Did Your Pet Adopt You?

As we learn more and more about animal cognition, emotion and intelligence, it becomes more and more humbling to be a human animal on this planet. The more we know, the less we truly know and the more there is to know about our animal companions and pet family members. For instance, how accurate is it to say you chose your pet? Did they perhaps also choose you? What do you think? Animal communicator Shannon Cutts shares insights from her human and companion animal clients.

A few weeks ago I shared the story o f how my soulbird, Pearl, and I first met. To this day - and it's been nearly 24 years now since the day he first came home with me - it still feels like a direct experience of divine intervention.

The act of saying "yes" to that palm-sized rumpled grey feather fluff changed my life instantly and permanently.

And it was all his doing. The way he responded the moment I laid eyes on him made it clear as day he was my bird and I was his large featherless mama (and if you want to know the rest of the story I know you will love our memoir of life together, Love & Feathers: what a palm-sized parrot has taught me about life, love, and healthy self-esteem).

So the question I want to ask you is, who chose who? How did you know your furry or feathered or shelled or finned companion was "the one" for you? How did your animal let you know they chose you?

The other day my mom was telling me about one of her neighbors and how he met his dog. He said he particularly wanted a male dog with a certain physical appearance. But when he went to select his puppy, this little female pup kept following him around. Everywhere he walked, she (ahem) dogged his heels!

Guess which puppy ended up coming home with Mom's neighbor?

Or were you like me when I first met my Pearl - still heartbroken over another animal and absolutely determined never ever to get another pet companion? But.....but, but, but.....and in spite of that big stack of "buts" you made a big commitment to a new canine or feline or avian or reptilian or mammalian love that day?

They do have their ways.

When I teach animal communication, I emphasize right up front that interspecies communication is not a skill to be learned but rather an inbuilt part of our operating system to be reactivated and put to good use. Conversing across species boundaries is something all animal species do regularly - well, all except our own. But it is our birthright. It is an epically essential aspect of who we are and how we are wired. And so for most of my students, actually learning to talk to animals quickly starts to feel much more like remembering a neglected skill than learning something brand new.

Practicing animal communication is very humbling for this same reason. For once in our lives, the animals are the masters and we their apprentices. Our pets are fluent in the universal language of all species and we are standing there holding the equivalent of our little translator book or app, bumbling around and making all sorts of beginners errors.

And the animals are so very patient with us!

Because animal communication requires an awake and aware intuitive system, it is one of the fastest and best ways to realize just how much animals of other species see and hear and know about us that we are completely oblivious to. One of the things the animals know that we often don't at first is which one of us is meant to be their person.

When I facilitate animal communication sessions for my human clients who want to call a new animal into their life or learn more about why their current animal is in their life, the animals always show me more or less the same scene.

And it also shows me plain as day how the animals are the ones doing the choosing.

They've been in charge of choosing us all along.

Would you like to know how your animal knew you were "the one" for them? Are you seeking your next pet and you aren't sure how you will recognize one another? I can help.