Some animal communicators have had the experience in long-distance consultations when clients test them by asking them to communicate with an animal but hide the fact that the animal has died.
I had this happen once during a phone consultation. The client asked about how her dog was feeling. Her dog told me about pains in his stomach. When the client then revealed the dog couldn’t have stomach pains because he was dead, I was thrown off because she had talked about him currently living with her.
I continued to communicate with the dog (in spirit) and he told me further about how he had died of cancer and was showing how he felt as he was dying. His person had also wanted to know how he had felt in his final days, so the dog was answering her question. Of course, it was clearer how to interpret his communication and what questions to ask once the person told the truth about him having passed on.
The rest of the consultation was fruitful. The dog, who was troubled about his person, and his person, who was painfully attached to the dog, came to a more peaceful state of being.
Readers have asked: Why doesn’t an animal communicator know if an animal who is not present is alive or dead?
Animals may appear to be out of their bodies because they are in shock, disoriented, or traumatized, and it is not because they have died.This is particularly common with lost animals. They may be confused as to where they are or where their home is, and so they may not convey clear signals of being with their body or in the spiritual realm. Sometimes animals feel they are alive and are trying to get home when they are dead and have not realized it.
In this, the third article of the finding lost animals series, animal communicators explain how they tell through telepathic communication if an animal is dead or alive. How to Know if Lost Animals are Dead or Alive It’s something that most people who are searching for their lost animal friends want to know, especially as time goes by and their precious ones have not returned home. Animal communicators hear clients plead, “I just want to know if my animal is dead or alive. Please just tell me if she’s dead or alive. I want closure.”
How do animal communicators tell if a missing animal is dead or alive?
The most respected and experienced communicators have been wrong on this most basic question. Sometimes the animals themselves don’t know the answer—particularly if they’ve been injured suddenly, or when they’re wavering between life and death.
Annette Betcher remembers when she used to ask missing animals whether they were still alive. “Animals are very literal,” she realized. Since the souls are always quite alive, thank you, she has now learned to be more specific: “Are you alive and in your body?”
But still. Annette took a call from a Vermont woman whose dog, Little Bear, hadn’t come home from a romp. “I kind of felt she was okay when she said she was in her body,” Annette recalls. So Annette tracked Little Bear’s footsteps: “I try to be them when I’m doing this. She was so earth-bound.”
The client knew exactly what Annette was talking about when she described the path of Little Bear’s outing with another dog. Little Bear showed her precise local landmarks, including the shopping mall and the railroad tracks heading out of town. Little Bear said she was along those train tracks, waiting for her dog friend to come back for her. In fact, Annette’s client did find Little Bear beside the train tracks—with her head and front legs severed. “She said, ‘I’m not leaving because [the other dog is] coming back for me,’” Annette remembers. “Then I had to help her to the light. I helped her move on.”
Similar to Annette’s example, I communicated with a lost German Shepherd, who showed me how he was trapped behind a wood fence he couldn’t get over. He was running back and forth, trying to come home.
I described the location from the images the dog gave me of the nearby neighborhood, fence, and house. The people found the house and fence and their dog, whose body, having been hit by a car, lay dead in the street. The dog thought he was still alive and desperately wanted to go home. With further communication, we helped him to realize he was in spirit and to make peace with his traumatic, sudden death.
At the beginning of every missing-animal consultation, Carol Gurney is careful to explain to clients that there are no guarantees. She also reminds them of the movie “Ghost,” in which Patrick Swayze’s character doesn’t realize he’s dead yet. “They can show you a field they’re running around in,” she says, “but they’re out of their body.”
Like many communicators, Carol has developed her own checklist. For instance: Does the animal have a pulse or heartbeat? Is the animal breathing? If you imagine a candle, is the flame lit? “Sometimes we can’t connect at first,” she says.“Sometimes people feel that when they communicate with an animal and they get nothing (blankness) that it means the animal is indeed out of his body. That is not necessarily so. The animal may be daydreaming, busy with some job, or could be in a terrifying situation, which can make him unavailable for communication. When an animal is extremely frightened, it can feel to the animal communicator that the animal has left his body, even though he is very much alive.”
“You can also check for a feeling of being grounded or of being connected to and part of the Earth. Check for a sensation of airiness. When the animal has moved into spirit form, you’ll feel a very light, ethereal, expansive, almost floating sensation.”
“Watch for images you receive. You may get a vision of how the animal met his death, which may be accompanied by a light sensation as he gently floated out of his body. If you do happen to see the event that caused the death, then see if the body was left there in that spot or carried away, or what else might have happened to the body.”
“Keep asking very specific questions such as: Where is this tree? What or who do you see around this tree? Is this tree on Earth or are you playing under a tree in spirit? Can you feel the dirt (grass, water, rocks) beneath your feet? Are you playing with those you know on Earth? It is always good to add ‘in present time’ to all of these questions.”
Dorothy Black usually asks questions revolving around their physical senses. Are they hungry, wet, cold, dry, warm….? She found that when they had passed over, these senses are not as acute.
Jacquelin Smith says it’s not unusual for her to get direct messages: “Often the spirit will come right before me and will say, ‘I’m out of my body.’” Because the animals can be confused, Jacquelin believes in asking for clarification from Spirit.
Leta Worthington typically asks to see out of the animal’s eyes. If the view is not from ground level, or if the animal seems to be at home when the humans say they’re missing, those are signs that the body is no longer alive. “That’s just for me,” she says. “Other people might not get the same thing.” A feeling of disconnection can also mean the animal is sick,” Leta cautions. “It doesn’t mean they’re totally disconnected.”
Confusing matters further is the fact that time frames can be out of sequence. So the impressions may come from the future or the past.
Jeri Ryan advises, “We assume that the animals know accurately what is going on for them. Most of the time, they do. However, sometimes animals can be confused about what is happening in their bodies and their lives. When animals have died suddenly and traumatically, they may not be aware that they are fully out of their bodies. It may take awhile for an animal to become fully aware of his current state. An animal may be injured, ill and/or terribly frightened, and partly out of his body. That animal may believe he is dead when he is still alive. The cat who appeared telepathically to have been eaten by a dog may have had such a close call, and may have felt he was dead. If so, over time, the spirit would realize that it is still rooted in the body, and then he could go home, feeling safe and sound.”
Jeri adds, “Since communicating with animals is a spirit-to-spirit communication, the spirit of the animal ‘sounds’ the same whether she is in or out of her body. When animals have died and are in spirit form only, they show themselves to the communicator in the form they were in when they were embodied so the communicator can recognize them. However, there may be a more ethereal sense to them. They may feel as though they have come in from far away. They may float in. They may have light around them. If they haven’t shown themselves to you, it could be helpful to ask them to do so.”
“Ask animals where they are. When I ask animals who have passed over where they are, they do not talk about being at someone’s house or in a tree, under a bush, or under the bed. Ask them whom they are with. They may give names or images of beings familiar to their persons, beings who have also passed over. Ask what is around them. Animals who have died usually talk about peace, pure love, and joy rather than objects or topography or terrain. Ask whatever exploratory investigative questions come to you from your own curiosity. Ask what happened in the most recent past. That will give you an idea as to whether there was an incident that has traumatized and confused them, or that has deprived them of life, as we know it on Earth.”
Elizabeth Severino finds, “Lost animal sensings require finding the animal's body and the animal's consciousness. People calling about a lost animal generally want their animal's body back with them. The animal's body is not always in the same location as the animal's consciousness. About three-quarters of the time, when the animal's body and its consciousness are in different places, the animal's body is dead.”
“If I perceive that the animal's body is dead, I then sense to locate the dead body or its remains. Frequently I can. This helps the humans experience closure. My approach is to tell people compassionately, gently, and clearly what I sense.” Knowing the Animal’s Current State An animal communicator won’t know to ask questions about whether an animal’s body is dead or alive if the client’s information is deliberately misleading about the animal’s current state or even if the animals exist at all (as in my article, Animal Communicators Can Be Fooled). It is simpler to connect with animals in spirit when you already know they are in spirit or animals who are alive when you know where they are living. In doubtful situations, these methods animal communicators have used to answer the “dead or alive” question can be helpful.
My book, Animals in Spirit, will help you understand what happens with animals after death and how you can communicate with them.
