More and more, behaviorists and biologists and trainers and people who live with domesticated animals like dogs and donkeys and horses and (some) elephants are coming to understand that they think in terms of visual images and communicate with one another and the world in that way, much like autistic children. This is what I am writing my next book, “Talking To Animals” about. We are always throwing words at animals like dogs, we think that is communication, but it most often is not. They don’t have our words, our language.

I communicate with animals using food, emotion, body language, voice and visualization. Maria has always done this with the donkeys, I have always done it with dogs, for many years and long before I came to Bedlam Farm. When Maria came home from Iowa yesterday, she immediately went out to the pasture. She stood still, Lulu and Fanny came right over to her, each on a different side of her, and they leaned into her and stood still.

She had the sense that they wanted to know where she had been, and so she showed them, in images and not in words. They seemed rapt and attentive, when she was done, they moved away. Visualization with animals is the most powerful spiritual experience I have had in my life, it has altered my consciousness and sensitivity. Here, once again, I saw it happening.  It is something anyone can do, if they are open to it.