Do psychic pets exist? Nearly half of all dog owners believe that their pets have some psychic abilities
Would you say that your dog or cat is psychic because it walks over to its feeding bowl and stares at it? Probably not. In all likelihood they are probably just trying to tell you that they are hungry. On the other hand, if you are a dog or cat owner, you may have experienced times when you were certain that your pet was able to read into your emotions. Perhaps your dog or cat come to you and stare at you forlornly when you were feeling sad, sick, or lonely? Or maybe your dog showed uncharacteristically aggressive behavior towards a person you later found out was not a good person? At times it can seem uncanny how our pets seem to sense or know certain things. While many skeptics may doubt that psychic pets do in fact exist, there is strong evidence that our pets do possess some psychic abilities.
Many dog and cat owners firmly believe that their pets are psychic and connected to them telepathically. One survey conducted by Dr. Robert Sheldrake of Cambridge University in the 1990’s found that 45% of dog owners and 30% of cat owners in California and England firmly believed that their pets had demonstrated some psychic abilities. Intrigued by the results, Sheldrake decided to investigate the matter further. Specifically, he wanted to find out if the claim by many dog owners that their pets knew in advance when a family member was about to return home could be scientifically proven to be true.
In one very well documented and controversial case, Sheldrake was contacted by a British woman named Pamela Smart who felt that her pet terrier, Jaytee, could psychically sense when she was about to return home about 10 to 20 minutes before she actually returned. Jaytee’s seemingly unexplainable ability to do this had been observed by other members of the family over many years. In fact, they claimed, Jaytee could even anticipate Pamela’s return even at odd hours that didn’t adhere to any kind of a regular daily schedule.
Sheldrake spent several days in the Sharp’s home observing and videotaping Jaytee’s behavior. In his initial research, Sheldrake found that Jaytee was able to successfully predict Pamela’s return ten minutes to twenty minutes in advance in 84 out of 98 instances. Although Sheldrake’s findings were held to be controversial by other researchers, years later he was able to document similar results with an entirely different dog and family. While Sheldrake’s research still stands as very promising evidence of psychic pets, no other similar studies have since been conducted.
In other instances though, researchers have found that dogs will often bark or exhibit other odd behavioral before an earthquake is about to strike. The best example of this occurred in 1975 when the Chinese government ordered a million people to evacuate the City of Haicheng right before a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck. They did so because they observed many of the city’s dogs behaving erratically just a few days earlier. The Chinese to some extent still rely on dogs to predict earthquakes to this day. While they haven’t been perfect in their predictions, they have proven to be more reliable than Chinese geologists.
So, do you have a psychic pet? The next time you notice your pet doing something out of the ordinary, stop and think about it for a moment. The best way to find out is by observing their behavior. Is your dog or cat doing something instinctively or are they in fact a psychic pet?