“I wish I could communicate with my dog!”
“Do they scratch at the door when they need to go out?”
“Yeah.”
“Do they make it obvious when they are hungry or want a treat?”
“Yeah. But, that’s not communication. Anyone can see that if they scratch the door, it means they need to go out.”
“Yeah, anyone can and they often do. That is a form of animal communication.”
“But, I want to be able to hear what they are thinking.”

So, we encounter one of the biggest obstacles to animal communication, wanting a communication that is different than the one they are offering. Babies don’t learn to walk by just walking, they begin by rocking, then crawling, then holding themselves us, then stumbling until they got the hang of it. Same with most things in life, including animal communication.

Unless we purchase some of the talking buttons, or teach our animals how to let us know what they are thinking (with ringing bells, or barking once to be let out), they quickly adapt to communicating with us in ways that capture our attention. Intuitively they know that making some form of commotion near the outside door, we will catch on quickly to their desire to go out. When they want snacks, they will intuitively stand and stare at the door to the treats, or scratch at it, or make some other commotion to let you know “Hey, it’s treat time!”

Animal communication begins with accepting that this is the rocking/crawling stage of learning the language. Most of us are content in that space. We know enough to meet our pets needs and that’s enough. However, increasingly, people are beginning to want more. They want to move on to the holding themselves up phase with their eyes on being able to one day run.

The next phase (or the holding ourselves up phase) as I see it, is trust. We must trust that the communication we are already experiencing with our pets IS a form of animal communication. We must trust that we understand what they are saying and be open to more. Here’s where it can get tricky – we must trust that these next forms of communication are real, valid, and true, whether it is coming from your own pet, someone else’s, or even wildlife.

When I began the holding myself up phase, I saw hawks everywhere. I was finding feathers everywhere. The frequency with which it was happening was absurd. It couldn’t be denied, yet I still tried to deny it. “People see hawks all the time.” “Birds drop feathers all the time.” “It’s easy to find feathers when you are looking for them.” None of these statements are inherently true. And, I had yet to learn to trust that when my gut was telling me something was out of the ordinary, it was truly out of the ordinary.

Which leads me to another obstacle I experienced when practicing animal communication. Even after I began trusting that the animals were communicating with me, it took years before I stopped looking for validation and proof that it was happening. Unsurprisingly, every time I looked for proof, nearly all communication stopped. Talk about frustrating! What I came to learn is that animal communication is a form of subtle light energy exchange. Emphasis on the subtle. The harder I tried, the less I was able to communicate. It took practicing softening my expectations and desires for specific outcomes to move from holding myself up to stumbling.

Once I got to the stumbling phase, my practice quickly evolved into what it has become today. My primary forms of animal communication are mirroring and metaphors. But, trust and searching for validation are obstacles I continue to encounter when I am practicing forms of communication that don’t come as easily to me. When this happens, the animals always find a way of guiding me back to my practice, reminding me of who I am.