What Your Dog Wants to Eat Is Rarely the Whole Story
What comes through in an animal communication session isn’t the final word. It’s an invitation to look closer.
Published July 2026 | Updated October 2026
Can an animal communicator tell you what your dog wants to eat? Sometimes, yes. But what they want you to know often goes further.
The very first question I ever asked my dog, back when I was just beginning to study animal communication, was what his favorite food was. The answer arrived like a cartoon. Dog bowls, stacking up, one after another, faster than I could count them. I laughed out loud. Of course. That was Stanley. Lots!
In the moment, it was funny and delightful. Afterward, though, I was a little disappointed it wasn’t a more clear-cut answer. But what I’d stumbled into was more than an answer about food. It was the start of a relationship built on listening. Listening to what I sensed, setting it against what I knew, sitting with it before any of it made sense.
As an animal communicator, I’m often asked about food. What should my dog eat? What does my cat want? They’re picky. They’ve stopped eating. Underneath all of it is the same wish: I just want them to have the best possible life. What can I do more of? It sounds like the simplest question there is, but every pet owner knows it’s rarely simple, and sometimes it isn’t about the food at all.
What’s Mine, What’s Theirs
Over Stanley’s seventeen years, whether I wanted to or not, I became something of an expert on dog food. Food allergies, colitis, pancreatitis, hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (HGE), and gas that could clear a room. We tried chicken, beef, lamb, rabbit, duck, turkey, fish. Prescription diets, premium grain-free, raw. Eventually we landed on one that worked beautifully for years, until it didn’t. I could have written a book.
Every time I sit down with another animal, all of that history has to be set aside. What worked for Stanley won’t necessarily work for someone else’s dog.
You deserve an answer from the animal you care for, not my opinion about food.
Telling the difference between what I know and what I sense is called discernment, and it’s one of the things I’d look for in an animal communicator you can trust. I sit with both long enough to tell which parts are mine and which are theirs. Food is where I’m most careful, because of Stanley. When the line gets blurry, I tell you.
A Thread to Pull
When I ask your animal what they like to eat, the answer isn’t always direct. Sometimes they don’t know, and finding it out takes some exploring on your part, too.
A client once told me her senior dog had ongoing stomach trouble. What came through, clearly, was beef. She was skeptical. His food had no beef in it, and she practiced holistic medicine herself. I shared it and let it go. Later, she realized the treats she’d been giving him all along did contain beef. She removed them, and the stomach trouble stopped.
I didn’t hand her a diagnosis. I handed her a thread to pull, and she’s the one who found where it led.
Even a clear impression isn’t always the full picture. Another client asked what her picky dog wanted to eat. Almost in passing, she mentioned his ongoing ear and skin irritation. When I asked about his food, chicken lit up. She confirmed he ate chicken, and I wondered: does he love chicken, or is chicken the problem? On its own, the impression could have meant either. Next to the itching and recurring ear infections, it became a thread worth pulling, with questions to bring to her vet.
And sometimes the question isn’t about food at all. Someone came to me as a first-time pet owner, wanting to know why her new kitten was not drinking water. What came through wasn’t about thirst or preference. The kitten saw the water fountain as a toy. She hadn’t been in this world long enough to understand it as anything else. No amount of asking why she wasn’t drinking would have found that, because it was something the kitten was still working out. When I asked what would help, she simply wanted to start with the basics. Take the fountain away for now, and bring it back once a foundation is in place.
If your animal’s answer doesn’t make sense yet, don’t dismiss it. Hold onto it. It may be one piece of a larger puzzle.
Bringing in a Pet Nutritionist and Your Vet
Anyone who has stood in the pet food aisle knows how overwhelming it gets. If your animal has food issues, whether allergies or senior wellbeing, I’ll say this plainly: get a pet nutritionist. It was the best investment I made in Stanley’s senior years, and I wish I’d done it sooner. That didn’t come through in an animal communication session. My vet suggested it, after about ten years of helping me manage Stanley’s sensitive diet.
She was honest that this wasn’t her specialty, and that we’d learn it together. When Stanley was 15, the nutritionist created his first recipe, built around his history, and it included grains. He’d been grain-free for over ten years, and it went against everything I thought I knew. I asked them both directly: are you genuinely comfortable with this? They said yes, and I had to trust the process.
In the end, what Stanley needed wasn’t in the aisle at all. So I started cooking his meals. My kitchen looked like a small storm had passed through, every counter covered in pots and measuring cups. Eventually I found a rhythm: ice cube trays sized for his nuggets, frozen in batches so there was always food waiting.
For a while, it worked. His symptoms eased. Then, one day, another bout of bloody diarrhea. At sixteen, I was afraid he wouldn’t survive another episode, or another trip to the ER.
I wasn’t sure where to go from here. So I sat down and listened past what I already knew and into what I sensed. It’s hard to trust that, but that day I did, and what I sensed was the barley. I told my vet, and she agreed. The nutritionist supported taking it out. The symptoms stopped, and Stanley went on to have one more year of the best life he could.
The nutritionist gave me a plan. Intuitive listening showed us where to look.
An animal communication session can point you toward what to look at, like an ingredient, a symptom, or a change in routine. It isn’t a diagnosis. Take it to your vet or nutritionist as something to test, not a verdict. They can check it against your animal’s history and what’s actually in the bowl, and help you act on it.
Food Is Where Animals Want to Connect
After years of feeding a sensitive dog, and many sessions where clients ask what their animal likes to eat, I’ve learned the food is rarely the whole story.
One client wanted to know what she could do for her dog’s wellbeing. When I asked what he liked, he said he had no preference, except that he loved it when she changed his food. It meant she was paying attention. She realized she hadn’t changed it in a long while. He wanted to be noticed.
That’s what I hear most from animals, in one form or another: they want you present. Food is often just where it shows up. I once asked a dog his favorite time of day with his person. Immediately: when she’s standing at the counter eating a sandwich. It wasn’t about the food. It was that she was there, talking to him.
Cooking for Stanley became a ritual in his last year. Every week he stood beside me the whole time, and he licked the bowl clean when I was done. Some weeks, when I wasn’t fast enough, he’d scratch his paw against the freezer door, asking for dinner before I’d even finished. I didn’t expect the cooking to become its own kind of bonding, but it did.
What did Stanley want most? Love. And lots of food.
When you’re ready to go deeper, I'd be glad to listen. Book a session.
If you've been wondering what your animal might tell you about their food, pain, aging, or anything else, I've written about that too: Questions to Ask a Pet Psychic About Your Pet's Wellbeing
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.
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