were dogs all around him. He then went back to sleep. I later realized that he was picturing what it would be like at the animal sitter’s house, showing his understanding of my images of the situation.

The animal sitter reported that Pepito did very well at her house. When her black lab first went over to check Pepito out in his pen, Maureen cautioned Bandit to be gentle. He sniffed Pepito and then lay quietly about a foot away. Pepito sniffed Bandit in turn and then settled on his bed.

Communication with animals on day to day affairs can make things go more smoothly.

Are you constantly talking or listening to your animal family?

Since I and my animal friends have lived with each other for a while, we understand each other more on a “knowing” basis rather than with questions and explanations. When our relationship doesn’t flow smoothly, or a new situation comes up that could be unsettling, then I take time for more focused listening and getting a better understanding about what’s happening.

Do you always understand your animals? What happens if you make mistakes interpreting your animal friends’ communications or miss things they are communicating?

We try again. Sometimes, in very stressful situations where cooperation isn’t restored easily with us communicating, I may need to learn something else that I’m not getting yet. Then, I will ask an animal communicator friend to help out. Just like in human relationship dilemmas, it can be very helpful to have a person who is not directly involved in the problem as a neutral listener or mediator. Each of us in the family then gets to have the opportunity to vent steam, get calmly back to our center, and open to a new outlook about resolving the situation.

Some things, such as individual animals not getting along with each other, require a long term working out. This ongoing learning helps each of us on our individual spiritual journeys and in our journeys with each other. Part of why we came together is to help each other grow and attain the states of being we set out for ourselves to realize in this life.

In the 1980s, my Afghan hound, Miel, and her daughter, Rana, had a fierce conflict that echoed the violence of my abusive mother and my own wounds from it. It took years to be aware of and to heal in me what was dramatized in my dogs' relationship. This was not going to become fully conscious and whole immediately. It required time, professional help, love, and patience to fully crystallize what was revealed step by step, in its own time and in its own way.

Do other animals around you or from long distances contact you and communicate with you often? Is it like a cacophony of communication coming from all directions or can you turn it off or decide when and who to hear?

I live with an abundance of wild animals and usually just “be” with them and enjoy their company. I enjoy observing, trying not to interfere with their natural life. Some want to connect or originate communication and, in being with them, a conversation will start naturally. This can happen with wild animals both near and far.

I may wonder about why they are doing something, and then I “know” or get the answers from them by “osmosis” or arising from their being. Sometimes they show me things I don’t know or understand about them as I connect deeply. As I”drink in their being,” understanding about them may happen in flashes of insight.

I learn many things from animals by just dwelling with them in silence. Our silence with each other is full and rich. I may also ask them questions telepathically about their life, my life, or life in general. I gain so much from their wisdom.

My previous writings and exercises that students have done in animal communication courses with me and other teachers are rich with deep messages and feelings from all our animal, plant, mineral, and elemental relations. See my publications and previous blogs.

Yes, I decide who and what communication I am open to. Otherwise, it would be like listening to a gazillion radio stations or internet podcasts at once. I choose to receive what is relevant to me when I am called by and can help with wild animals or domestic animals and their people.

Does your telepathic communication help relationships between animal family members?

Yes, it is often very helpful, sometimes immediately and sometimes requiring a longer time.

Orange tabby cat, Jerry, loves Pepito as he loved our previous dog, Belinda. When Jerry first started to rub his face against Pepito, Pepito snapped at him. It’s understandable that Pepito would not relish a much larger face than his own pressing against him without his permission. However, Jerry felt rebuffed and sad that he couldn’t express his affection toward Pepito this way. He would then tentatively rub the bed that Pepito lay in, flinching if Pepito glared at him or showed signs of possibly snapping.

I explained to Pepito that Jerry really loved him, and he just wanted to be close to him and wouldn’t hurt him. Each time Jerry would come near Pepito, purring in his adoring way and controlling his desire to rub Pepito’s body with his face, I would repeat how much Jerry loved Pepito. Pepito would then soften a bit and shift from alert stance to relaxing with his head down on the bed while Jerry rubbed as close to Pepito as he dared.

One day, as Jerry came over to Pepito’s bed, I was just about to repeat how Jerry loved him, when Pepito said to me, “I know, I know; he’s the cat who loves me.” And then, he let Jerry rub the side of his face for the first time.

Jerry was ecstatic but didn’t push his luck by trying to rub Pepito more. When this scenario repeated, I helped facilitate cat and dog comfort by rubbing both of them as Jerry approached. Pepito again said how he knew that Jerry was the cat who loved him. He allowed the rubs to carry on longer. Jerry was thrilled and Pepito more easily received Jerry’s affection after that.

What do animals think about all the time?

While animals can think about many things that are relevant to their lives, they don’t generally engage in streams of automatic thought association as humans do. They dwell on awareness of what is around them in a meditative state of being much of the time.

They are capable of fast thinking when the situation requires action, but they don’t usually get caught in compulsive thinking, as humans do. Exceptions to animals’ usual calm mental states of being are found with traumatized domestic animals, who can have human-like neuroses.

An animal communication student was accompanying me on a walk through a field of cows. She peppered me with questions about what each cow was thinking. Each time my reply was, “Nothing. Nothing. They are not thinking about anything.”

It was hard for her to believe that they weren’t thinking about something or ruminating about things in their heads. Her own mind raced from one thing to another. She couldn’t fathom what it was like just “being” with a calm mind and enjoying life just as it was with the full sense appreciation so natural to the cows.

Recognizing How You Are Communicating
You may have recognized yourself in these examples of communication with animals on a daily basis. Perhaps you saw that you do more of talking to animals and maybe not so much listening and getting their full telepathic communication.

Recognizing how you communicate with animals is an important step to developing your ability. These pointers may be helpful to you in that process. You can make yourself more of an equal partner in two-way communication with your animal friends by using this program.