I'm Not Your Typical Animal Communicator. Here's Why
On staying open and letting your pet show you what you're ready to see.
I've never written this down before. There's something vulnerable about sharing my inner life with an animal.
But if you've ever felt that your animal companion was trying to tell you something — something you felt but couldn't quite catch — you're not imagining it. You just need to be open to it.
One morning at the lake, meditating — something I do most days to clear out the noise and receive what's there — Stanley showed up.
He does this sometimes. My miniature schnauzer who passed after seventeen years still visits. Not as a memory. As a presence and a guide. He arrived in full skydiving gear. Goggles. Parachute. The whole thing. Standing at the open door of a plane. He wanted me to jump.
At first I laughed, then 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. If you do, you're not present where you are.
I sat with that stoic wisdom for a long time after. It wasn't the first time he'd shown up like this — pushing me toward the edge, encouraging me.
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 walks, the way he opened people up just by being himself. But I haven't written about this next part: after he died, he didn't stop being there. The relationship changed form. He became something I can only call a guide — a cheerleader, a sage who shows up when I need reminding of what I already know.
Like: don't look at the ground. Stay present to where you are.
What Every Animal Is Trying to Show You
This is what animal communication can look like — emotional, contemplative, specific, surprising. Not something you explain at a dinner party. Something that lands in your body. Arriving on its own terms. Asking something of you. If you're ready to receive and hear it.
This is what Stanley was doing. This is what every animal does — trying to show you what you're avoiding, what you're ready to understand, what you've stopped noticing about yourself.
Your animal is a mirror for what you need to see. Seeing that reflection clearly can happen in a single session — surface-level, complete in itself. But I keep following the thread — into the emotional places, the same ones your animal is standing in, to understand yourself too.
I didn't always know how to go there. Like most people, I used to reach toward the unknown — trying harder, analyzing, needing to know before I could trust.
The depth I bring to this work comes from an unconventional path. I trained as a clairvoyant and psychic medium first, long before I ever certified in animal communication. That training was its own kind of personal growth — learning to see energetic blocks I couldn't before, and to move them so there was more room to receive. I later became a certified animal communicator because I realized that same practice of deep listening could help people hear what their animals had been trying to show them all along.
What comes through in a session doesn't arrive as simple translation. It carries emotional or energetic weight with it: a past life, an unexplained event, grief that hasn't finished speaking. Your animal isn't just communicating information. They're inviting you into a deeper conversation about yourself.
This is where healing begins.
How Does an Animal Communication Session Unfold?
Every session begins the same way: your intention first, then presence — no rushing to interpret, just letting your animal lead the way to what they want you to know.
I bring this same presence to the shelter where I volunteer — walking in without knowing which dog I'll connect with, or what will happen between us. I just stay curious.
That curiosity is what carries into every session.
What emerges might be your pet's preference of turkey over beef, but also their purpose, and their perspective on your life together. Often, it's what they've been trying to help you with all along — asking for more attention, revealing why a behavior exists, or showing you a connection that goes back further than you knew. Here's what I mean:
Not there to be managed. One dog I worked with revealed, when asked about her purpose, why the leash struggles were happening in the first place — she'd come to show her person something about the energy they carried, before the leash ever clipped on. Once her person saw it, the walks became easier. Things felt gentler between them.
Attention, asked for plainly. One cat I worked with gave her person a precise list of spatial requests — which room, which corner, where the litter box needed to move. Once followed exactly, the shift was immediate. But what emerged deeper was what the cat kept asking: I need you to pay attention. The cat wasn't just requesting a room change. She was asking her person to be present.
Grief, not moved through but stayed with. I worked with someone grieving a loss. Her dog showed her that with grief, there is also love — not something to move away from, but something to stay present to. Be present with the grief, and hold the love. She stopped fighting it, and in doing so, uncovered a pattern from a past life they'd shared before — one that made the loss feel less like an ending, and more like a continuation.
What Changes After a Session
Not every session unfolds this dramatically. But each of these stories started the same way — someone showing up with one question, and leaving with an answer to a different one. That's usually how it goes. 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.
Sometimes the shift is subtle — a small change in how you show up for them, or how you show up for yourself. Some people book one session and something reorients. Others return, let it deepen, continue the conversation over time.
Either way, you develop a different quality of relationship with your animal — and a different quality of listening in yourself. More open. More willing to receive what's being shown.
The next time your animal looks at you, don't interpret. Get curious instead. See what they're trying to show you about yourself.
That's the whole practice. And if your animal has already passed, it doesn't stop there — that's its own path, one I hold through pet loss mediumship.
When you're ready to go deeper — Book a session.
If you want to understand what to look for in a communicator you trust, I've written about that too: Choosing an Animal Communicator You Trust.
Lesley Ames is a certified animal communicator and psychic medium based in the Pacific Northwest. She works remotely with clients in Seattle, Chicago, and worldwide — including the UK, Europe, and Australia. Find her at lesleyames.com.
Explore Sessions: Animal Communication | Pet Loss & Mediumship | Clairvoyant Readings