Homage to Jelly

I took Pippy to the vet yesterday, December 29^th, 2015.  While I was checking in, the receptionist, with whom I have been friends for many years, told me an odd thing happened this week.  She said a Shreveport Police Officer called her on Monday.  She was tracing the rabies tag of a dog that had been hit, in downtown Shreveport.  She said she had moved the dog out of the road, and onto the side of the road.  It was Jelly.  I broke down, cried and made a scene, I am sure.  After almost a year, I finally know that my sweet little smushie face is dead. 

I have no idea how she ended up in downtown Shreveport.  Perhaps she was still with Paige.  Perhaps Paige is now homeless or living in her car.  Our homeless tend to hang out downtown.  Perhaps she gave her to someone, or she ran away.  I have no idea.  All I know, is it is finally over, and I can stop killing myself over all of this. 

For a year, I have cried over Jelly, grieved for her, constantly worried where she was or what had happened to her.  At night I tortured myself wondering if she was cold, or hungry?  Did she know I loved her?  That I cried for her at night?  Was she happy?  Now I know, the answer to some of those questions.  I am grateful to the Officer who’s tiny gesture, has meant the world to us.  It has given my peace.

Jelly would have turned 13 this spring.  You can read about our adventures in Meet Paige  and  Goodbye Paige. 

When I finally told the rest of my pack what had happened, Precious the second, suggest perhaps we should howl for her.  So that she might find her way back to us.  I know wolves do this in the wild.  They howl to other pack members, and sometimes for a lost or dead member.  Perhaps Precious found that memory in my mind.  So we began to howl a terrible and mournful cry, by the time we were done I felt Jelly settle near us.  After 2 years my baby was home, if nothing more than her spirit.

I had already lit my candle for her, burned my incense, and called for Holda to come and retrieve her spirit until I could properly cross her last night.  I felt her happy spirit near me all night, and when I lay down I could feel her spirit kissing me.  I called for Bifrost and on it we rode.  When we entered Holda’s Garden, all Jelly’s friends were there.  Boy-Boy aka Prince, Punka, Precious the first, and some of my living babies, Princess and Sophia, had made the trip with us as well.  She was warmly greeted by all who had loved her.  She was finally safe.  The last I saw of her, she was running off behind the Apple Grove to go and hunt for moles, one of her favorite activities in the whole world.  She was always a great huntress.  I returned to this plane, smiled, and told Jay that Jelly was safe and happy. 

I have lost three children this year, Rebecca, Prince, and now Jelly.  As I write this, it is the last day of Yule 2015.  We know that as Holda and Odin ride in the Wild Hunt, black dogs or hounds bay at their feet.  They are gathering up the dead.  Perhaps Prince is riding with the Hunt and called to Jelly.  Perhaps the whole reason he died, was so come this time of year, he could bring her home.  I have no idea, I am just speculating here. 

We always said that Prince and Jelly were married.  We had caught them making out many years ago, and they did love to go hunting together.  We even have “wedding” and “honeymoon” pictures of them together.  Who knows, perhaps it is just our stupid human mind trying to make sense of things.  Maybe Prince was lonely and wanted her to join him.  Maybe he was rescuing her from whatever living conditions she was in.  That’s probable something I will never know, and honestly don’t want to.  I would just make me madder.

We have no body to bury, no collar to put on my altar, so we have decided to bury one of Jelly’s outfits in Boy-Boy’s grave.  I have already made her an offering on my ancestor altar of this little red and white monkey that plays music.  It plays, “I like to move it, move it.”  She loved all toys, but in particular ones that sang or danced.  I have kept this little monkey hid all these years, so she would not find it and destroy it.  It seems like a fitting offering I think.

Ilsa

 

Goat Problems

In late 2012 I had acquired a new dog I named Perro, an Australian Cattle Dog, aka a Blue Healer.  Tami had found him.  I took him because Tami had too many animals.  He had belonged to some Spanish fellows, and they had been trying to get rid of him.  He was such a bad dog, they were planning on putting him down.  I never could properly say his name.  So I named him Perro, the Spanish word for dog.  At first he only spoke Spanish.  He had never been in a house before.  He was terrified to come in the first few days.  It was only later that we would find out how severally abused he had been.

Perro could at times be a very good dog.  Then a switch would flipped in his brain and he would attack.  He had been raised on a horse farm, and he kept attacking the million dollar thoroughbreds.  He was trying to herd them, by biting them in the leg.  He was beaten for that, often.  He would be beaten so badly one time, he defecated on himself.  We would learn later, that if you do not properly train one these dogs from an early age, they kind of go nuts.  They are not for a first time dog owner.  I believe Perro had brain damage from his abuse.  We later found out that his original name meant Devil dog. 

Perro would bite my goats and not let them go.  They would just scream out in pain and not let them go no matter how much I screamed at him, or threatened to beat him.  It was no simple nip in the heals.  He often broke the skin.  Our goat herd was large that year.  We were running about 14 head at the time.  I would turn them out to graze, and go about my day.  They would just take themselves across the highway, to the fire station and start grazing in the woods over there. 

One day we went to round them up, taking Perro with us.  I had hoped he would herd them for us.  He didn’t he just ran around biting them.  Tami and I were riding on the back of the truck, and I had my leg hanging from the tailgate.  Perro was happily following behind us.  Suddenly he reached up and bit me in the leg,  and threw my jeans he drew blood.  The only reason he didn’t take a whole chunk out of me, was because his bottom teeth tried to bit threw my boots, and could not get thru.  I knew I in trouble.  I was bleeding, but I had to cowgirl up and go on.  My goats took priority. 

We were able to get the heard back across the road and in the pen.  By that time I am hurting pretty bad.  “Jay I’m in trouble,” I said.  And I dropped my jeans, in front of Tami, god and everybody.  I was pouring blood at that time.  Tami was shocked and ran for medical supplies.  Jay was pissed and fussed me.  “Why didn’t you say anything?!” he scolded me.  I told him we had to get the herd safe first. 

The wound was bad enough that taking me to the hospital was discussed.  I told them, “No.  If they find out it’s a dog bite they will put Perro down.  It’s my fault for what he did.  I should not have been dangling my leg.”  Thank the gods Jay is a trained medical assistant and first responder.  He patched me up, and although I was sore for a few days, the two deep punctures I received, healed up nicely. 

My goats continued to go across the road, every time I let them out.  The cops were nice about it the first 10 or 15 times they were out here.  In March of 2013, the livestock man came to my house.  He is in charge of arresting people for livestock violations.  He drives a truck with a fifth wheel attachment in the bed, to hook up the goose neck trailer to take your animals away from you.  He is a regular police officer with a gun, handcuffs and everything else. 

He’s a bit terrifying.  He came to my house to discuss my goat problem.  He told me, “If I have to come back out here again I will take all your goats, and it will cost you $75 a head to get them out.”  And he looked around at my dogs, who are free roaming, and said what terrified me most, “and I’ll take your dogs too.”  I kind of lost it after that.  I went into a suicidal depression for several weeks.  I jumped at every sound.  I was terrified he was here to take my fur kids from me. 

We continued to have goat problems.  We put up a fence, and the goats just jumped threw it.  At some point that year Jay and I were both separately slapped with a lose livestock fine.  In August of that year I gave away most of my heard.  I kept Star, Kali, Bridget and Dagda, because they never went across the road.  In September I had to go to court and plead guilty to a misdemeanor.  One of the scarcest things I had ever done. 

Perro’s attitude never improved.  He often wanted to nibble or give love bites to people.  He never got any better.  He had tried love and we had tried whooping him.  I would not keep him confined or chained up.  That is no life for an animal.  We did not know what else to do.  Perro was becoming a danger.  He was still biting the goats.  I never knew if he would bite me again.  I never knew if he would suddenly decide to bite someone else.  What if he bit a child?  I was also feeling a lot of pressure from D & K to put him down.  Perro was unpredictable and a liability. 

Jay and I made the decision to put him down.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  I have never had to put down a perfectly health dog for mental issues.  In the end I could not be in the room with him when it was done, and we did not bring him home to be buried.  I wonder if he hated me for that.  Felt abandoned.  I hope one day he can find it in his heart to forgive me and return to me in a new body. 

Perro taught me a very important lesson.  You can’t save every dog.  Some dogs are just too far gone from, abuse, trauma, bad breeding, etc.  That doesn’t mean we should not try, I just think we shouldn’t be devastatingly angry at ourselves, if we try our best, and it does not work out.  Sometimes we are just not the right home, the right owner, or the dog is not the right breed for you.  I often still kick myself, thinking that I did not do enough for him.   I wonder if someone who knew more about his breed, could have pulled him though this and made him change. 

I recently journeyed to Holda’s Garden.  I wanted to check on some of my goats who had passed over.  Holda told me the pasture was around the bend, and so it was.  Just past her house, down the dirt road, thru a grove of trees I found the pasture.  Sitting among my goats was Perro, watching over them.  I did not expect to see him there.  He came to me, and gave me love.  He told me that he had had, “a broken brain.”  He told me he was all better now and his job was to watch over the goats.  I told him again how sorry I was about putting him down.  He said he didn’t blame me, and assured me again he was alright.  I am glad he is there with them, doing what he loves.  Even if it may all be just in my head.

Ilsa

 

Healing

On Thursday August 25^th, 2011 I had my first major panic attack.  I have covered the day and most if it’s events in a little crazy, just like me.  I had a massive panic attack, that made me regress me to a younger age, in fact I went so far back I ended up thinking I was in one of my past lives.  I have spoke of this day with some breath, but I have not discussed, so far, what happened to me after wards, nor have I discussed the spiritual aspects of this event.

For two weeks after I came home I had the worst headache of my life.  No medication could touch it.  I found it difficult to pray or to journey.  Now I have been journeying for a long time.  To journey, for me, means I put myself in a semi-trance state and go to visit the other side, where my dead and my animals are.  I have been doing this for at least as long as I have defined myself as Pagan, although my techniques have changed over the years.  It is often something I do in times of stress.  It gives me great comfort.

This is totally my UPG.  I tuck myself in bed, because I usually go to sleep at some point during the journey.  It is rare that I come back all the way back across to the land of the living.  The way I journey is, in my mind I stand on my front porch and look down at my outside altar, which is next to a great, big, old, tall Pine tree.  I call for Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, and Heimdall who controls it.  He comes to me on what like a wooden bridge painted a rainbow of colors, on both the walk way and the rails.  He ties up to the porch and I step on.  He is behind a great big, tall, desk with a wooden wheel attached to it, which is always on my left as I step on.  He greats me with a hug and sometimes a kiss and asks where I am going.  I tell him Holda’s Gardens, this is what I have come to call her lands over the years as I have never known the proper name for it.  Heimdall then asks for an offering.  I usually give him what I have had to eat that evening with a glass of sweet tea.  He seems to really like my tea.  It always makes him smile.  He thanks me and he directs the bridge, which acts a bit more like a boat, over the swirling and misty air. 

We soon come to the gate to Holda’s Gardens.  I see it as black wrought iron, filigreed, arch with a half doggie door.  Heimdal ties up the bridge to two statues or columns on either side of the bridge.  I don’t know it’s always kind of misty.  I open the door and go in.  Once I am safely on the other side, he takes off and tells me to call for him when I am ready to leave.  I enter what is essentially Holda’s yard.  Weather it is the front yard or the back I don’t know.  On the other side I find a sandy dirt road, that always feels good under my bare feet.  To the right is Holda’s House, to the left a line of trees that separates the house from the pond.  There is now a bench, in front of the trees, for me.  I often sit under these trees, on the ground with Punka in my lap looking out over the pond.  I do this especially when I’ve had  a bad day.  The sandy road stretches on past Holda’s mill, into the trees, and beyond to the pastures where my goats are.  I usually don’t go down that far.  My guess is this is where the livestock lives.  That area is very green and hilly, like at the base of a mountain or in a valley.

From the spot where I stand I can call any of my deceased animals to me.  It may take them a minute to come to me, as they have to quit what they are doing first.  I often see Precious the first, zoom past me on her wings, chasing the bunny, sometimes it is the other way around.  She informs me the chase is the important thing, not the catching.  So they take turns. 

Holda is almost always the first to greet me, wearing her white dress and her blue apron.  I almost always see her in her grandmotherly form, about age 50 or 60 I would guess.  Then Momma Muriel and Oma come out. Sometimes Father Frey is there as well.  It just all seems to depend on what I need. I can never really see their faces.  I think it is just too much for my human brain to process.  Sometimes we all go into the kitchen and I am fed some type of apple dessert, hot cider or coffee.  I know there is a rule about not eating in the other worlds, but I do not wish to offend her.  When I have refused to eat in the past she gets annoyed with me and says, “EAT!”  I am often surprised she does not slap me in the back of the head when I do this.  It is there I will catch them up on what I am doing and why I have come to visit: occasionally it is to cross a dead animal’s spirit over, sometimes I have a question, sometimes it is to ask for healing for a friend,  or I’ve had a bad day or I just miss them so much. 

Now if all this sounds bizarre or made up to you, I’m sorry.  It is simply how I experience the divine, and it works for me.  All this spiritual healing is about to get a little stranger.

Not long after I had been hospitalized for my first panic attack, Holda came to me in a dream and said, “I don’t want you to journey, work magic, or even pray until after your initiation.”  I was a bit confused, but I agreed to do as I was told.  Every time I tried to do any of this, it just made the headaches worse.  I would do just about anything to make the pain stop.  Holda then took me to a women, in a temple with lots of herbs hanging around her.  I don’t know who she was.  My guess is either Eir or Brigid.   

I asked, “Where we were going.” 

She said, “I am taking you to be healed.”

“Why can’t you heal me?” I asked

She told me she did not do this type of healing, or that I need healing she could not do.  I don’t remember. 

I then asked, “Who is she?”

“She is my sister,” is all she would reply.  I am still a bit befuddled.  As far as we know Holda has no sisters. It is my guess that she used this title to apply to another Goddess.

Within a few days, whenever I closed my eyes, I began to see another Goddess as if she was standing before me.  She had coal black hair, pale skin and red painted on lips.  She would take me to a Greek or Roman style temple.  She asked me to lay down on a stone platform like bed and roll on my right side.  She would then take a large bowl of water and pour it threw my left temple, and into my brain.  I kid you not, from my right temple would pour out snakes.  As she did this technique my headache would lessen, and I would find some relief.  For a long time I thought the snakes were symbols of my illness.  I wonder now if they instruments of her healing.  This went on for several weeks.

Towards the end I asked what her name was.  She told me her name was Danube, and that she was the Goddess of rivers.  I thought, “Oh I will have to look that up.”  She looked at me and said, “you will not find me,” and she was right.  I have yet to identify her.  I have yet to meet anyone who knows who she is. 

I went to two of my elders, in the community, in between being hospitalized and being initiated.  My HP and I were trying to decide if I should still be initiated given my then mental health status.  I believed Holda was telling me yes.  I had hoped a tarot card or rune reading would give me confirmation of that.  I also went to them to ask if they had any idea what had happened to me, and to see if they knew who this mystery goddess was.  They told me they did not know who the Goddess was, but that if she was helping me I should continue to work with her.  I don’t remember what the cards and runes said.  They brought out a Tibetan singing bowl to get a reading on my chakras.  I had a blockage in my 1^st and 2^nd, that I was not terribly surprised at. I am infertile after all.   I was also having a blockage in my crown chakra, something I had never had a problem with.  I wonder now if part of the headaches, was having all that energy stopped.  One of the elders did tell me, that it was not unusual, for pagans to have some type of mental break or psychotic event prior to their first initiation. 

Apparently after I left, one of the elders sent a nasty email to my HP, saying she should never consider initiating someone in my mental state.  Yeh she was not pleased with me about that one.  I did not know, until years later, that she did not like them.  Although we were never sworn to secrecy about anything in the coven, she did not like me talking about such matters with outsiders.  We decided to do the initiation anyways. 

On September 9^th, 2011 I was initiated as a witch into my HP’s coven.  I will only speak to you of one part that occurred during that ritual.  I consider the rest too sacred. At one point I was laid on the ground and covered with a black sheet.  When I arose I felt better than I had in weeks.  My headaches were gone.  There were pictures taken of that night, long since lost to me.  But in the one of me lying on the ground, you can see tons of orbs.  Upon closer inspection you could see a sickle with 13 different points.  The sickle is one of Holda’s holy symbols.   There could be no doubt that the initiation was her wish. 

Even though in a few years time I would be asked to leave the HP’s coven, I have never been sorry I was initiated.  I have never been sorry that I spent my time with them.  I am honored to have learned under the HP. 

Ilsa

Animal communication and Finding Holda

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love animals.  The walls in my nursery had animals on them, and I even had Bambi curtains.  Being a little girl I remember my momma teaching me to pray for the animals.  She has always been an animal lover.  I’ve been saving and rescuing dogs since I was little.  People would just dump their unwanted dogs at our house.  We’ve even had them dumped as young as 2 or 3 weeks old.  We kept most of them and rehomed where we could.  The only time I did not have a dog is when I went to college and then shortly after.  I used to tell my friends in college, “as soon as I graduate I’m going to get a dog and dishwasher and in that order!”  LOL! 

I guess then that it should come as no surprise that I am an animal communicator.  I think the person who was shocked the most was me.  I have always had a deep connection with the creatures, dogs in particular.  Like I said before I am a funny lady, always cracking jokes.  I have always done the dogs voices.  Spoke aloud for them, and spoke to them.  Known what they what and how they thought.  I have ready many books on dog and animal psychology. Their research mirrors what I knew already that animals do not think the way we do.  Some of their concepts make no sense to us and some of ours make no sense to them. 

Yes I’m crazy, and been to the psych ward to prove it.  But Schizophrenia has never been part of my diagnosis.  Now when I tell you I hear their voices, it is in my head and mostly my heart.  Animals may also speak by sending pictures to your mind. I’m sure if I could smell the way they do, they would send me that as well.  I have never heard them, except in two cases, with my ears.  Therefore these are not auditory hallucinations. Yes I have told councilors this and they look at me a bit weird, but never call for the straight jacket. 

You will find, as you study pagans in general, that this gift is not unheard of.  I know many in the community who speak with trees and plants, some who speak to birds, and even a few who can speak with the rocks. 

Dogs have been my friends when there was no one else.  I believe it was my dog Texas, one of our rescues who helped me to first learn the language of the dogs.  Texas was a beautiful half Lab, half Border Collie that my daddy found as a stray on a location.  He was sleeping under dozers, covered in oil and mud.  It took three baths to get him clean.  Texas was with us 10 years.  He was my best buddy, the one I told all my secrets to, and I believe now probable my first familure.  He died six weeks after I went to college, the vet said of hep c from eating something dead.  I believe he died of a broken heart from missing me. 

Dogs and most animals have a different sense of time then we do.  The watch the way the light falls, the moon and the cycles of the seasons.  They understand routine as well.  That daddy will be home every day about sunset.  I even had one dog, Sassy, that would dance on our heads, at dawn, on every other day.  Because that is when her former owner, Jays grandmother, would get up for dialyses.  She must have had some concept of the ability to count as well.  But the idea of a future, as we understand it, is foreign to them.  Everything is about now, and this present moment.  So when they freak out that you are leaving to go to the store they have two general thoughts.  One is that you will never come back.  The other is that you are going somewhere they cannot protect you.  They believe their job is to love you and protect you.  This is part of why they freak out when you take them to the groomers or the vet.  They often associate the two with physical pain and the pain of being away from you.  They believe you are never coming back.  This is why they are so excited to see you. 

I told you I’ve had two experiences in which I really heard the dogs speak outside my head.  Both times I was sleeping.  The first time, Jay and I were dating, but not yet married.  I was living at home with my parents.  I was asleep in my bed when I was awakened by talking. 

I heard, “Should we wake her up?”

“No, let her sleep.  She had a rough night.”

“Could you move over please?”

I was confused.  There was no one in bed with me, just the dogs.  I was so disturbed by this I went to my pastor at the time.  I was told I heard my angels talking.  I believed him, obviously he was the expert.  But why would there be two angels, and why would one ask the other to move over???  Many years later I was again awakened by voices. 

I heard, “Mommy!  Mommy!  Mommy!  Move the covers and let me in.  Are you okay??  I had to go pee.”  I opened my eyes to me lifting the covers and letting Punka, my Dachshund, jump in the bed.  She had indeed been outside to potty.  No one else but the dogs calls me Mommy.   I began asking other pagans in my community if it could be possible I had heard my dog speak to me.  They told me it was definitely possible.  I know now my dogs were talking amongst themselves and in Punka’s case directly to me.

In the early days of my pagan path, I was working as a dog groomer.  After my encounter with Punka, I began to believe that I could in fact speak to the animals, that I was an animal communicator.  It kind of became known around the office.  One day I had a client come in and speak with me.  She asked me to talk to her dog for her.  She had been robbed, but the dog had been unhurt.  I said I would do my best. 

As I groomed the dog, I laid my hands on him.  I began to ask him questions out loud and he began to transmit pictures to me.  I was a bit taken aback by what he had told me.  That he knew the people who robbed the house.  The robbers had been in the house before.  The dog told me they were friends of his human brother.  The dog told me that he had hid because he was afraid they would take him as well.   When the dog’s mom came to pick him, I gave her the description of the robbers I had been given, as well as the way the robbery occurred and the red truck they had been driving.  What happened next I did not expect.  She came to me a few months later and told me, thank you.  The robbers had indeed been in the house before, and they were friends of her sons.  Also a suspicious red truck had been seen in the area around that time.  For better or worse it seemed I had the gift.  I was floored.

We had just moved to this land, not long before the above story took place.  This land is very wild and full of land spirits.  One day my kids are going just nuts, barking their heads off, about noon. 

I asked the dogs, “What is it!  What are you barking at?”

“Momma!  It’s Momma!”  That just made no since to me what so ever, I’m Momma.  Just because I can hear what they say does not mean I always understand or translate correctly. 

“Momma who?” I asked.

They looked at me stupid and said, “Momma of the dogs.” 

I leaned over the couch and sure enough I saw, with my third eye, what they were barking at.  With my third eye I saw a woman dressed in white with a white horse, coming up from the creek bed.  I had seen her before but told no one.  The fact that they could see her too amazed and comforted me. 

I immediately got on the yahoo groups and began emailing my pagan friends all over the world, telling them this story.  Most of them believed her to be Rhiannon aka Epona, goddess of horses.  But it made no sense to me that a horse goddess would come to me when I had no tie to horses.  But I put a horse shoe on my altar just in case.  No the dogs had said, “Momma of the dogs.”  As I have mostly Germanic dogs, Dachshunds and a Rottweiler.  I thought I would look up Germanic dog goddess, so I Googled the words, and there she was… Holda. 

It took me some years of research but I did find that in her maiden form sometimes she is seen dressed in white, bathing in creeks and rivers, sometimes accompanied by a horse, and noon is her holy hour.  What the kids and I had seen was Holda.  I still believe that to this day.

Holda was my first and still is my main goddess.  Now she is known by many other documented names including but not limited to: Hulda, Frau Holle, Frau Holt, Percha, Bercha, and Herka.  She is the Germanic goddess of the dog, domestic animals, children, winter, snow, lakes and streams, infertile women and is sometimes associated with caves and forests.  She has been seen in all three aspects of Maiden, Mother and Crone.  Although it is perhaps as her crone or grandmotherly state that she is best known in.   I have seen her in all three.  She is known throughout Germany and among the Pennsylvania Deutch.  Many fairy tales and much oral tradition surround her in both places.  Using the internet, many who believe in her, have banded together to share their local heritage of her, as well as their own stories.  In 2011 Garden Stone published “Goddess Holle,” to date it is the only book in English totally devoted to her.  I believe she stirred me in the caldron of life.  I believe has been with me since the beginning, guiding me ever gently back to her.  I encourage you to look into her and see if she may be the right Goddess for you. 

I believe every animal speaks their own language.  Different animals, different things that are important to them, different ways of thinking, and what feels like to me different frequencies.  Dog is my main language.  My cat is rudimentary, as I have no cats and I am deathly allergic to them.  I have a pig, but have yet to hear him speak to me.  I understand most of what he says with body language.  I still have no working knowledge of bird.  The pictures they send get all jumbled in my head.  They come so fast.  Also they often send me colors I don’t understand.  I mentioned this to a bird friend of mine.  Apparently they see colors we cannot, like infra red and ultra violet.  My head is just not tuned for that.  I seem to be tuned into mammals and only at close distances. 

Goat took me a while to learn.  I think it is lower and slower then dog.  Star and I talk all the time.  We say normal things, like I love you, go this way, come here for a cookie, etc.  Mostly what I get from Star and Kali talking is, “OH!  Have you tried this plant!  Oh!  It is so good!  Oh! but what about this one here!!!”  Probable the most earth shattering conversation we have had is over what each finds valuable in life.  She and Kali value good plants, variety, and the ability to walk freely around the property and browse.  Star likes to nibble on my wedding ring.  I explain to her that it is valuable.  She likes to say, “It’s just a shiny rock.  If you can’t eat it, how valuable can it be?”  point taken.  I ask her how she feels about the fact humans eat animals.  She says something to the effect that animals know all their lives that someone may eat them.  They consider it an honor to give their lives for those they serve.  The least we can do is be thankful. 

I think one of the best conversations I have ever overheard, and they do talk to each other, was between Star and Ostara.  We were milking.  Star is always great in the milk stand.  She never kicks.  Ostara was just the opposite.  She would get in the stand, put her head threw to eat her grain, as soon as I locked her in and started touching her udder, she would freak and start kicking.  I did not want to hobble her.  After a while she settled down.  I think in part because of the conversation she and Star had.  Star told Ostara that she needed to give me milk.  She said, “It is an exchange.  They give us grain and a place to live.  We share with them our milk.  Now you just need to settle down.  She’s not going to hurt you.”  Ostara listened to her mother.  We had few problems after that.

I have also had conversations with other animals.  My favorite one was with an Elephant.  My friend and I had gone to a fair.  The Elephant and its owner were in an outside ring giving a demonstration.  It was funny and quite difficult at the same time, as they were both talking.  I could hear the ring master and then right after him, was the Elephants voice saying almost the same thing.  Example:

Ring master:  “I will now give him a loaf of bread to eat.”

Elephant:  “I will now eat this loaf of bread.”

The Elephant loved the crowds and you could feel lots of love for his owner as well.  The Elephant offered rides and pictures after the show.  My friend and I hung around.  After everyone was gone I approached them both.

 I said to the owner, “I know this is going to sound a little crazy but I am an animal communicator.  I would like to try to speak to your Elephant.” 

The man was more than happy to oblige, saying; “I am interest to see what you have to say.  We have been approached by an animal communicator before.”

I laid my hands on the Elephant and began to ask him questions.  He was so funny.  I just remember him asking me again and again if I wanted to ride.  I told him, no I just wanted to talk to him and ask him about his life.  He said okay.  I asked if he was treated well.  He responded that he was and he loved his owner very much.  That he was looking forward to sitting down and having a snack now that the show was over, and was I sure I didn’t want a ride? 

I told the owner what the Elephant had said.  He kind of chuckled.  Apparently I had said just what the other animal communicator had said.  I thanked them both and watched them walk away, into the shade to enjoy a snack. 

My dogs have never told me anything earth shattering either.  I also don’t think, they think as much as we do.  They have lots of free space in their brains, most of the time observing the natural world around them.  They tell me they love me and they are happy.  I can’t ask for more than that. 

Ilsa