A VOICE FOR THE SILENT MAJORITY

What if your horse could talk? What if it could tell you what had happened to it before you owned it? What its greatest pleasures, fears and secrets were? What if there was someone who really gave animals their voice, who saw into their hearts, minds and souls and was able to share the innermost workings of their psyches with you, the owner?

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Sounds improbable, too. But that is what animal communicators and equine psychics claim to do. I managed to track down someone who can give your horse a voice, and it is so freeing for you both to stop staggering around in frustration and to clearly understand each other at last.

Unfortunately this mythical being lives in Scotland, far away on the other side of the world. But thankfully she can weave her magic via the modern miracle of the telephone and as long as you’re prepared to pay for the call, the possibilities are endless.

Scotland’s best kept secret is called Anne Dee. She is a fourth generation psychic who knew she was different from childhood, and while she was used to the ‘gift’ which ran through the female line of her matriarch cal family structure, she was mercilessly teased at school for being other worldly and ‘knowing’ things that she couldn’t know through normal channels. The desire to fit in to so-called ‘normal’ life saw Anne ruthlessly trying to shut down her psychic ability and phenomena, taking mundane secretarial jobs after finishing school, and then training as a counsellor and working for the local authority. When she finally found peace with her gift, she did tarot readings for free for those in need, and in 1992, quite by accident, discovered that she could hear horses, dogs and cats, as well as humans. Such was the accuracy and effect of her communications with our silent friends that she has garnered a clientele as diverse as the animals she talks to – from thoroughbreds racing for honours and glory, polo ponies, hunters, hacks and everything in between. Anne travels all over the British Isles visiting her equine clients and their owners, trainers, riders and jockeys. She charges a £50.00 fee for a consultation (about A$100.00) but, quite frankly, the information is priceless.

Purely in the interests of effective journalism, you understand, I agreed to see how, and if, psychic communication with horses worked. I was told that I needed to have the horses with me at the allotted time of the phone consultation. With the time difference between the UK and Australia that meant that three of us were hanging around in the dark and the cold one wintry night, watching the minutes tick by until our 8pm slot (10 am UK time). I had visions of having to hold the phone up to the horse’s ears, and didn’t know which horse to choose for the consultation . . . but I needn’t have worried on either count. I was able to settle myself in a chair and take notes while Anne channelled information from the horses, and when I explained my ‘which one?’ dilemma, she immediately said that she was being told that they were a job lot – where one went, the other was bound to follow – which is true!

Anne knew absolutely nothing about my horses. No pictures, no history, no names, no nothing. And yet, the information she provided me with was staggering in its accuracy, spooky in the reactions it prompted in the horses, and even the facts that there was no way of corroborating had the distinct ring of truth.

How does she do it? What is ‘psychic’, anyway? We are all born with an innate ability to see, hear and feel more than tangible physical reality. Some work to develop their ability, some gain greater insight through trauma, near death experience or experience of abuse, and most people choose to ignore their extra-sensory perception – the so-called ‘fifth’ sense. But we all either follow or ignore our ‘gut’ instincts, unexplained ‘feelings’ about people, places and things, visions, dreams or unexplained voices. It’s a personal choice whether to expand into the other realms, or securely barricade ourselves in this one! Most horse people are practical, down-to-earth, no-nonsense cynics and sceptics but even they will wax lyrical about the incandescent beauty Mother Nature serves up for us, and the almost spiritual connection they have with their horse and with whatever they call God, through their relationship with these magnificent, primitive, elegant beasts.

And most horse people would love to know what makes their horses tick. Anne undoubtedly has a natural gift for communicating beyond the earthly realms, but she has honed and nurtured it in order to be a clear channel for those who have no other voice but her.

So what did she find? What did she tell me? Some things that I already knew – like the little one is trouble and into everything, and knows better than anyone else . . . that she’s too clever, bright as a button and needs constant stimulation and play and would live in the house if she could. But also that the enormous weight gain and subsequent laminitis she had last year was more to do with her hormones than her feed (although getting in the chook run and gorging on corn didn’t help!), that she was of mixed parentage, not pure bred as I had always thought. She was a ‘mistake’ I knew, but the breeder had always assumed that it was a stallion of her own kind that jumped the fence – the psychic said no, the stallion was much bigger than the mare which explains her enormous body on small, stick-like legs! And also that the reason she turned so nasty over the laminitis was because the pain was so intense and so awful that she was terrified that she was going to be put down so she wouldn’t let anyone near her in case that was their objective. I was also told that she was allergic to something she was eating (acorns) and had digestive tract problems, probably candid and liver issues and that her constant itch is an allergic reaction – from the inside out, not the outside in.

The horses were absolutely still and silent during this. No movement at all. None of the normal hoof shuffling, tail twitching or head shaking. That alone was fascinating.

The other horse was a much greater voyage of discovery. I had always known that something terrible had happened to her but nobody knew what. When I got her she was a basket case and I only took her on because the other options were too horrible to contemplate. And in the brief moments she was good, like the girl in the nursery rhyme, she was very, very good – but when she was bad she was vile! I also knew that she had something important to tell me and this is what it was: (bearing in mind once again that I told Anne precisely nothing about her or her history) Anne said that when she was between 4 and 5 she was trained for eventing (she was sold into polo as a six year old) and she fell down one of those ditches on the other side of a jump and landed on her back, on the saddle, with her legs in the air and was stuck down the deep dark hole for several hours until they managed to haul her out with a sling and a tractor. Which explains why she is the most claustrophobic of horses, terrified of dark spaces and has always been sore in the pelvis and back? Now this might all sound like a very convenient fairy story, but while Anne was telling me this, the horse moved around from standing behind me and came to stand right beside me, nudging the pen with her muzzle as I wrote, looking me deep in the eye, and then licking and chewing, licking and chewing as if to say ‘that’s my story, now you know’. It was as if her whole life made sense! She’s been so scared of what might happen that as soon as you are on, she wants to get you off, and she hates saddles – a) because she landed on one and it hurt and then b) she went into polo where the saddle crushed her withers and Anne said her feet were kept too small in polo and basically she was in pain which made her impossible. What was also amazing is that I have recently been teaching her to jump (just as groundwork, initially) and the panic she has demonstrated has been phenomenal and yet when she jumps she does it beautifully. So now we know!

Anne recommended some homeopathic remedies for each horse and that was it. I felt that the veil had been lifted, we had all been healed and awakened during the session and that I had been given more understanding, empathy and compassion for my horses and their stories.

I can’t recommend this process highly enough. If you have a horse with a problem, and/or you don’t know its life story, this is a fantastic way of learning the horse’s history and understanding its psychology BEFORE you start to encounter unexplainable problems – whether physical, emotional or behavioural.