Should you use an animal communicator or pet psychic to find a lost pet? Most definitely not, and here’s why. I have been helping people find lost pets in the Seattle since 2008, and I have helped with over 5,000 cases of missing cats and dogs. In roughly a quarter of those cases, my dogs and I went out to help search, and in other cases I provided advice and information. In order to improve my ability to help, I keep track of how lost pets are found, whether it was directly because of my actions or advice, or some other reason. About a quarter of the people who have asked for my help also sought advice from an animal communicator or pet psychic. In maybe two of those cases did the psychic provide clues that led to the lost pet. (If the clues from the psychic did turn out to lead the owner to the pet, this still could be due to random luck, and not because telepathy is a real thing.) In some cases, one of the many vague clues provided by the psychic turned out to have possibly been true in hindsight. For example, a psychic might say, “You’re dog walked past a yellow house with an orange car in front”, and later, after the dog was found, it seems possible that he might have wandered down a street at some point where there actually is a yellowish house with a sort of orange car in front. But ten other clues provided by the psychic turned out not to have had anything to do with anything. People who want to believe in the abilities of psychics cling to that one possibly correct clue about the yellow house with the orange car and ignore the other clues that never matched up with reality. In any case, a psychic will almost never say, “Your dog is walking down 53rd Avenue right now, turning onto Sycamore Street, and he will be waiting for you by the coffee stand.”
You might think, well, even if information from a psychic probably won’t lead to my lost pet, it can’t hurt to try, right? It actually hurts in many ways. First, when people consult psychics, then convince themselves the psychic was possibly right about one clue, even though it didn’t lead them directly to the lost pet, and then that person turns around and tells others that the psychic was helpful, it contributes to the spread of misinformation and delays the finding of lost pets. Second, psychics have given clues that were definitely wrong and hurtful. For example, many people have been told by psychics that their pets were dead, but those pets were later found alive. This is obviously very counterproductive, to say the least, and potentially quite damaging emotionally. Third, even when the psychic’s clues don’t turn out to be specifically wrong, time spent trying to decipher vague clues is a distraction from real actions you could be taking to find your pet.
I’m sure that many psychics are nice people who actually believe they have a skill. Undoubtedly, a few of them are outright frauds. It would not be possible for the psychic’s customer or victim to know whether the person they are talking to actually believes in psychic abilities; the outright frauds are quite good at fooling people, and they choose their words carefully so that you would never be able to prove they are lying. Even psychics who are true believers and have good intentions should be avoided because of the damage they can do.
For all other methods of finding a lost pet, one can verify whether the method works. One of the most effective ways to find your lost pet is to put up large, brightly-colored signs with a nice picture of the pet and some simple text, including a phone number. It is clearly provable that such signs have directly led to the finding of about 25% of lost pets. Someone saw the pet, saw the sign, and called the number, leaving no question about how the pet was found or why. With other methods, such as search dogs, people can keep records to say the search dog walked right up to the lost pet in X number of cases, and the search dog indicated a direction of travel which turned out to be right in X number of cases. Humane traps worked so many times, and social media was the answer in other cases. Psychic clues are slippery because they never provide enough information to lead you directly to the lost pet, but if you want to believe, then you can say that certain clues could possibly be seen as true in hindsight.
Undoubtedly, someone reading this will give an example where they went out to follow up on a clue provided by a psychic, and following up on that lead directly resulted in them finding the lost pet. An example provided by one particular animal communicator illustrates this point perfectly.
by KING 5 News
Animal rescuers freed a fjord pony who apparently slid down a 70 foot ravine in Redmond and spent several days trapped. Their rescue of 4-year-old Gemma was challenged by the steepness of the terrain and heavy brush. The rescue took place in the 24000 block of 115th Street near the Saddle Rock Stables. The stable owner said the pony was brought to the stable for training. Gemma was described as being a bit of an "escape artist" and got out of her stall.
Gemma had been missing since Sunday. It's believed she was walking around an embankment and slid down into the ravine. A spokesperson for the Washington State Animal Response Team said Gemma appeared to be in good health and had water and hay. She was given a painkiller for some bruising. Rescuers used a fire hose to wrap around the 800 pound horse and pull her up to a ledge. She was walked out from there. To make this story even more remarkable, it was an 'animal communicator' that led searchers to Gemma. Joan Ranquet was contacted by Gemma's former owners, and says after seeing only a picture of Gemma, she was able to make a connection and feel where the horse was.
“I connected with the horse, and the most important sense I got was the sound of rushing water," said Ranquet. "I didn’t know if it was rushing water or a freeway, just a very loud, loud sound.”
This might sound a little crazy, but Saddle Rock Stables owner Barbara Linstedt says once she heard from Joan, she was able to find Gemma within five minutes.
Thirty responders from King County Search and Rescue helped with the rescue.
That psychic led the people to the pony, right? Only in the sense that a broken clock is right twice a day if you happen to look at the right time. Where the horse was lost, it had to go toward a busy, noisy road or toward rushing water no matter which way it went. The property was surrounded by noisy roads and rushing water. When the owners were told that the horse was near the sound of a busy road or rushing water, they could have looked in any direction, but they just happened to look in the direction that the horse went. Also, if your horse is missing, you can guess it’s not standing in the middle of the street or someone might have told you. Horses do get stuck in ravines, so a ravine is a place you should go looking for a horse well before you call an animal communicator. They could have found the horse days earlier if they had bothered to look. It's a horse, so Gemma would have been visible if they had looked in that ravine in the first place. To say that they found the horse because of the psychic is wildly inaccurate. They found the horse because they finally looked in the place where the horse was, where they could have looked days earlier if they had done a thorough search.
Most importantly, how many times did this psychic claim to connect with a lost animal, but that animal was never found? To say that animal communicators are effective in finding lost animals because of one story where a horse just happened to be found in a manner that conveniently fit the psychic’s vague clues is equivalent to saying seatbelts in cars are deadly and should be avoided because you had an uncle who was burned in his car when he couldn’t unfasten his seatbelt. Statistics clearly show that seatbelts save lives, and research clearly shows that many methods, but not psychics, have proven effective in finding lost pets. If psychics actually helped find lost pets, I would recommend them whether I believed in it or not. Time after time, information from psychics is contradictory, vague, usually not helpful, and often detrimental to the search effort.
If animal communicators and pet psychics truly want to help find lost pets, they have an easy way to gain legitimacy and become useful (if it were possible). Simply, they can agree to fair and open testing. If a psychic says she can tell you where an animal is, then put an animal somewhere within a given physical area and have the psychic tell you where it is. Either a psychic can do it, or she can’t. Even if the psychic was right 25% of the time, that would be significant and useful. Every year for decades, a million dollars has been offered to anyone who can demonstrate that they have provable psychic or ESP abilities. That money has never been claimed. Even if a psychic didn’t want the money, you would think it would be important to prove the ability through scientific testing for the benefit of humanity, and all other species. If a person can receive information from an animal ten miles away, that is really important information, and it could be useful in all kinds of situations. All other professions that want to help people or animals--doctors, veterinarians, cab drivers, plumbers, police officers, animal control officers--do go through training and testing that shows they have some basic skills required. If psychics truly want to help lost animals, they will prove their abilities in scientific tests that can be reproduced and confirmed. The occasional story of a pet that was found in a circumstance that could be construed as fitting a psychic’s clue is not proof of any ability.
Furthermore, if a psychic can find a lost pet just using her mind, why are there any lost pets at all? If I had the ability to find a lost pet just by sitting at home and opening up a psychic connection to a lost dog or cat, I would be calling up 50 people per day, saying, “Buttons snuck out of the back gate and he is running loose on Clover Street, between 8th and 10th,” and, “Snickers pushed out the window screen and climbed up a tree in the Johnsons’ backyard.” Even if it wasn’t that easy, even if it took an hour of meditation to enter the correct mental state, you could still reunite a few lost pets every day. If psychics have the ability to help lost pets so easily and effortlessly, why aren’t they doing it more?
If you personally like the idea of animal communicators and want to believe in them, I suppose that does no harm to others. Before you recommend an animal communicator to the owner of a lost pet, you have an obligation to be sure you aren't making a bad situation worse. You should only recommend those psychics who have been able to prove their abilities in controlled scientific studies, which is exactly none of them.
Below is another example of why you shouldn’t use a pet psychic: even if everything this person said was true and somehow verifiable, it would not be the least be helpful in finding a lost dog. The dog was lost in a farming community, and the imagery provided would be typical for hundreds of places within ten miles of where the dog was last seen. Time spent chasing down such clues could have been spent putting up large, colorful posters, which have been proven to be effective.
----------------------------------Begin dog owner’s post----------------------------
Below are the notes that I took while on the phone with him. This was all the information that we could get at the time. We really need to focus on these notes and go from there.
There are similar things that come into play with what [name removed] told me and what [name removed] (the other communicator I've been working with) has told me.
***I DON'T CARE TO HEAR ANYTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT THIS. SO PLEASE, IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING NEGATIVE KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.***
I'm not giving up on [the lost dog] and I'll do whatever it takes to find him. <3
NOTES:
wire baskets that hold fruit/food "daniels parents house"
customized exhaust pipes (possible where [lost dog] is or could be around)
fields of wheat ready for harvest (we both got goosebumps, he started choking up/tearing up)
combines/thrasher piece of equipment that goes through wheat field when ready to harvest.
proximity in a farm to wheat farm, strong yes
no manure smell
he has smelled it and passed through it but not there now
[the lost dog] is not tied up, or kept where he cannot get out, not captured
he is alive he says he is not deceased
wheat field field/farm right now
small air strip/small crop dusters
contact wheat growers
any air craft over the wheat fields/ very close to being harvested
is red a variety of wheat? *checked this, yes it is*
fairly quiet location
busy rd or hwy, where you can kind of see it but not hear it
hwy is higher than field or elevated
go south from where he went missing
he had asked if we had steak last night, my answer "yes…… we had carne asada” [the lost dog] knew that. Food is relatively easy for him to talk about” CRAZY….WHAT THE
navy dark blue some sparkles motorcycle possible speed boat ……..again…seeing the exhaust pipes
sam? Samantha?
no to a river
definite yes to a canal
skittish, works perimeter, side step, you may have have something i want but i dont trust you (when [psychic] asks if he is being approachable)
He took off just about 5 o’clock the day he went missing….( I didn’t tell him that……)
He asked if we recently left out food for him, dry food. Yes we did. knew about it but it was not near it at the time. ( when i pray, I also talk to [the lost dog], I told him we had left food and water out for him).
Cell tower or maybe some kind of radio tower long antenna near where he is right now
farm that he is at now, when you look off to the distance you can see the hill with “match box cars” because they are so small from where he is at, he also cannot hear the cars. Road way is elevated with hills elevated.
roadway runs parallel to the foothills
he’s living off of little ground squirrels, he’s seeing something that feeds off the grain that he is catching. Rabbits also.
He asked if i have had any dreams of [the lost dog], I have had ZERO dreams no matter how hard i have tried. He said” thats very good….that means they are not in spirit” He said it doesn’t matter if friends or strangers have had dreams of him, If you his owner have not had any that is a HUGE indicator that he is still alive (also helps that [the lost dog] told us he is alive, which makes it even more so).
^ So weird….because of all the people that told me their dreams about him….I seriously have not had one, and i kept asking myself why, even if I look at his pictures right before bed or pray and talk to him, Still i would not have dreams. Apparently this is a good sign, because if i were to dream about him it would mean he is possibly in spirit.
He’s found a place that he is staying sustained in. Found some other dogs that he has made friends with. Possibly all white dog, something similar to a great Pyrenees
The end of the session:
[the psychic], basically was telling [the lost dog] to be safe, if he sees someone he can trust to get him home and call me then approach them, watch out for rattlesnakes, do not chase chickens especially if someones trying to shoot him off their property, DO NOT cross busy roadways.
He thinks [the lost dog] is alone right now, on his own.
In the very beginning he got a strong connection *we both got goosebumps* (that was EXTREMELY weird, like hard core goosebumps out of nowhere. I’ve never had that before) He said he would not have gotten this connection if [the lost dog] and I did not have a strong bond.
$5000 REWARD NO QUESTIONS ASKED
MISSING SINCE 3-9-16
Please contact me ASAP at [deleted number] if you know anything or see him.
-blue eyes
-65lbs
-gray white black
-neutered
-white tipped tail
-distinct markings between eyes and on neck.
POSITIVE THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS PLEASE!
--------------------End of post from dog’s owner--------------------------
You might think, well, even if information from a psychic probably won’t lead to my lost pet, it can’t hurt to try, right? It actually hurts in many ways. First, when people consult psychics, then convince themselves the psychic was possibly right about one clue, even though it didn’t lead them directly to the lost pet, and then that person turns around and tells others that the psychic was helpful, it contributes to the spread of misinformation and delays the finding of lost pets. Second, psychics have given clues that were definitely wrong and hurtful. For example, many people have been told by psychics that their pets were dead, but those pets were later found alive. This is obviously very counterproductive, to say the least, and potentially quite damaging emotionally. Third, even when the psychic’s clues don’t turn out to be specifically wrong, time spent trying to decipher vague clues is a distraction from real actions you could be taking to find your pet.
I’m sure that many psychics are nice people who actually believe they have a skill. Undoubtedly, a few of them are outright frauds. It would not be possible for the psychic’s customer or victim to know whether the person they are talking to actually believes in psychic abilities; the outright frauds are quite good at fooling people, and they choose their words carefully so that you would never be able to prove they are lying. Even psychics who are true believers and have good intentions should be avoided because of the damage they can do.
For all other methods of finding a lost pet, one can verify whether the method works. One of the most effective ways to find your lost pet is to put up large, brightly-colored signs with a nice picture of the pet and some simple text, including a phone number. It is clearly provable that such signs have directly led to the finding of about 25% of lost pets. Someone saw the pet, saw the sign, and called the number, leaving no question about how the pet was found or why. With other methods, such as search dogs, people can keep records to say the search dog walked right up to the lost pet in X number of cases, and the search dog indicated a direction of travel which turned out to be right in X number of cases. Humane traps worked so many times, and social media was the answer in other cases. Psychic clues are slippery because they never provide enough information to lead you directly to the lost pet, but if you want to believe, then you can say that certain clues could possibly be seen as true in hindsight.
Undoubtedly, someone reading this will give an example where they went out to follow up on a clue provided by a psychic, and following up on that lead directly resulted in them finding the lost pet. An example provided by one particular animal communicator illustrates this point perfectly.
by KING 5 News
Animal rescuers freed a fjord pony who apparently slid down a 70 foot ravine in Redmond and spent several days trapped. Their rescue of 4-year-old Gemma was challenged by the steepness of the terrain and heavy brush. The rescue took place in the 24000 block of 115th Street near the Saddle Rock Stables. The stable owner said the pony was brought to the stable for training. Gemma was described as being a bit of an "escape artist" and got out of her stall.
Gemma had been missing since Sunday. It's believed she was walking around an embankment and slid down into the ravine. A spokesperson for the Washington State Animal Response Team said Gemma appeared to be in good health and had water and hay. She was given a painkiller for some bruising. Rescuers used a fire hose to wrap around the 800 pound horse and pull her up to a ledge. She was walked out from there. To make this story even more remarkable, it was an 'animal communicator' that led searchers to Gemma. Joan Ranquet was contacted by Gemma's former owners, and says after seeing only a picture of Gemma, she was able to make a connection and feel where the horse was.
“I connected with the horse, and the most important sense I got was the sound of rushing water," said Ranquet. "I didn’t know if it was rushing water or a freeway, just a very loud, loud sound.”
This might sound a little crazy, but Saddle Rock Stables owner Barbara Linstedt says once she heard from Joan, she was able to find Gemma within five minutes.
Thirty responders from King County Search and Rescue helped with the rescue.
That psychic led the people to the pony, right? Only in the sense that a broken clock is right twice a day if you happen to look at the right time. Where the horse was lost, it had to go toward a busy, noisy road or toward rushing water no matter which way it went. The property was surrounded by noisy roads and rushing water. When the owners were told that the horse was near the sound of a busy road or rushing water, they could have looked in any direction, but they just happened to look in the direction that the horse went. Also, if your horse is missing, you can guess it’s not standing in the middle of the street or someone might have told you. Horses do get stuck in ravines, so a ravine is a place you should go looking for a horse well before you call an animal communicator. They could have found the horse days earlier if they had bothered to look. It's a horse, so Gemma would have been visible if they had looked in that ravine in the first place. To say that they found the horse because of the psychic is wildly inaccurate. They found the horse because they finally looked in the place where the horse was, where they could have looked days earlier if they had done a thorough search.
Most importantly, how many times did this psychic claim to connect with a lost animal, but that animal was never found? To say that animal communicators are effective in finding lost animals because of one story where a horse just happened to be found in a manner that conveniently fit the psychic’s vague clues is equivalent to saying seatbelts in cars are deadly and should be avoided because you had an uncle who was burned in his car when he couldn’t unfasten his seatbelt. Statistics clearly show that seatbelts save lives, and research clearly shows that many methods, but not psychics, have proven effective in finding lost pets. If psychics actually helped find lost pets, I would recommend them whether I believed in it or not. Time after time, information from psychics is contradictory, vague, usually not helpful, and often detrimental to the search effort.
If animal communicators and pet psychics truly want to help find lost pets, they have an easy way to gain legitimacy and become useful (if it were possible). Simply, they can agree to fair and open testing. If a psychic says she can tell you where an animal is, then put an animal somewhere within a given physical area and have the psychic tell you where it is. Either a psychic can do it, or she can’t. Even if the psychic was right 25% of the time, that would be significant and useful. Every year for decades, a million dollars has been offered to anyone who can demonstrate that they have provable psychic or ESP abilities. That money has never been claimed. Even if a psychic didn’t want the money, you would think it would be important to prove the ability through scientific testing for the benefit of humanity, and all other species. If a person can receive information from an animal ten miles away, that is really important information, and it could be useful in all kinds of situations. All other professions that want to help people or animals--doctors, veterinarians, cab drivers, plumbers, police officers, animal control officers--do go through training and testing that shows they have some basic skills required. If psychics truly want to help lost animals, they will prove their abilities in scientific tests that can be reproduced and confirmed. The occasional story of a pet that was found in a circumstance that could be construed as fitting a psychic’s clue is not proof of any ability.
Furthermore, if a psychic can find a lost pet just using her mind, why are there any lost pets at all? If I had the ability to find a lost pet just by sitting at home and opening up a psychic connection to a lost dog or cat, I would be calling up 50 people per day, saying, “Buttons snuck out of the back gate and he is running loose on Clover Street, between 8th and 10th,” and, “Snickers pushed out the window screen and climbed up a tree in the Johnsons’ backyard.” Even if it wasn’t that easy, even if it took an hour of meditation to enter the correct mental state, you could still reunite a few lost pets every day. If psychics have the ability to help lost pets so easily and effortlessly, why aren’t they doing it more?
If you personally like the idea of animal communicators and want to believe in them, I suppose that does no harm to others. Before you recommend an animal communicator to the owner of a lost pet, you have an obligation to be sure you aren't making a bad situation worse. You should only recommend those psychics who have been able to prove their abilities in controlled scientific studies, which is exactly none of them.
Below is another example of why you shouldn’t use a pet psychic: even if everything this person said was true and somehow verifiable, it would not be the least be helpful in finding a lost dog. The dog was lost in a farming community, and the imagery provided would be typical for hundreds of places within ten miles of where the dog was last seen. Time spent chasing down such clues could have been spent putting up large, colorful posters, which have been proven to be effective.
----------------------------------Begin dog owner’s post----------------------------
Below are the notes that I took while on the phone with him. This was all the information that we could get at the time. We really need to focus on these notes and go from there.
There are similar things that come into play with what [name removed] told me and what [name removed] (the other communicator I've been working with) has told me.
***I DON'T CARE TO HEAR ANYTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT THIS. SO PLEASE, IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING NEGATIVE KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.***
I'm not giving up on [the lost dog] and I'll do whatever it takes to find him. <3
NOTES:
wire baskets that hold fruit/food "daniels parents house"
customized exhaust pipes (possible where [lost dog] is or could be around)
fields of wheat ready for harvest (we both got goosebumps, he started choking up/tearing up)
combines/thrasher piece of equipment that goes through wheat field when ready to harvest.
proximity in a farm to wheat farm, strong yes
no manure smell
he has smelled it and passed through it but not there now
[the lost dog] is not tied up, or kept where he cannot get out, not captured
he is alive he says he is not deceased
wheat field field/farm right now
small air strip/small crop dusters
contact wheat growers
any air craft over the wheat fields/ very close to being harvested
is red a variety of wheat? *checked this, yes it is*
fairly quiet location
busy rd or hwy, where you can kind of see it but not hear it
hwy is higher than field or elevated
go south from where he went missing
he had asked if we had steak last night, my answer "yes…… we had carne asada” [the lost dog] knew that. Food is relatively easy for him to talk about” CRAZY….WHAT THE
navy dark blue some sparkles motorcycle possible speed boat ……..again…seeing the exhaust pipes
sam? Samantha?
no to a river
definite yes to a canal
skittish, works perimeter, side step, you may have have something i want but i dont trust you (when [psychic] asks if he is being approachable)
He took off just about 5 o’clock the day he went missing….( I didn’t tell him that……)
He asked if we recently left out food for him, dry food. Yes we did. knew about it but it was not near it at the time. ( when i pray, I also talk to [the lost dog], I told him we had left food and water out for him).
Cell tower or maybe some kind of radio tower long antenna near where he is right now
farm that he is at now, when you look off to the distance you can see the hill with “match box cars” because they are so small from where he is at, he also cannot hear the cars. Road way is elevated with hills elevated.
roadway runs parallel to the foothills
he’s living off of little ground squirrels, he’s seeing something that feeds off the grain that he is catching. Rabbits also.
He asked if i have had any dreams of [the lost dog], I have had ZERO dreams no matter how hard i have tried. He said” thats very good….that means they are not in spirit” He said it doesn’t matter if friends or strangers have had dreams of him, If you his owner have not had any that is a HUGE indicator that he is still alive (also helps that [the lost dog] told us he is alive, which makes it even more so).
^ So weird….because of all the people that told me their dreams about him….I seriously have not had one, and i kept asking myself why, even if I look at his pictures right before bed or pray and talk to him, Still i would not have dreams. Apparently this is a good sign, because if i were to dream about him it would mean he is possibly in spirit.
He’s found a place that he is staying sustained in. Found some other dogs that he has made friends with. Possibly all white dog, something similar to a great Pyrenees
The end of the session:
[the psychic], basically was telling [the lost dog] to be safe, if he sees someone he can trust to get him home and call me then approach them, watch out for rattlesnakes, do not chase chickens especially if someones trying to shoot him off their property, DO NOT cross busy roadways.
He thinks [the lost dog] is alone right now, on his own.
In the very beginning he got a strong connection *we both got goosebumps* (that was EXTREMELY weird, like hard core goosebumps out of nowhere. I’ve never had that before) He said he would not have gotten this connection if [the lost dog] and I did not have a strong bond.
$5000 REWARD NO QUESTIONS ASKED
MISSING SINCE 3-9-16
Please contact me ASAP at [deleted number] if you know anything or see him.
-blue eyes
-65lbs
-gray white black
-neutered
-white tipped tail
-distinct markings between eyes and on neck.
POSITIVE THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS PLEASE!
--------------------End of post from dog’s owner--------------------------