Are All Animal Communicators Psychic?

My viewpoint on the subject, as expressed in my book, The Language of Animals by Bantam Dell, and taught in my workshops throughout the world, has been to keep things SIMPLE AND PURE. I believe there is a big difference between communicator and psychic. My belief is strong enough to have turned down a 3-book deal from a publisher because all 3 books had the word psychic in the title and that would be in direct conflict with my belief.

My philosophy has been this. Animal Communication is a language of its own. Learning to communicate with animals is analogous to learning a foreign language like French, Italian, Spanish, etc. It is a language that just comes in a different package/form than what we are used to (as hearing a person’s voice and having their lips move). An animal communicator has a direct two-way conversation with an animal; just like a person would communicate with another person--SIMPLE. Even when the animal has passed on, you can engage with the animal directly and have a two-way conversation with the animal.

When a psychic does a reading for a person, he/she might use lots of different modalities in retrieving the information: tarot cards, spirit guides, etc. Some often forecast the future for people. The psychic is not necessarily talking to the person or animal DIRECTLY. This is a big difference from what an animal communicator, in my opinion, is doing in its purest sense—having a two-way conversation with the animal and no one else.

As an animal communicator, my focus is to engage in a conversation with the animal directly. Why would I have to consult with anyone else (spirit guides, using journeying techniques, etc.) about the animal? In communicating with a person, you would not consult spirit guides or any other third parties; so why would we do that with the animals? That is how I believe the waters get muddied and we enter into a gray area and we lose the integrity of what animal communication is. One of the things that I teach my students is not to cloak the message from the animal in a veil of interpretation or judgment, but to simply report it and respond to it.

Some of the people who come to my workshops have taken psychic development classes and/or have studied shamanism, and I think those techniques are great in helping a person “trust” in their intuition and listening abilities. It is true that many of the “conversations” between an animal and a communicator come as fleeting thoughts, and the process of learning to communicate is, in large part, a process of learning to recognize and acknowledge those impressions as actual language. Good animal communicators almost invariably have a finely tuned intuitive sensibility, but this is not the same thing as being psychic, in the sense that there is some form of “supernatural” intervention in the process.

Some of my clients have become very confused after they have had a session with other communicators who are not clear about how the process of communication actually works. They might tell me that a communicator said their animal chose a particular homeopathic remedy for himself. The clients justifiably wonder how their animal could have known that. I can only tell them that the person is most likely recommending a remedy that he/she feels would be beneficial for their animal and that the information did not come from the animal, per se.

I have had many psychics refer their own clients to me or come to me themselves because of this issue. For instance, the very famous psychic, Char, referred her client to me for a lost cat. She told her client that she felt the cat was dead but she suggested the client call me. Char knew that this was her impression and that she was not talking DIRECTLY with the animal. When I got in touch with the animal DIRECTLY, he told me he was still in his body and gave me great details as to what he saw around him. Well, the client found his cat alive and exactly where he said he was.

As animal communicators, I believe it is our responsibility to the profession to keep the integrity of THE LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS intact and not make it something that it isn’t. It is so important to keep our boundaries clear. And if other modalities are going to be used within a consultation session, the client should be advised as to what their animal has communicated vs. what information the communicator is offering from their own intuitive sense.