Who doesn’t love to hear someone tell them that! Guess what? Your animals love to hear it too. Here’s a case study to illustrate. I just rescued a feral cat who showed up at my door a few months ago. He was about six  months old and completely wild, so much so that he bit my hand if I got it near his face. I’d told him that if he wanted to stay he had to be nice to the girls, my three other female cats. He was nice for awhile but then he started fighting them. He also started spraying in response to other cats in the area.  So I had three major bad behaviors to work on, none of them easy.
 To shift his behavior I used most my own advice from the chapter called “Creating the Peaceable Kingdom” in my latest book, Ask Your Animal. I took what I call the “Coach Approach”, decided he could be changed, explained the whole situation to him, showed him mental scenarios of what I wanted him to do, and manifested for a good outcome. I also gave flower essences and intervened with a loud “AhAh” and a stern lecture at the beginning of any behavior I didn’t want. Within a week he started to change and every time I saw a change, instead of giving a treat or patting him or some other standard reward, I started telling him how brilliant he was and how I knew he could do this. He really loved hearing about how fantastic he was and would just look at me gob smacked while I was telling him. Along the way I changed his name from the first one I gave , Niko, to Miles, in an effort to mellow him out! It has completely worked. He is almost an angel now and loves to be patted. No more biting, no more spraying and just a few little tiffs now and again with the girls. If you want more information on these techniques you can get my book, or call for a consultation or  individual tutoring session.
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  YOUR QUESTIONS
Casey Canney wrote me this question:
I was wondering if there were any special techniques for trying to communicate with an animal that has passed, and also if the communication you have with the animal has any correlation to their age, in terms of their maturity and being able to communicate.
My Response: I don’t use any special techniques to contact the spirit of an animal who has died. I do, however, imagine the animal as he or she was when alive, as the way to connect with that particular spirit. With regard to an animal’s age and maturity affecting communication, I would say that is a possibility, but not a given. Animals are as different as people and you will find the same variation in personality and maturity as you would with people. I have worked with  young animals who were very focused and easy to talk with, just as some young children can be. You will also find variation in terms of how talkative an animal may be. Some are Chatty Cathys and some are very terse. In my experience some of this is innate personality, but much of it is how they have been raised and what their life experiences have been.
Anna Ballman sent in this series of questions:
When one has an intuitive conversation with an animal or nature itself, is it like this type of conversation?
“Hello, I like to run fast”
“Hi, I don’t like to run fast”
“Do you like the color blue?”
“Yes, that’s my favorite color! What’s your favorite thing to do?”
“I like to…”
 What I mean is, is the conversation like the ones that people have, where you can hear their voice and they’re in complete sentences? Or is just like a feeling or knowingness you get?
My response: There are essentially six ways to receive information intuitively: hearing, seeing, feeling, knowing, tasting, and smelling. Keep in mind your intuitive senses are virtual , so you might have the experience of seeing a scene in your mind’s eye, or of feeling an emotion that another is feeling. You can also have mental conversations just like the one Anna described above. Most often when you hear conversation it will sound like you talking to yourself and it can be hard to recognize and trust as coming from the animal. When people start out in this field, often their strongest intuitive senses are feeling and knowing. To receive information as knowing, you will find you just know something about an animal but you don’t have any idea where that knowlege came from – it just popped into your head. The important process for beginners especially, is to get feedback on your intuitive impressions so you can prove to yourself that they are real. This involves going to the animal’s person and asking whether your impressions match what the person knows to be true for that animal. Once you start getting 80 to 90 % accuracy on your verifiable intuitive impressions you can be more confident of the nonverifiable information you might get and of the whole process in general. In my classes and in private tutoring, I focus on helping you get lots of verification. Even after all these years of doing this work, I make sure to inlcude verifiable questions with each case I work on, in order to check myself for accuracy and make sure I am connecting with the right animal.
Do you have a question? Send it in and I will include it in future blogs.
YOUR STORIES
Patty Jones sent in this story about her dog Wicca.
After our conversation last Spring, I gained new skills that involved communicating with my dog Wicca, who was close to death. Her cancer was overwhelming her. From some of your suggestions, I was able to make contact with her mentally. She and I agreed on a place that she would go to when she was ready to pass over. It was an old dog house in my backyard that she had never used in her six years of life. The next day, I found her in the dog house. She passed away four hours later. As she looked at me for the last time, her eyes were replaced with an amazing and radiant white light. Then she dropped her head and passed away. It was so hard losing her, but I know she is with me. I felt her jump on my bed the night she passed away. I have had some amazing things happen with my rescue dog Shaual also. We connected up for a reason, two months after Wicca passed away. She is healing me and I am healing her! Thank you so much for your guidance and reassurance that animals really do have spirits.
Wicca
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This picture was late in the evening, before she passed the next day. It is an amazing picture because she looks like she is laughing at the universe! She knew she was going but knew that there was no death pysically. If we could all meet death with that big smile, like hers!
This is Benny who reminds me of my cat Jenny Any Dots, also a one-eyed kitty. Jenny did just fine with one eye thank you very much, even though everyone felt sorry for her at first. She could catch mice and climb trees with the best of them. My one-eyed horse Cody (yes I changed his name again!) also does fine with one eye, he goes on trails and completely trusts us to guide him.
Benny
TUTORING
 No matter what your level of expertise, you can always improve your skills at intuitive communication. My tutoring sessions are tailored to your needs. The sessions can be half-an-hour or longer, one-time or ongoing. If you like I can give you homework assignments in-between sessions to help build your skill. We can work by phone, skype, or in person. You are welcome to come to my house to work with my animals in person.
A note about the upcoming Professional Series – If you have taken a number of workshops from me already you can sign up to come to whichever workshops you would like to take. Contact me to sign up.
JUST FOR FUN
All you ever wanted to know about the day you were born, plus numerology of your birthday and name.
Ever wonder why more and more animals are getting cancers and other diseases? Read the Environmental Working Groups’ research on the toxins our dogs and cats are being exposed to:Â Â http://www.ewg.org/reports/pets
Here is something good that is happening in the world…for a change.
Germany just banned electronic voting.  This is a first step toward legitimizing elections and should be done worldwide. (Read more about this here:  http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/79633.html). Doing this in combination with getting rid of corporate lobbying and implenting campaign finance reform would most definitely result in more legislation favoring animals and the environment. Read here for information on current developments in exposing electronic voting machine fraud in the US:  http://www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/
  ACTION ALERT – US
Monsanto is at it again trying to push through legislation to force organic farmers to use pesticides, outlaw heirloom seed production, and production of raw milk. The bill is  HB 875  . Here is a video about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epXNJNjYBvw&feature=related
