I'm Not Your Typical Animal Communicator. Here's Why.
On staying open, releasing fear, and what your animal has been waiting to tell you.
I'll admit something I haven't written about before.
The other morning I was meditating at the lake — something I do regularly, not as a ritual but as a practice of staying open. Of clearing out whatever has accumulated so I can actually receive what's there.
And Stanley showed up.
He does this sometimes. My miniature schnauzer who passed after seventeen years — he still visits. Not as a memory. As a presence. And in this particular visit, he arrived in full skydiving gear. Goggles. Parachute. The whole thing. He was standing at the open door of a plane, and he wanted me to jump with him.
I told him I was scared.
He looked back at me with that Stanley patience — the kind that always knew more than it let on — and said: don't look at the ground. When you look at the ground, you're not present to where you are.
I sat with that for a long time after.
I share this because it's exactly what animal communication is — and what this animal communicator does. Not the tidy version. Not the version that's easy to explain at a dinner party. The real version — specific, surprising, arriving on its own terms, asking something of you.
And because if you've ever sensed that your animal was trying to tell you something you couldn't quite catch — if you've felt that the connection goes deeper than you have language for — you deserve to know that you're not imagining it.
You're just not sure how to receive it yet.
What I've learned to stop doing
Most people approach the unknown by reaching toward it. Trying harder. Analyzing. Needing to know before they're willing to trust.
I did this too. For a long time.
What changed me — what years of training in clairvoyance, astral work, telepathic animal communication, and death doula practice slowly built in me — wasn't a new set of skills. It was the gradual release of that reaching. Layer by layer. Each practice asking me to put something else down.
The need to perform certainty. The urge to interpret before something had fully arrived. The anxiety of not knowing what a session would bring.
What's left when you release all of that is something much simpler. Curiosity. Openness. A willingness to see what arrives and let it be what it is.
I practice this at the shelter where I volunteer. I walk in not knowing which dog I'm going to connect with, what we're going to experience together, what's going to pass between us. And I love that. The not knowing. The being genuinely curious about what this moment holds.
The dogs already live there — in pure curiosity, no agenda, completely available to what's here. They're not bracing against uncertainty. They're walking toward it.
That's not just a philosophy. It's the practice. And it's what I bring into every session.
What telepathic animal communication makes possible for you
Your animal already lives in that same openness. They're not waiting for you to decode them. They're in conversation with you constantly — through feeling, through image, through the particular quality of how they look at you sometimes, like they know exactly what you're carrying.
What a session does is create the conditions to actually hear it.
I begin every session the way I begin my morning meditation — open to what I'm going to receive, curious about what will come through. No two sessions are ever the same. Your animal has their own perspective, their own personality, their own very clear sense of what they need you to understand. My job is to get out of the way and let that arrive accurately.
What comes through is specific. Not vague impressions. Images, sensations, emotions — sometimes something closer to words. A client's cat once gave me a precise list of spatial requests — which room, which corner, where the litter box needed to move — and when she followed them exactly, everything shifted within a day. Another client's dog made clear she hadn't come into her life to be managed. She'd come to teach her something about the energy she brought before she ever clipped on the leash. She recognized it. Walks became easier. Things felt gentler.
Your animal is that specific. That present. That willing to be heard.
I work with people from Seattle, Chicago, and wherever you are — by phone or video. The connection doesn't require proximity. It never did.
What Stanley taught me that training couldn't
Stanley was my first real teacher in this work — long before I had a name for what passed between us. I've written about him before — the morning walks, the way he opened strangers up just by being himself. But I haven't written about this part.
After he died, he didn't stop. The relationship didn't end — it changed form. He became something I can only describe as a guide. A cheerleader. A sage who shows up when I'm working on something and need to be reminded of what I already know.
Like: don't look at the ground. Stay present to where you are.
This is what I most want you to know — not about me, but about what's possible for you. Your animal companion isn't just someone who sits beside you on the couch, though that love is real and complete on its own. They can be a teacher. A mirror. An inner companion whose wisdom doesn't stop at the garden gate, or at the threshold of death.
The connection doesn't end. It changes. And there are ways to keep finding it — to keep that conversation alive and growing, in whatever form it takes now.
What you might find on the other side of a session
People arrive to this work for all kinds of reasons. A behavior they can't explain. A decision they can't make. A loss they can't move through. A sense that something is being communicated and they keep almost hearing it.
What they find — more often than not — is something they didn't expect. Not just information. A different quality of relationship with their animal. A different quality of listening in themselves.
Some people book one session and something reorients. Others come back, let it deepen, continue the conversation over time.
Either way you're not just getting answers. You're being invited into a different way of being with what's already there. More curious. More open. More willing to receive what arrives without rushing it toward meaning.
Your animal already knows how to live there.
You can begin right now
Before a session. Before anything.
The next time your animal looks at you — don't interpret. Don't reach for what it means or what they need. Just get curious. Be there with what's happening and see what arrives.
That's the whole practice. And they've been waiting to meet you there.
When you're ready to go deeper — Book a session.
You might also enjoy: The Space Between Things — on Stanley, Andersonville, and what presence makes possible.
Lesley Ames is a certified animal communicator and psychic medium based in the Pacific Northwest, with deep roots in Chicago. She works with people and their animals — helping them hear what's already there. You can find her at lesleyames.com.
