Pets are Talking

Epic Twitter Special!

Right now, you're either thinking- "YAY!" or "WHAT?" Twitter is an amazing social media tool, where lots of cool people congregate to chit chat, share ideas and have a good time. 

I'm on twitter. My twitter name is @petsaretalking.  And for my 4,600 or so twitter followers, I have an epic twitter special:

I'll talk to your pet, and answer one question for $7.50. 

Your pet can be alive or passed away. 

Simply email me with the number of questions you'd like to buy. I'll send you a paypal request. 

This offer is limited to 2 questions per pet, but you can have as many questions as you want per household. 

Now through the 4th of July! Get On It! 

Olive's Heroes!

Wait! You say! That's NOT Olive! 

No, you're right, you eagle-eyes you! That's NOT Olive. That is Gwen. Gwen is a wonderful agility dog adopted from a rescue organization who has gone on to win Agility titles and be the joy of her mama's life! 

She's an example about how adopting a dog from a shelter can be like winning the jackpot! 

Olive's Heroes is our new project to raise awareness about the awesomeness of dogs from shelters and rescues and to raise money for folks who do good work for dogs in need. 

Each month, we'll select a dog rescue organization for whom to raise funds. Then there will be 2 ways to donate for the rescue, either through shopping at our affiliates or going directly to the rescue's site to donate there. 

We're going to select our first rescue in just a few days! 

You can read more about it at http://olivesheroes.wordpress.com! 

We're also going to set up "Olive's Fund", a fund that enables us to give money to dogs that need medical help. 

Our first shopping partner is The Dharma Dog, an online store that sells eco-friendly, made-in-the-USA, fair-trade dog stuff!  They've agreed to give Olive's Heroes 25% of their sales through our site. 

You simply need to use the coupon code "Olive" when you check out! 

So, please, check out Olive's Heroes.  

Aroone and his nemesis, Tucker

This is Aroone: 

Aroone lives in a pasture in New Jersey, with his friends, Willz and Phil and his nemesis, Tucker. 

Tucker is the pasture nerd. 

I asked Aroone about Tucker, because Aroone has a tendency to lunge out and bite Tucker as he's walking by his stall.  This little exchange cracked me up:

Bridget: You know Tucker?

Aroone: Yes. TUCKER has boundary issues (shows Tucker getting in Aroone’s way, pushing his rump into him) and he SMELLS!

Bridget: So you’re not a fan?

Aroone: No, not a fan of Tucker.

Bridget: Is it okay sharing a field with him?

Aroone: Sometimes it’s okay, but other times he says things that are really stupid.

Bridget: Like what?

Aroone: One time, we saw a tractor, and Willz and I were talking about it, and Tucker said that horses used to do what tractors do. HORSES can’t do what tractors do!

Bridget: I think he meant that horses used to pull the plow.

Aroone: I don’t think that’s what he meant.

Ah, Aroone, you are priceless. 

When I asked Aroone not to bite Tucker, he said "It's my right as a horse!" His mom has taken to calling him a "horse activist". She's going to make him some protest signs. 

I'm talking with Tucker this week. Maybe we can work on those boundary issues.  

Reading of the Week: Finding Beaujolais

12 days ago, I received a frantic phone call from Lorance Pasco. Her new dog, Beaujolais, had run off while she was visiting a client. 

Beaujolais is a young dog. He was rescued from a hoarder in Oregon. He is afraid of people and most other dogs. He had lived with Lorance for two weeks before he embarked on this adventure. 

Lorance had done everything right. She'd made up a thousand flyers, and had plastered them all around the Capital Hill neighborhood in Seattle. She'd contacted everyone she knew. She put up an ad on craigslist. She called animal control and checked the shelters.  Beaujolais had been microchipped and she knew that the microchip company had her information. 

He'd been gone about a week when Lorance called me. There had been sightings, but Lorance kept missing him. She was starting to think that she'd never catch him. She was worried about his condition. 

I tuned into him. He was in a park. He was scared that somebody would catch him and take him back to his first home. I said "Don't worry. Nobody is going to take you back. You need to go up to people so that you can get back to your new home."

He was quiet when I said this. I said, "You remember Lorence?" I sent him a picture of Lorence. 

I felt him warm up a little. "Yes. I like her."

I said, "Well, she's still looking for you. She's going to find you. She needs you to go up to people so that they can help you get back to her." 

Beaujolais liked that. He was slightly surprised that she was still searching for him. He said he'd try to go up to people. 

I twittered about Beaujolais, and throughout the next week, I checked in with him every day. Sometimes he was hiding behind some garbage cans. Sometimes he was in the park. They tracked him up to the Seattle Arboretum. 

He told me that he was finding food and water. He tried to go up to people, but then it occurred to him that they might keep him, so he reverted back to hiding in the park. 

One day, he told me that he had been finding food behind a restaurant, then running by the orange building and back to the park. 

Throughout, Lorance and I talked, and she went from hope to despair to just plain exhausted. She continued her search for Beaujolais. 

Then, on Tuesday, she got a call. Somebody had spotted him. She ran down to the park where he had been spotted. 

Lorance saw Beaujolais up on a hill. He saw her. They both froze. 

She said, "Beaujolais!" 

He leaped into the air and ran down the hill and jumped all over her, crying and whining and licking. Then he went home and rolled all over her bed. 

She has since fitted him with a GPS collar! 

Olive asks a difficult question...

I'm surprised and in tears this morning. I'm not sure what to think about my latest conversation with Olive.

She's been tense. Her acupuncturist, the great Becca Seitz, says that she has some of the tightest muscles in her back that she's ever felt in human or animal. 

I'm working on rubbing out her back, and we're keeping things light and fun here.

Today, she was lying in her chair, having a bad dream. I sat down next to her, woke her up, and said "Olive, you're my sweet girl, you NEVER have to worry about being hurt again."

She said, "But what about the other dogs?"

She showed me a row of kennels, pictures from the LA harbor animal shelter. 

"What about those dogs?" 

I thought that life would be great for her, moving forward. I thought she'd play ball and eat snacks and sleep under the covers until she died peacefully in her sleep at an advanced age. 

I thought that while we've started up Olive's Heroes, a group that raises money for rescues that help dogs in need, that she'd be a sweet spokesdog who'd get annoyed having her picture taken. 

I didn't expect my girl, Olive, to be thinking about these things. I didn't expect her to be so attached to those she left behind. She feels guilty and sad. She's so serious these days. 

She's four years old. She should be thinking about tennis balls and snacks. That's what every dog should be thinking about. 

I know, if you're reading this, that you love dogs. I bet you've got some good ideas of how to help dogs. Would you share some ideas here? 

What my animal clients see-

This morning, I had a lovely conversation with this fellow, a horse named Willz. 

After I greeted him, he said, "Those are some nice flowers." I have a bouquet of white mock orange on my desk. 

I said, "Thanks! Wait, you can see them?"

He said, "I can see them and smell them!" 

I asked, "Can you see me?"

He said, "Of course."

I said, "What do you I look like to you?"

Willz said, "You are making a funny face!"  Sometimes, when I concentrate, I squish my eyebrows together, and squinch my nose up.

I said "I am, huh?"

Willz said, "You look nice and soft. Do you ride?"

"Yes, I do ride, though I think I'm much bigger than your owner."

"I'd let you ride me," Willz said.

"I'd be honored!" I said. 

"That's why I told you, and that's why I'd let you." Willz said. 

I don't know why, in all my conversations, it never occurred to me to ask my pet clients what they could see. I often ask them how they are feeling, but what they are seeing, it just never occurred to me. It makes sense that they are experiencing our conversations in a multi-sensate way. 

It is a happy discovery! 

Honored to Know: My Students and Their Pets!

One of my students last week came up with a great question for her pets. She asked, "How do you see yourself?"

We asked four dogs this question on a Tuesday night. It was interesting to hear their answers. A Great Dane described herself as "Elegant, Funny and a Mother". She's not technically a mother, but she sure mothers everyone at her house.

The doggies appreciated talking about themselves in their own words. I liked hearing how well their opinions matched what their owners thought about them!

My students are so smart.

What would your pet say? 

Remembering Clem

My students must make several leaps to successfully talk with animals. They must suspend their fear and disbelief long enough to sign up and pay for the workshop.  They must try to connect and talk to animals with relative strangers over the phone. They must try again when they are wrong. 

What drives them is the same: the thrill and joy when they connect with their pets. The deepening of the relationship that happens when their pets understand them and vice versa. 

I love the feeling when they get an answer right. I love that little intake of breath that I hear over the phone. 

And I love stories like Clem's...

Clem was Peggie's beloved, ancient 8-lb. poodle. He was mostly blind, nearly deaf, but he still knew when dinnertime was. Peggie had adopted him as an older dog and he was a dear, dear friend. 

I met Peggie when she asked me to talk with Clem, to see if it was his time to go. He was emphatically not ready to go. He loved his life with Peggie, her husband and the rest of the pets in their household. 

Peggie took my class, and one day, I received this email:

I think I had a conversation with Clem.  At the time it seemed very real, but now 2 days later I'm having my doubts.  It was very emotional, the emotion just welled up in my chest and throat, and he did have a couple of odd phrases, so it was either real or I have a very vivid imagination.  I also didn't do any of that grounding or connecting stuff, so this is another reason I have doubts.
 
So anyway, on Sunday hubby and I were on a day trip to Charleston and we were driving along and the sunroof was open and it was a bright sunny morning.  Music was on the radio and I was just very relaxed and so I asked Clem in my head if I could speak with him and I hear a voice say "well, of course" and we spoke for maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
 
Bridget, it was like speaking with a very wise and spiritual soul.  He is here, he said, to help me with the lessons of patience and humility.  At one point he said (I wrote this down) "It's ok to just be".
 
He talked some about his life with the other woman and her other pets.  He said (wrote this down, too)  "I was the boss of them.............I got old and sick and they were the boss of me".
 
I told him I would have liked to have known him as a puppy and as a young dog and he told me that in this life he came to me twice as a puppy and those 2 lives were short, so this time he came to me already old.  He said when I was a little girl I once shared a lollipop with him and he's never forgotten.
 
Since this life of his is almost over I asked him if he would come back to me.  Clem said this has been a very long life for him and he will want a long rest on the spirit side, but if he doesn't come back to me in this life don't worry because his spirit is connected to mine forever.

Even with all of this wonderful information, Peggie wondered if she had really heard him. The details here are so clear. I assured Peggie that she heard him loud and clear! I asked if she remembered the lollypop. She said that she vaguely remembered a large dog that roamed the town, and that she shared a lolly with him. 

A few days ago, I received another email from Peggie:

Just wanted to let you know Clem passed on yesterday.  We miss him terribly as he was a very big presence in a little tiny body.  The household seems quiet and empty without him, but we know he's in a better place, whole and happy and bossy.
 
One odd thing.........Clem kept himself and me to a strict schedule.  At 9pm every night if I wasn't making the motions to go to bed, he'd stand up and bark at me like, "don't you see what time it is?".  Last night Jim and I were sitting on the sofa, just kind of in a daze, when all of a sudden Quest, the big boxer, stood up, looked at us, barked twice and walked down the hall to go to bed.  We looked at the clock and, yep, it was 9pm!  Clem left Quest a job to do.
 
I want to thank you again for the class and my one opportunity to really communicate with Clem.  I know why he was here with me and, though the loss hurts now, deep down I know his spirit will always be connected with mine...........because he told me so.

When I say that we all can talk with animals, I mean, we all can talk with animals. And we are so blessed when we can hear them! 

 

Olive joins a herd...

Today, Olive and I went to the pasture to see Ed. Olive has no fear of the horses, and they like her too. They have been Olive's friend since early April. 

The four horses in the field have always been sweet to dogs. They sometimes take Olive's ball away to make sure it's not an apple. Olive wanders amongst them as easy as a 6 hand high  mare.  

Today, there was a new palomino in the pasture (which is about 5 acres wide). She kept herself apart from the rest of the herd. I'm sure Ed chased her for most of the day. 

After a round of apples, I saved a chunk for the palomino. As I approached her, Olive did too. The mare turned on Olive and pinned her ears, snaking her head. Olive started to run away to avoid those hooves. 

Bailey, Ed's good friend, ran up to Olive and stood between her and the mare. Ed flanked her on the other side and Mick stood behind her.  Buddy ran up to the new horse and kicked at her. The palomino turned tail and ran. 

Bailey reached down and sniffed Olive to make sure she was okay. Olive skipped up to me, perfectly fine, not even worried, and certainly not surprised that her friends came to her rescue. Our herd followed us to the gate. 

Olive will not be playing in the pasture until we can be reassured that the palomino is okay with dogs. That mare probably had a really hard day. 

Celebrating Pets are Talking's First Anniversary

A year ago, I started Pets are Talking. In this year, I've talked with hundreds of pets and taught dozens of people how to talk with their pets. It's been quite exciting and very fun!

To celebrate- I'm offering a buy one get one special on Consults. If you buy a 60-minute consult, you get an additional 60 minute gift certificate to use on another pet, at another time or to donate to charity. It's your choice!  This special runs until June 6th, so get them while they're hot! 

To get your consult- go here: http://www.petsaretalking.com/consult.html 

If you've been part of this journey so far, Thank You!