I spoke to a retriever!

The animal communication workshop was fascinating. We spent the morning doing meditation followed by exercises in free association - you know, that game where someone says a word and you have to say the first thing the pops into your head, and if you say the first word again, you're out. In this version though, repeating the first word didn't matter as the purpose was to keep going and overcome any blockages that stopped you speaking.

After that came the free writing exercise, where Anna, our leader, gave us half a sentence and we had to carry in scribbling. My first attempt was far too controlled; I told a true story, which wasn't the idea at all. My next was a proper ramble, quite hallucinogenic - what was in that herbal tea?

After lentil soup and baked spuds, we were given our first test. Anna passed round a photo of a recently deceased cat and asked us all to write down what came into our heads as we stared at it. Most of us got that it was an indoor cat - I gave a reason, that it hated the sensation of wind blowing on it - and several, including me, also picked up that it had had an accident to its left front leg at some point, but only three people got the fact that it had died from a cancer on its nose, poor little thing. Oddly enough, the nose and mouth area were the first things that drew me, and I had a sensation of snuffling and sinus problems, but I thought I was thinking of a friend's cat who'd had a lifelong sinus problem, and dismissed it. However, I did get the fact that it hated its white bib getting messy and kept cleaning itself, which was absolutely true.

Where I really managed to score, though, was with Pilgrim the flatcoat retriever. (That isn't him in the pic, it's one I 'borrowed' from the internet.) We'd all been asked to bring a photo of a pet and we got into pairs to do our readings. I warned Pilgrim's owner that I'd never had a dog and might be hopeless at 'reading' him, but to my amazement, I scored almost 100% accuracy, picking up that he loved racing along a shingle beach (I described it and the sea wall in some detail, and then discovered Pilgrim and his owner lived in Eastbourne and went to the beach every day), that he had a touch of arthritis (true, he's on glucosamine), had had eye trouble that would recur (true, he'd had it in the past), wasa very jealous dog who wanted to be the centre of attention (true), had recently had tooth problems, and was sick in cars and hated car travel.

I was wrong about the teeth: it was Pilgrim's brother, also in the photo, who'd just had two teeth out so I was 'reading' him by mistake. And at first his owner disagreed with the car sickness, saying that he lay there very quietly when travelling. But later, she suddenly remembered that the first time he'd been in the car, he had been horribly, tremendously sick, so much so that they were worried he might choke and die. No wonder he was quiet in cars now. The poor dog is terrified of it happening again. I also picked up that he was quite nervous and highly strung and had had to have sedatives at times, which was also true.

So... do I have a career as an animal communicator? I am going to do a more advanced course, where Anna will teach us how to do a psychic body scan of an animal. She can also locate missing pets and tell the owners where to find them, even in other countries. I don't think I shall ever get that good, but someone on the course has given me a photo of her rabbits to do a reading on. I'll let you know how I get on.

If you're interested in finding out more about animal communication, here's the address of Anna's website: www.pettalk-online.com