The Picnic Table
What the Dogs Know — Stories from a shelter volunteer and animal communicator
Ophelia walked four feet ahead of me the entire time. Ten pounds, Victorian gloves, nose in the air. I tried a dozen names. She ignored every one.
Some days volunteering with shelter dogs feels like speed dating. I arrive, I introduce myself to a stranger, I try to be entertaining. Sometimes they are indifferent. Sometimes they are loving. Mostly they are somewhere in between. I have my basic questions. I have learned to read a room. But some days I walk away feeling like I could do better — like I am asking the right questions in the wrong way, or asking the wrong questions entirely.
Today was one of those days. And also the opposite.
I walked Ophelia first. She walked four feet ahead of me from the start, nose up, chin lifted, moving with the kind of confidence that doesn't require an audience. I tried names. A dozen of them, maybe more, names I was choosing rather than hearing. She ignored every one of them.
There is a particular feeling that comes with being ignored by a ten-pound dog. You become aware of yourself. The effort. The performance of being friendly when what you actually needed to do was get quiet.
So I got quiet. And I heard it. Ophelia. A name that moved with her air — cool, correct, in no rush to explain herself. That was the energy she walked through the world with — not unkind, not cold, just complete. She didn't need my conversation. She needed me to keep up.
At the end of the tree-lined path there was a picnic table. Ophelia jumped up without hesitation and turned to face me. And then she gave me a kiss.
She had been waiting the whole walk for somewhere worthy of her. I had spent forty minutes trailing behind, simply hoping I'd figure that out. Once I had — once I found her name, once I stopped filling the air — she was generous. She thanked me for the walk. She meant it.
Then there was Louise. All white, wanting, Labrador, with bubblegum pink gums and a gentleness she carried quietly. She said her name immediately when I asked. It felt like the name of someone she had been close to, a name that carried a specific warmth. She walked beside me with quiet determination, knowing exactly which direction she wanted to go, soft but not uncertain.
I have been immersed in an astral projection workshop of late. This week's homework was to notice micro and macro moments throughout the day. It is a practice around attention — about bringing the body fully into the present, noticing what is alive right now through smell, through feeling, through sound.
So I asked Louise. What was her micro moment and macro moment right now.
She slowed down immediately. She lifted her head toward a tree at the edge of the path. Two birds. She had noticed them before I asked. Or the question gave her permission to stop. Either way she was there, fully, with those two birds.
Then I asked her about the macro.
The scene expanded. All the trees. The light moving through them. Everything living inside the branches, the roots, the air between. She held it all without effort, the way animals sometimes do — without needing to name it or understand it, just present to the whole of it at once.
I walked the other dogs at the shelter and tried to find my own micro and macro moments. The smell of the path after a morning rain. The weight of the leash in my hand. The specific green of the grass at the edge of the park.
It kept coming back to the dogs themselves. The way each one moved. What each one cared about. How much they were already here, already paying attention to things I was walking past.
I was learning what Louise already knew. That the point was not to get somewhere. The point was the two birds. The point was this path, these trees, this dog walking beside me who had been present the whole time, waiting for me to arrive.
If you've ever wondered what your animal already knows — that's where a session begins. Book here.
More from this series: I Wanted to Name the Dogs — They Had Other Ideas · Each One Enough Names have been changed in this series to honor their privacy while they find their people.
Lesley Ames is a certified animal communicator, pet psychic and psychic medium based in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. She volunteers at her local animal shelter and works with living animals, animals who have passed, and the people who love them. You can find her at lesleyames.com.