To find out why a dog bites or a cat avoids the litter box, ask animal communicator Joan Ranquet

She listens to the animals

The horse whisperer whispers. Joan Ranquet gets to listen.

She’s listened to the typical domesticated animals: dogs, cats and horses. But owls, monkeys, pigs, sheep, goats and even an elephant have told her what they thought about things.

“I was always connected to animals. This career picked me,” said Ranquet, an animal communicator for nearly 15 years. She rode horses while growing up in the Bellevue area.

Thousands of pet owners, horse trainers, barn managers and veterinarians have asked Ranquet to help them troubleshoot medical issues and stimulate healing. Using telepathy – the transference of pictures, words and feelings – she also has helped clients deepen their ability to care for and understand their animals.

She has been featured on television shows such as “Dateline,” “The Today Show” and “Good Morning America,” and on the AMC Channel. Her favorite televised animal adventures to date are talking to the horses at the Kentucky Derby for MSNBC and talking to the baby elephant, Hunsa, at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle for KING channel 5.

People have contacted her to find out things such as why the cat isn’t using the litter box, why the dog bites and why the horse won’t jump. Other times, people need help connecting to their animals or saying goodbye to a dying pet.

Usually, she’s the last resort with people, as she’s been met with a bit of skepticism. But after she helps them figure out their animals, she turns people, like Ruth Nielsen, into believers.

The Seattle resident, who is featured in Ranquet’s new book, “Communication with All Life,” was having problems with Max and Tonka, her Bernese Mountain competition dogs. She had met Ranquet through a friend and called on her for help.

“Joan was in Colorado and I was in Seattle and I really didn’t see what she was going to do for me over the phone,” Nielson recalled. “The shocking thing about it was Joan got on the phone and the dogs were sitting there and she started telling me about them and she’d never met them, but she described their personality perfectly.”

Once Ranquet had Nielsen’s attention, the frustrated dog owner said she felt disconnected with her dogs during competitions.

Ranquet told her she had to “get her head into the game” because the dogs were just picking up white noise from Nielsen.

“I just figured they had it memorized and we’d go in the ring and they’d do it,” Nielsen said. “I started realizing I had to do more than just teach them to go through the motions, that there was a big mental part to it.”

After Nielsen started thinking more positively, Max and Tonka ended up being named the top dogs in their categories. Later, Tonka entered a beauty contest.

“I just started telling him how good-looking he was and he won best of breed and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god!’ This mental stuff is frightening. It’s so scary that it works that well,” she said.

When Ranquet encounters her animal clients, whether it’s via phone or in “person,” she begins with quieting her mind. Over the phone, she asks clients to send a picture of the animal, as the energy still transfers from the picture, she said.

“If I can get really quiet, sometimes I get a flurry of images and then I start breaking it down and asking questions,” she said. “It’s like a little puzzle I have to put together.”

On other occasions, she picks up on something the animal is feeling, actual words they transfer or a combination of images, feelings and words.

We’re all sending and receiving information, she said, adding that anyone can communicate this way if they make themselves aware.

To illustrate her point, she asked an audience at a launch party in Bellevue for her book to break up into sender/receiver pairs and participate in a telepathic game. She asked the senders to think of a common red object. Receivers were asked to quiet their minds and try to receive the sent images.

One woman said she received a fire engine, but her partner had sent an image of an apple. Another participant said he had sent out the image of a fire engine and perhaps the woman in the other pair had received it.

It is common to pick up on other’s images and feelings, especially for animals, Ranquet said.

“If a person comes home from work and they’ve had a bad day, they accidentally put it on the dog and then the dog starts acting out and the next thing you know you’ve got a bad pattern going on,” she said. “I always say that emotions become a pattern. Feelings are like ocean waves – they come and go.”

Ranquet has helped people and animals, like Sierra Parshall and her dog Snoosh, to unlock these patterns. A few years ago Snoosh, now 16 years old, led Sierra, now 13, down to the barn where her mother, Julia, had been kicked in the head by a horse. Julia was airlifted to the hospital and when she finally came home, Snoosh became depressed.

“For four weeks, Snoosh wouldn’t get more than two feet away from me,” Julia recalled. “She wasn’t eating. We had to force her outside to go to the bathroom.”

From a phone in Florida, Ranquet “chatted” with Snoosh. She learned that Snoosh had internalized the situation and negative feelings.

“She felt like she wasn’t helping enough,” Ranquet said of the feelings she received from the dog. “Sometimes when you just let an animal get it off their chest, it just realizes the stuck emotion or pattern. It’s like they finally get to talk about it and let go of it – sort of like therapy.”

By the end of the phone call, Julia was still chatting with Ranquet when “Snoosh took a deep breath, got off the bed and walked away,” Julia said. “It was like she felt okay and could leave mom alone now.”

Sierra said she also had the chance to “spill out” her own feelings onto Ranquet, “so she’s good with animals and people.”