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Talking to Animals

How You Can Understand Animals and They Can Understand You
May 14, 2017nellybells rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I've been reading Jon Katz for a lot of years. I remember his books on Lenore, Elvis, Orson, et al. I am so jealous of his life - "living the good life" with so many animals. This book has a different underlying theme from the other books. I'll call it spiritual communication/connection. Katz was deeply engaged by Bowlby's work on attachment theory. Katz saw this as the entryway to visualization. That's pretty vague, I know. Katz had to do a lot of inner work on himself, bring himself and animals to a calm state and imagine what he wanted his critters to do. He kept at it, and lo and behold he succeeded. Some examples: he had a 3000 pound steer and was successful in getting the steer to "stay". His farming colleagues were utterly gobsmacked. Another example: Katz had an unruly and unpredictable collie and Katz's farm was near a road with fast-moving traffic. After working with his dog, using food initially and then visualization, the dog would NEVER even attempt to cross the road, not for anything. Talking to Animals is Katz's autobiography much of the time, and biographies of his animals. Katz also gives examples of what happened when he, the human, really listened to what his animals were trying to convey to him. Sometimes it got a bit too woo-woo for me. But this was his experience, his truth, his way of seeing his life. He is sharing his journey and how animals made the journey possible.