Animal Communicator session

On Saturday morning we had our phone appointment with the animal communicator, Aileen D'Angelo. http://www.reikiforcritters.com/

Mother did a lot of the talking and question asking as well as taking notes. I left this mostly in note form, sort of like an interview. The bold is our questions, italics is comments that I've added, and I've marked where Aileen gave us suggestions, everything else is her translating from the animals. I left some of the repetion because that's what she/the animals emphasized. It's not quite in chronological order. We started with Tom and asked the beginning questions, Niko sidled in and we spoke to him a little, and then more with Tom, then we gave him a break and asked Opal a couple questions and then finished with Tom. It was a 50 minute session.


Aileen seemed to connect to Tom right away. She asked if he was more my dog or Mother's and said that Tom was trying to give her the feeling that he's not pulling favorites, it’s whoever needs me, or I need.

Tell us about your life before you came to us. Did anything upsetting happen?
He has an issue w/men, glad he ended up in mostly female household. Most men, majority of men, he does not trust as far as he could throw. Almost at the point where he's not willing to give them a chance to prove that they’re not like who was in his past. Doesn’t want to give me a lot of details. Something physically and mentally painful happened to him at the hands of a man. He’s made 2 exceptions to that rule. 2 male figures that he’s bent his own rule for, that’s b/c their energy is quieter and they have been respectful of him. As far as he’s concerned, men are bad, he’s not sure he wants to give any of them a chance.
Getting quiet…
He had a place to live, not sure I would call it a home. I’m getting impression you are the 3rd place he has lived. He doesn’t have much memory of the 1st place, I think it’s b/c he wasn’t there that long, 2nd place is where other things happened, doesn’t want to go into them.
My Note: Tom stayed in a foster home for two months. I doubt the incident happened there. So perhaps that doesn't count because it was temporary.
He does feel like he has a home now.
He has something going on with his right ear. You might want to check it. He’s giving me a pressure feeling, not painful, but bordering on painful.

When/how he first came to us….Scary at first, the 2 of you made it relatively easy for him to start to relax, although it took him a while.
I just got this worried feeling from him, talking about going to home to home, concern for moment that there was discussion about sending him to another home.

You probably know that there’s some of your behavior that’s causing a problem in our household. We really want to work with you so we can all live together. Can you tell us why you do them? He’s actually very very insecure. He tries to come across as bold, confident, protective. He’s actually very insecure. He gets himself a little riled. He wants to be protective. But at same time, not sure he can really do it, goes into mode, adrenaline take over, goes over top, can’t stop.



Did something happen with a UPS man that upset you?
Giving him picture of UPS man, didn’t tense, men in dark clothes, that he did tense over. Men in dark clothes. That definitely tensed, Men w/dark skin, almost closed the door on me, I'm giving him a chance to relax.

My Note: Right before that we thought someone was at the door and I grabbed Tom's leash. He came over to me and was sniffing the leash when she first asked about the UPS man.

What can we do to solve the problem?
Biggest thing with him is finding a way to build his confidence, obedience training, practice…got quiet..he’s really good at the obedience stuff, it isn’t enough to drain him. He’s a very hyperactive boy or high energy boy. His head seems to go 90 million miles an hour sometimes. In addition to obedience, he needs something to drain him physically, and keep his head busy. He feels like ricochet rabbit, bing bing bing all over the place. He got me revved.
The obedience stuff is good, He’s got the obedience stuff down, almost don’t have to verbalize command anymore….needs new brain challenge, needs something to drain him physically
From Aileen, not directly Tom: Herding breeds meant to go the distance, also thinkers, having to outthink what they’re herding. She suggested finding a herding class where he has to learn the self-control to do it properly. There are places that could help him learn to herd and how not to go over the edge.

He gets into an excited state, it goes over the top, has trouble bringing himself back
He needs self-discipline, an immense amount for self-confidence, to do this [be around triggers] the right way w/o stepping over line
He doesn't like it when he steps over the line, adrenaline takes him over, and another piece of him says "I know this wrong."
At his heart he really does want to be a good boy and wants to please you guys.

Do you like agility and rally classes? One more than the other?
He likes the tricks and games, partly because those make him use his brain the most.
The things that make him use his brain most are what he enjoys, likes puzzles, trying to figure things out, figure out what you’re asking, enjoys most of all feeling that "YES that’s what we’re looking for."

My Note: She emphasized the "YES!" which is our marker word.

There’s a new trick you’ve been trying to teach him & he’s almost got it. It feels like he’s almost dreaming about it, trying to figure it out in his head & his dreams, how to make it work right.
He does like agility and rally, but they're not his favorite. The agility and rally are close, agility is a little more of a challenge, b/c things keep getting changed up and it's not the same thing.
Doesn’t like being bored.

Has he bitten somebody? [She asked sort of out of the blue without any suggestion.]

He does get that you’re committed to him. He’s doing waffling right now, part of him wants to promise he’s going to be better, part of him not sure he can promise that right now, doesn’t want to lie to you, animals won’t make promises they can’t keep. There is a bigger part of him that wants to make this better for all of you but part of him that feels he can’t do that. That tells me he’s committed to making it better for all of you.
He wishes that there were a way. He hits a certain point, adrenaline going, part of him knows it's not right.

Aileen suggested that we have him wear a muzzle on walks so it's safe for everyone when Tom can't fully control himself: Mother and I, Tom, Opal and other people.




Niko:

Niko is trying to sidle in. Is there a bit of a thing between Niko and Tom? Niko says it is getting better. Niko is trying to insinuate himself but not blatantly, sneaking in….He wants you to know it’s getting better & he's figuring out how to handle himself and handle them [the dogs].

Do you feel comfortable here? Is there something we can do to help you with the dogs?
He is feeling more comfortable, not anything you guys can do, more he and the dogs working it out, he wants to let you know it is happening, but not quickly.

What do you think of your food? What do you like what do you not like?
He’s giving me taste of rotisserie chicken or turkey, definitely has rotisserie taste, more of a poultry guy, not a beef guy, runs hot & cold, on fish. His favorite thing is poultry.
He’s eating new kibble not thrilled with it, he keeps giving me chicken taste. My Note: At this point I explained that he had gotten into the dog's chicken based food and that the last few days he's been eating the prescription food. But she mentioned the chicken taste before I said anything. He's trying to get across w/o pushing that he definitely prefers something that tasted better than what he's eating now. He does like some kibble, almost pleading, likes the crunch. Aileen suggested "maybe do small amount of better quality chicken based kibble." Niko: I”ll eat whatever you think I should but I don’t want to be pushy & ask too much. Aileen commented that he seemed like a very sweet boy.



Opal:

Do you like living here?
She does. AS soon as Aileen switched to her Opal said, "I’m not causing any trouble." A little bit of a side thing, I’m the good child.

Do you like agility classes?
We hadn't mentioned that Opie was a Greyhound or said much about her at all. She does. She knows she doesn’t excel, but she does have fun. She does appreciate you’re not turning into competition. This is for fun. OK with you if she never beats everybody else as long as you’re having a good time. Knows she’s never going to be a champion.

Her life before (we mentioned her being a retired greyhound)…
She actually had a good and loving home, but also twinge of sadness when she thinks about it. Loss of somebody or home? More feeling loss of her person, but don’t get the feeling they died, but for some reason they couldn’t be together anymore. But she immediately switched, I’m very happy to be here, keeps giving me that. She’s very content, to have this life.
No, she never raced, kind of sucked at racing thing…not any good at that, heart was not in it.

Scars? several different incidents, one of the scars comes from fact that she was bad at racing, crashed into something, others from other dogs, Aileen commented that it's not unusual w/greyhounds to get scars from other dogs roughhousing because they are so thin skinned.
2 scars from wipeout…that’s why I don’t’ miss it.

We asked about how she plays rough with other dogs?
Never intentionally harm them, adamant about that.
Knows that she does take it little far, that’s the way she learned to play, but would never intentionally hurt anybody.
Lot of her stuff is more noise….sounds rougher than she’s actually being, sounds ferocious, but is actually not.
Is she quite a singer? Well, she does whine... Looks at it as singing, not whining, ….

She has somewhat of prey drive, not a really high one, enjoys chase more than anything else. With her she wants to see if I can catch it, not neccessarily to take it further, the chase & challenge of can I catch it.
Is there a squirrel in your yard teasing her,--- I mentioned that there is a rabbit. The rabbit is playing catch me if you can, almost a game…that’s why rabbit has been playing the game {know O not serious about hurting, but likes chase]

Back to Tom with Aileen's final suggestions:
Give Tom some time to mull, to think about what we talked about, he's such a brainy guy, hope he’ll process what we talked about today and working out how he can get himself more under control.
Before taking him for a walk, talk about how you want the walk to go, when we speak we actually project feelings and pictures to our animals.
If we run into someone, no big deal, keep going and enjoy our walk, help him picture this.
With his history, difficult for you not to think about him flipping out, you have to work hard at getting a different picture.
Mostly animals get feelings and pictures from us, over time they do learn some words
I had some agility people, dogs having trouble w/courses, before running course, they'd verbalize the run w/dog, rather than actually walk course, project the pictures, improved performances, gave the dog a roadmap from the person.


My commentary on the whole thing
So it was very interesting. I'm still a little skeptical about animal communication. A lot of the things she said were quite accurate, and her comments on the personalities of the animals were too. There wasn't one big specific detail that she provided, validating her connection. Still, Opal's feelings on agility, Tom saying he was glad he lived in a mostly female home, Niko and poultry, bringing up tricks (I hadn't mentioned them), are all pretty definite and not something you could get from the questions we asked. In my email I mentioned that Tom has fear aggression issues and over the course of the conversation we filled her in with more information on the different topics. We didn't get any huge insights, just an emphasis on some things we've wondered about over others. I am curious about who the two guys are. Michael, perhaps? And we've had three male house sitters with calm energy... Jordan, Yannik and Wolfgang. I think Jordan is one of them because Tom did seem to take to him.

The session did make us feel more loving of the animals, and more hope in general.