So You're Skeptical. Good.
The question isn't whether animal communication is real. It's whether you're willing to be present to what's already there.
You felt something. Maybe with your animal — a sense they were trying to tell you something. A knowing that arrived quietly, without being invited. And almost immediately, you talked yourself out of it. Not because it wasn't real. But because we've all learned to wait for something outside ourselves to confirm what we already sense.
So we wait. Or we move on. Or we just don't mention it.
There's a reason for that. A recent piece in the Guardian, drawing on neuroscience, put it plainly: our brains are wired not just to avoid harm, but to avoid not knowing. Our ancestors survived by assuming the worst quickly, with limited information. That negativity bias kept them alive. In modern life it can lead us to resolve uncertainty by saying no — rather than sitting with the discomfort of something else that could be.
The first step out of that loop, the article suggested, is simply to ask: what do I not yet know?
As a psychic medium and animal communicator, that question is the foundation of everything I do. And I've had to learn to ask it of myself just as much as I ask it in sessions — whether I'm sitting with someone in a psychic reading or tuning in to what an animal is carrying.
A year or so before my dog Stanley died, he was dealing with serious digestive illness — bouts of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, pancreatitis, allergies that kept returning. I had managed it his whole life, but it was coming around again. I brought in a vet. I brought in a pet nutritionist. I had external input from every direction. And still, the symptoms kept returning.
There was one thing I kept hearing quietly, underneath all of it.
It's the barley.
I heard it. My inner knowing was certain about the grain. But there was a whole internal conversation happening alongside it. How could I trust my own sense of things when there was a vet and a nutritionist who saw this every day? I didn't want to micromanage. I wanted them to do their jobs. I didn't want to be the person who thinks she knows better.
But the voice didn't go away. It just got quieter each time I dismissed it.
Eventually I listened. I took the barley out of his diet. With permission first, of course. Everything changed. Likely it was the gluten. And I had known — or something in me had known — before any of it was confirmed from the outside.
What I appreciated about that time was how we worked together to troubleshoot. A vet who referred me to a nutritionist. A nutritionist who listened when I brought something new. None of us had the complete answer. But all of us kept something open. And that openness is what finally got us there.
I've been doing this work as a psychic medium and animal communicator for years now. And I still almost missed it. Not because the knowing wasn't there. Because I kept waiting for permission to trust it.
Recently a client came to a session wanting to understand why her dog kept rolling in poo. This is, objectively, one of the great questions of the human-animal relationship. And I say that with complete sincerity.
She started the session describing the morning — she'd been photographing the sun on the water, that particular quality of light. It had been a good walk. Open, unhurried. And then, somewhere in the dunes, her dog found something irresistible.
What came through was essentially this: smells are extraordinary. She gave him open space. He used it.
He wasn't ignoring her. He very much wanted to align with her and make her happy. But she had settled into her own ease that morning — the open path, the light on the water, no agenda — and in doing so, had let the edges go soft. He hadn't acted against her. He'd moved into the space she'd left open. He didn't need as much freedom as she was giving him. He was okay being told where his boundary was. She didn't want to take away his freedom. Just not the poo.
What she could do was remind him of where she'd like his limits to be. And when she heard that, something clicked — because of course it did. She had been so absorbed in the light on the water that she hadn't quite been present to him.
That's when she said: this all makes sense now. I knew that, I just didn't see it.
This is what animal communication, at its best, points you back to. Not something mysterious arriving from outside. Something you already sensed, finally given room to land.
When I first began doing this work, I found it a creative and fulfilling world to be in. And for a long time I kept trying to justify what I was seeing. To find language that would make it make sense to other people.
To hold it at enough distance that it wouldn't sound like too much.
Until I had to stop. Because this kind of work creates shifts that are noticeable. Not theoretical. Something you feel, and then feel again, until the justifying starts to seem beside the point.
I still ask the questions. Is it okay to trust what I feel? Am I making this up?
Shamanic practitioners have sat with the same uncertainty for centuries. They didn't resolve it by proving anything. They resolved it by following what came through and attending to what was true and useful in it. That's discernment — not blind belief. Just enough openness to notice what's already there.
The deeper I ask what do I not yet know — the closer it gets me to where I want to be.
The question was never really whether animal communication is real.
It was whether you're willing to be present to what's already there.
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You might also find this post helpful: What to Expect from a Pet Psychic Reading
Lesley Ames is a certified psychic medium and animal communicator based in the Pacific Northwest, also serving Chicago and available worldwide. She works with people and their animals — helping them hear what's already there. You can find her at lesleyames.com.