Pet psychics help animals find themselves

By DAVID USBORNE

NEW YORK - The New York Metropolitan Hotel has a new offer for guests with pets. Called the "Privileged Paws" frequent-stay programme, it promises a free in-room meal and water bowl - fluoride-enriched, of course - for any dog or cat after five nights. After 30 nights, Fido or Felix gets a free one-hour session with a pet psychic.

This is not the management trying to be funny. (Any dog kept for a month in a 12-floor hotel room on Lexington Avenue would be entitled to a little stir-craziness.) Rather, the Metropolitan is responding to the newest fad among New Yorkers; psychic counselling for stressed-out pets.

The human inhabitants of Manhattan, with their numerous hang-ups, love to spend hours a week on the therapist's couch, so why shouldn't their four-legged companions? Nearly every other indulgence is available to them in the city, from dog spas and pools to dog massage parlours.

It is the job of the psychic to talk to pets about what ails them and what they need. "They give their viewpoint on what is happening with them," says Penelope Smith, the pioneer in the field, who consults on pet communication from her home in California. "Most animals will answer questions about what they think and want."

Among those struggling to keep up with demand in New York is Joanna Seere. "Business is booming," she said. Seere, who has been peering into the souls of pets for 15 years, had just got off the phone from a one-hour meditation session with an Airedale and its owners.

The dog, she said, was showing signs of "fearful aggressive syndrome", because a new baby was expected in the household.

Calling herself a "telepathic communicator" as well as an "animal psychic", Seere said meditation was central to her work. Usually, an owner sent her a photo of the pet and consultations were done on the phone for $US90 ($220) an hour. "Meditation is to help animals find themselves, to find balance and to find wholeness," she said.

No one should be surprised, Seere said, that New York animals needed a little more attention paid to their inner selves. They, too, felt the pressures outside. "It's chaos on the streets," she said. And nerve-shredded New Yorkers needed to lean on their animals to preserve their own inner peace.

"Here, like in other big cities, our animals become family members and they mean as much to most people as their partners and children. "

Determining the extent to which animals think and have emotions is an area of serious scientific endeavour. One of its foremost researchers is a British biochemist, Richard Sheldrake, the author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. A co-researcher, Pam Smart, said: "Through the evidence he has gathered, it does strongly suggest some pets do have a telepathic connection with us."

Still, even Seere admits not everyone finds it easy to take her and other pet psychics seriously. "I am not surprised. For a lot of people it's a leap. But to me it's a leap of the heart."

- INDEPENDENT