Off Track -- Horse Communicator

OFF TRACK

FEBRUARY 4, 2012

Horse Communicator

by Jordan Strickler

We are going way off track here. I was at the Fasig-Tipton sales a while

back, and I see this van advertising a "Horse Communicator." Well, I looked at

that for a bit and had a pretty good idea what my next article was going to be

about.

To learn more about this interesting occupation, I had the pleasure of

talking to Raphaela Pope, a horse communicator who has been featured on numerous

national and international radio and television programs. She is a practicing

telepathic communicator who has made her living for many years talking to

animals about life and death, about health and behavior problems, asking their

opinions and discovering their desires.

Horse communication is pretty much what it sounds like. It is the ability to

communicate with our equine friends to get a better idea of their emotions,

feelings and opinions.

Not quite Dr. Dolittle, but still pretty darn cool.

"Telepathic communication with animals is not as weird or as spooky as it

might sound like," Pope said.

The way telepathic communication works is simple. You send your thoughts to

the animal, and the animal sends its thoughts back. The communicator then

receives these thoughts as feelings, pictures, images or sometimes even words.

Lots of times it's a physical or emotional feeling. The animal can usually give

you symptoms of how they feel.

"Think of it like a radio that can be tuned to different stations if you have

the properly equipped receiver. It doesn't matter whether the animal is in the

same room, same neighborhood or even the same state."

Heck, they don't even have to be alive.

"It's pretty much exactly like talking to another animal. Just ask for a few

physical characteristics and you can communicate with them."

The majority of calls dealing with horses usually stem from physical issues.

People want to know how their horses are feeling. They tend to have more

physical issues than other species, Pope said. From all of the different things

we ask them to do, they tend to be affected both physically, mentally and

socially.

"One of the biggest things that people call about for performanceshorses will

be if they have pain that's keeping them from performing. We ask them to do a

lot of unnatural things."

Mentally, it turns out horses aren't actually that much different their human

counterparts.

"I talked to a racehorse once who was so pumped because he had just won a

race. Well, it turns out it was nose and nose, but I wasn't telling him that he

was second. He thought he had won, and I didn't disillusion him."

And are racehorses as cocky as their owners?

"Oh God yes. They know if they've done well. You bet they do. If they've won

a race, they will tell you. Sometimes they'll give you a blow-by-blow of the

race. You can feel the physical sensations; the dirt hitting you in the face and

hitting you in the chest. It's very visceral."

Also like humans, they can feel downcast after losing.

"They can't console themselves and say it was good conditioning, they just

know they didn't do well. It's very hard on them."

According to Pope, we are all born with the ability as kids but most of us

lose the ability to speak with animals as we grow older.

"Many children do it, but most of us give up this means of communication when

we learn to speak. Like a lot of animal communicators, I was born just loving

animals, in particular horses."

The good news (unless you really don't want to know what your cat thinks of

you) is that you can regain the ability via Animal Communicator workshops like

Raphaela did when she began to pursue her career.

"I just thought, God, if this for real, this would just be the coolest thing

I have ever heard of. I became convinced that it was for real. It is a pretty

fascinating world. I took a bunch of classes and started assisting at workshops

and just gradually started developing my skills."

If this is true for her, it should also be true for you and me. With this

encouragement, I began the process of attempting to communicate with my Quarter

Horse.

Unlike Ms. Pope, however, my horse could not be reached for comment.

***

If you have any type of equine job you have always been curious about, but

can't blindly call anybody out of the blue with the "reporter" excuse, drop me a

note at

Jordan.Strickler@brisnet.com. I'll find someone who will put up with my

questions so I can answer yours.