Welcome to the Soul Touched by Dogs Podcast, the show for dog lovers who
see dogs not as toys or tools, but wise souls worth our respect and care.
I'm an Herrmann, and I'm your host.
I talk to poor some humans, people who do great work for dogs and their people.
So come and join us for today's conversation.
Anke: Hello and welcome, Emma.
I'm delighted to have
Emma: you here with me today.
Thank you for inviting me.
It's, uh, it's lovely to be here.
Thank you, Anke.
Anke: My pleasure.
So, let's share with people where you're based and, you
know, what's your business with
Emma: dogs?
Thank you.
Yes, um, I'm based in the UK and I am an intuitive animal communicator.
So that means that I can speak with animals of any species, um,
telepathically to find out their point of view on any queries that
their human may have for them.
So at the moment, the main sort of categories that I
focus on are health queries.
Um, behavior queries, and also conversations with
animals who are in spirit.
So, um, you know, a lot of people find that very comforting and it can bring a
lot of, uh, closure, really, and even joy.
So, so yes, but I'm planning in the future to expand kind of the types
of communications I offer, um, you know, just as things develop really.
So yeah, I'm an intuitive animal communicator based in the UK.
Love it,
Anke: thank you.
Um, now, my mind's going offline.
So many questions.
The one word that jumps to mind is trust, right?
So trust and like, almost like coming at it from different,
from different angles, right?
So because, because You know, our rational minds, like we kind of,
when we're little, like we're almost like trained out of our intuitive
connection with everything around us.
Right.
So we're very sort of head heavy, basically.
Right.
So, so I'm curious about the part of how did you discover this for yourself?
Right.
So how did you discover it?
And also, you know, how did you manage to trust what's coming back?
You know, because like, first of all, there's this like, Perceiving it,
but then also the courage, I mean, call it courage, like to trust it.
And then obviously the next step is how do other people trust that the messages
that come through, that that's actually what really the animal kind of, that
it really comes from the animal, right?
So that's, that's, that's like the person that jumps to mind.
Emma: Yeah, okay.
So, um, I think you're first asking, how did I discover it?
And really, it was completely by accident.
I'm not one of those people who can say, Oh, I come from a long
line of, you know, mediums and psychics and that kind of thing.
Nor do I have the story of, Oh, I had, you know, an accident and an
out of body experience and I came back with all these new skills.
No, it was completely by accident.
My dog Oscar came into my life.
Right when I needed him most.
He's absolutely fabulous and he's very bright.
He's so clever, really intelligent.
And very quickly he understood me and my husband.
He, you know, fitted in with us and then he started training us.
So I thought he's so brainy.
I want to try and meet him on his level.
So it was just purely by accident.
I was just Googling animal communication or dog communication.
I think trying to, I thought I was just going to find stuff about
body language and vocalizations.
Right at the top of the listings was a listing for, um, uh, a psychic
animal communicator based in the UK.
And I'd never heard of it before.
She was the only one in the listings.
All the others were behaviorists or this kind of thing.
And I thought, I've never heard of that before, but I know that I need
that in my life immediately, right now.
So I booked a session with her.
She and Oscar and I had a three way conversation.
It was amazing.
And, you know, I had another, you know, session with her a year or so later.
Um, and I, as soon as I've had this conversation with her
and Oscar, I thought, I wonder if I could learn to do this.
And I sat on it for a while and I tried researching it and couldn't
seem to find much about it.
Eventually found a book.
It happened to be exactly the right book.
Read it.
Asked Oscar a couple of questions, got some answers back, was shocked.
And then immediately went on this, this lady, the author's
training and was astonished when myself and the other students
immediately were getting messages.
So that can then kind of lead me into your other question about trust.
How do you know that what you're receiving is from the animal?
And you know that it, you know, it does make sense.
So the way we receive the information, I'm sure this will come as no
surprise to some people, maybe a surprise to others, but we receive the
information in lots of different ways.
We get visual images, we can hear sounds or even words, um, you can get
an emotion and a feeling, you can get physical sensations, and the most, the
hardest one to kind of define, but I think the most useful, is you just get
knowing, they just download, knowing to you, just that, um, They just literally
share kind of like a scene with you of something that happened and you get their
emotion, you get what they saw, what they thought, what they felt, all as a package.
So, um, you get it in all sorts of ways.
And by the way, all of us are doing this all the time.
This isn't a special skill just for a few people.
We all do it 24 7 and we've been doing it since we were born.
It's just it's mostly below the level of our conscious awareness.
So, um, all you have to do is just believe, trust and start
listening and you start getting it.
So the way then that you start to trust that this information is coming
from the animal and not from you, because that's the first question
all student animal communicators ask.
How do I know this isn't just me making it up?
It's very simple.
So you pair up with another person or student and you tell them about
their animal, they tell you about your animal, and you go through certain
validation or verification questions.
Most, the main one is around their personality.
You can feel the animal's energy, you can feel their personality, you can
get them to describe their personality to you, and as soon as you relate
that to the human, most of the time, occasionally it's not quite right,
but most of the time, they'll say yes.
That's my dog or my cat or my horse or whatever.
And yes, he does do that.
And yes, we do call him that.
And he has got that nickname and that type of thing.
So you do little validation or verification sort of questions like that.
But yes, we do get imposter syndrome all the time.
Anke: Yeah, because I mean, That's fascinating.
I mean, it's, it's, I find it totally fascinating because you can sort of
see how it would, you know, and at the same time, you know, like when,
well, to know the nickname, like how?
Emma: With things like that, that are quite specific, usually
it would be if I asked them.
So here's an example recently, there was, um, she was an animal
communicator friend and she'd kind of rescued this dog that she found
at the side of the road, this puppy.
Right.
And she wanted to know a few things from him.
And as I was chatting to him, I realized that she hadn't told me his name.
So I was just thinking, I wonder what his name is?
I didn't ask him directly, but he heard the thought, and he
straight away, he said Ted.
I heard the name or the word Ted.
So when I clarified with her later, I said, what's his name?
His name is actually Tate, T A T E, but you can imagine if you hear that
faintly, Ted Tate, kind of sounds fake.
Yeah, so you don't always get it spot on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's pretty close.
Anke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, so, I mean, I think the fascinating piece is that, that
Like it's not even, it's almost like unlearn all the crap on top of it.
It's not even a learning a skill.
It's kind of remembering or
Emma: coming back to it.
Exactly.
That's exactly it.
It's, it's remembering or relearning or just trusting and believing
that yes, we do this all the time.
And you know, most people are pretty, tuned in with their animals and
they know what they want or need and they know if something's wrong.
Um, and we do, we do it, but, um, we just, it's not talked about or
nurtured, you know, in the mainstream.
So
Anke: I think that's the thing we saw kind of like proof, you know,
scientific, visible, tangible proof.
And that's, that's, that's where the trust thing comes in.
Right.
There isn't usually that you can't sort of.
Rationally trace it back, right?
Do you find it's easier to communicate with somebody else's animal?
Like, do you find it's harder with your own, or you're
emotionally involved somehow, or?
Emma: It can be, yes, yes.
So with, with Oscar, my dog, um, once you kind of get past the basics, like
how do you feel, and do you want to go for a walk, and what's your favorite
food, and stuff like that, eventually you get to this point of thinking,
well, Well now what do we talk about?
But um, yeah, so with your own animal it's not that exactly that it's
harder, it's just kind of different because you know all the day to day
basics so eventually you have to start thinking of better topics.
Um, so So, for example, I was doing a workshop on communication with your
own animal recently with Oscar, so we were, we were being encouraged
to think of better questions.
So one we came up with together was, um, you know, how do you
define unconditional love?
What's unconditional love to you?
So, my dog, he was so astonished to get this question, he came running
through from another room and he kind of looked at me like, what?
But what he said was, um, it's a feeling of peace and trust.
It's being able to lie down next to somebody quietly.
It's loving somebody even if their energy is too big.
And his parting shot was, I even love things I hate.
And he shared an image of a squirrel in the garden because he loves a bit
of righteous anger about squirrels.
But um, just kind of as an extension to that with your own animals, if you're a
bit stressed, if something's happened, like they're injured or something, Very
difficult to communicate because all your emotions are all over the place.
You can't calm down.
You can't tune in.
So you have to just kind of go back to normal, basic communication and
try and communicate later or rope in another, you know, communicator friend.
I guess that
Anke: would be the perfect moment to kind of bring in somebody else, right?
Who hasn't got that, you know, emotional involvement and
kind of be all over the place.
Yeah.
So what would I mean, you hinted at the beginning, like, people come
a lot, you know, for sort of grief and end of life stuff as well, like,
what, I mean, what would be the most common thing that people come to you?
Um,
Emma: I think it's mostly, I suppose, behavioural type things,
like, why is my dog doing this?
Or can you tell my cat to stop doing that?
Um, I can't tell them as much as you can tell them, but really we need
to find out why they're doing it.
Um, you know, what's going on from their perspective.
Um, so yes, it would be, why is
Anke: that?
Can you give an example?
Like say where somebody came, Hey, why is my dog doing this and that?
And from what you've received, they've managed to, to sort of change what
would be like a scenario there?
Emma: Yeah.
Um, So there was one where the person asked me, she asked me to
tell her cat to stand up to the dog.
She's got two cats, and a dog, and the dog harasses one of
the cats and not the other.
So one cat stands up to the dog, second one doesn't.
So she wants me to just simply tell the cat to stand up to the dog, but of
course it's not that simple because You know, he's got his reasons for why he
does what he does, um, and basically it just turned out that he's a pacifist and
feels that it would be too kind of, um, confrontational to stand up to the dog.
Um, and he also explained that it's not really the dog's fault because
the dog doesn't really understand.
He hasn't got a great level of understanding really.
Eventually I then also had to talk to the dog who thought the cat
loved it and it was a great game.
When I explained, though, he doesn't love it.
Dog was really upset and really sorry.
And was kind of apologizing.
So between the two of them, and I think it was mostly the cat, the cat
actually came up with a potential solution, which was, um, for the
person to mark out a zone in the house to say, this is the no game zone.
So the dog is not allowed to chase me.
You can come up to this point and no further.
Um, and the cat even shared an image of the human using a piece of masking
tape on the carpet to mark out.
Where the borders of this no game zone were.
They're very clever, they show us in all kinds of symbolic ways, um,
how, you know, ideas they've got, and apparently it worked immediately.
Um, so I think they relapsed a bit after a week, because you do need
to have an ongoing kind of reminder with them, an ongoing agreement.
But, you know, ultimately we need to ask the animal, what will support
you with whatever this situation is?
So, you know, it's really no good as just telling them do this or don't do that.
We need to find out why from their perspective and then
negotiate, um, and act courteous.
Anke: I think even just knowing what's underneath it, like the stuff
that's not obvious, you know, I think that, that would make, make sense.
Thank you.
Because then, then the human can come up with ideas as well, you know, so
it's like, but if you don't, I think that's always the problem when stuff's
not working, it feels it's a hint that you're not solving the right problem yet.
You know, if you can kind of bring it down, actually figure out what's really
going on, you know, then, then, then I think the solution becomes a lot
more, you know, a lot easier to see.
Emma: Yes, yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
Yeah, I
Anke: think it's just fascinating.
So on like on the health front, like say, would you be able to, you know, when you
sometimes when you might think like, not sure he's not quite himself kind of thing.
So there you would come in and say, well, you know, if there's like physical
discomfort, because you know, dogs are like, I mean, animals, I guess it's,
it's their animal nature, like they can't afford to be seen to be weak.
So they're going to hide it from you as much as they can, right?
So that would help as well to kind of discover issues
Emma: earlier, right?
Yeah, so I can tune into the animal and, you know, first of all I'd ask them is
there anything about your health that you'd like to share with me, and quite
often you'll get something straight away.
I don't particularly, um, exactly feel the exact sensations in my
body, but I might straight away, be drawn to the left hip, for example.
Straight away, I just think, oh, left hip, something going on there.
Um, and they might, I might get a quick image of a tooth or something like that.
And then, and then what we do is I do, I invite them, I say, can I do a body scan?
Would you like me, would you like to show me in my body how it feels in yours?
And then what I do is I methodically go through the body area by area
and see if there's anything there.
And so I might just be drawn to, I can just feel something, I can't
define what it is, there's something.
And so I'll ask them, you know, what, what, what does this feel like?
What type of a sensation is it?
How would you rate it on a scale of 0 to 10?
When did it start?
How often does it happen?
What makes it better?
What makes it worse?
And how does it make you feel generally in yourself?
That can be physically, emotionally, mentally.
Um, so the human then gets an idea of, you know, which bits are a priority
to the animal, which bits are a priority to the human, because we
don't always have the same priorities.
So things that really worry the owners, animals just cope with and they say,
no, it's fine, that's just part of my body, that's how it is, I accept it.
But then there might be something that the human didn't realise.
So, um, just trying to think of a recent example.
Um, I mean, this is just a quite a minor one.
Again, this was an emergency call.
Again, this was from a fellow animal communicator.
She, she thought her cat was dying.
It was, it hadn't eaten for a few days and it seemed to be in pain.
It was very quiet and she couldn't work out what was wrong with it.
She said, I'm on my way to the vet now.
But I thought I heard her say, I'm dying.
So I thought, oh God, right.
So I quickly tuned in and she shared the sensation of something
kind of stuck in this kind of area here, like down there, I suppose
esophagus, just before the stomach.
Um, and it didn't hurt that much, but it just felt like there was a
blockage and it was annoying and it was just above the stomach area.
And what she showed me, or she kind of shared a sensation that whatever it was,
It was about as long as a, about that long, like a, like a, the lid of a pyro or
something like that, something that kind of shape, a smallish, longish, thin thing.
Everything else was fine, and no, she wasn't dying, but she just
had this uncomfortable thing.
She went to the vet, the vet couldn't find anything wrong with her, did all
the tests, And then she came home and she coughed up a hairball that was
about that long and about that size.
And that's all it was.
It was just a hairball.
But this is an example of how difficult it is to communicate with
your own animal when you're panicking.
So he was dying.
And to me, it's like, no, it's all right.
Calm down.
She's not dying.
And what, all I really did was I helped calm the human down.
Well,
Anke: I mean, and that's a lot, you know, that's a lot, that's a
lot, because I think that helps the animal as well, because they
will then pick up on our panic.
So I think, you know, if we can calm down that, you know,
Emma: goes a long
Anke: way, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
So do you, do you need to.
see the animal or like, like a photo or like what do you need in
order to be able to communicate with
Emma: an animal?
Yeah, I mean I usually ask for a photo just kind of as backup but I don't, I
don't really need a photo and often I find that I prefer to do communications
without a photo and with as little information as possible because otherwise
what happens is Your logical mind gets hold of a piece of information
and starts making a story around it.
So if I see particular breed of dog, for example, and I think I know a little bit
about that breed of dog, my logical mind might try and weave that info into the
communication, which Might be helpful.
And it also might be a complete red herring.
So, um, although I do ask for a photo, I kind of look at it at the
end and kind of go, Oh, wouldn't have expected them to look like that.
Anke: Oh, that's hilarious.
Emma: But often their personality is different to, you know,
how, how you might think.
So some, I'm sure everybody knows this.
Some small dogs have very big Personality is a great big character.
You would think they were a huge doll.
And of course it can be the other way around as well.
Yeah,
Anke: my Leo was like that totally.
He thought he was big, but like the physical body didn't quite catch up to it.
So, so where can people go and find out more about you?
Can book a session or like, oh, I don't know.
Like, does it work like that?
Emma: Yes, yes.
Um, so I have a website and it's Sage Animal Wellness.
It's Sage Animal Wellness.
And my social media accounts are linked on there as well.
So on my website, you can, um, contact me via my contact form, you
know, to start discussions about what it is you'd like help with.
Um, you can also book a free discovery call, actually.
I do 15 minute free calls for anybody who's kind of interested,
but not sure, and they'd like to have a chat with me first.
Um, and also, you know, if you like, you can sign up to my newsletter and,
um, as a thank you for that, there's a free download of, uh, ten tips.
to help your animals.
So
Anke: that's awesome.
I love it.
Obviously the link's going to be in the show notes.
If you're listening to the podcast and right underneath here, or above here,
if you, if you see it in the newsletter.
So thank you so much.
This is fascinating.
I'm always intrigued by, you know, how, how this, and anything that's
kind of beyond the rational mind, I find endlessly fascinating.
So thank you for sharing a little bit about what, what you do.
Emma: Oh, thank you, Anke.
No, it's been very enjoyable, very entertaining.
And yes, I mean, animal communication, it's, it's a huge topic, really.
You know, I've never even heard of it until about three years ago.
And now, and here I am doing it and kind of getting more and more into it.
I'm constantly learning and developing and kind of adding new skills to my set.
And it's just, it's just a passion, really.
You know, I always wanted to work with animals.
And this is just So brilliant, uh, being able to do this because as a
kid, you know, I think a lot of us do, we fantasize about being able to
talk to animals and get answers back, and as kids we probably are doing it.
Yeah.
Anke: I mean, then we're kind of told we're kind of making stuff up, like that's
probably where a lot of it starts as well.
So thanks so much.
And I mean, obviously anybody listening, if you know, if you
want to know, like, try it out.
Like you're never going to, you know, I would say like, you can't, you can
talk about chocolate all you want.
You're not going to know what it's like until you take a bite.
So, you know, get in touch with Amma, book a session and, um,
and see what you're, what So
Emma: thank you.
Oh, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks so much for listening.
If you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to subscribe, and leave a review so
other dog lovers can find the show.
If you haven't already, head over to soul touched by dogs.
com and sign up for weekly doggy cuteness tips, recommendations, and personal
stories to warm your dog loving heart.
And if you know a pawsome human you think I should interview,
I'd love an introduction.
Email me at Anke.
That's A N k E at Soul touched by dogs.com.