Ambassadors for the Wild

A Conversation with Penelope Smith
Woman sits next to a coyote in a grassy field

Penelope Smith is a revered founding pioneer in the field of interspecies telepathic communication since the 1970s. Her visionary work has been featured in newspaper and magazine articles, in numerous books, and on radio and television. Her training program has guided the unfolding of generations of professional animal communicators. She wrote the popular classic books Animal Talk, When Animals Speak, and Animals in Spirit. Penelope believes that everyone is born with the power to communicate with other species, and that although that is long lost for many of us, it can be regained—for the benefit of all beings on earth. For more information, visit animaltalk.net.

In this conversation, Penelope shares her thoughts on what makes Earthfire unique, and why that’s so important.

Transcript

Susan: So, Penelope, it’s an honor and delight to have you here. I’ve known you for a lot of years. And really, my respect for your work has just grown, the depth of your understanding and what you bring to animal communication. You’re really known as the grandmother of the interspecies telepathic communication movement. You started as a little girl, and you’re widely known and respected. One of the reasons I respect you is because I think you really try very hard to stay true, rather than add fantasy. I have a lot of respect for how ethical you are. And for that reason, I’ve often invited you here to do retreats, which you’ve done, and you’ve been able to have some remarkable insights with some of the animals. And as the world’s getting in a more and more difficult state, I’m more and more committed to what we’re doing here. So, now that you’ve been here, and you’ve been to quite a few other places in your process of helping people communicate with animals, what do you see as Earthfire’s contribution?

Penelope: I feel that Earthfire has really a unique focus on animals being ambassadors of the wild animals. It’s a unique voice in the wilderness and for the wilderness. We need as many voices as possible on behalf of the animals, and not just the domestic animals who we all are close to. But often people don’t feel close to wild animals. They feel like, well, they’re out there and they’re kind of scary. But the animals here at Earthfire, many of them very consciously want to connect with people. And so Earthfire grounds the whole feeling of who the wild animals are because they’re here, a variety of species of animals who have been rescued or otherwise come to Earthfire to be ambassadors for the wild animals. They are here for people to get close to, to see, to hear their stories, to feel them as fellow beings rather than as scary critters who might hurt them. And that’s very, very important.

I’ve seen people come here, we’ve communicated with many of the animals here and they’ve changed. The people change. They get it. They start to feel like, oh, these are the beings of the earth. These are our friends; these are our family. And they’re very moved. And so that, to me, is how you reach people. You touch their hearts. And so the animals here, and your focus on helping people to hear their stories—and helping humans who may have been socialized out of any connection to nature and any connection to wild animals—to start to come back, because if we don’t come back, we aren’t going to have a planet here. Well, we’ll have a planet here, but there won’t be any species on it anymore, including the human species. I feel it’s imperative that we have these ambassadors be heard.

Susan: You talked about how people are moved and changed. You also have come here and spent time with the animals, and you’ve seen the animals be moved and changed.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: In some really interesting ways.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: If you want to talk about that at all.

Penelope: Yes. When animals realize that they have a purpose—that they, too, can affect others—it changes their life around, too. When they see that people respond to them and listen to them, it makes a huge difference. So you have some animals who weren’t conscious at all that they would relate to people. And when people come and relate to them, besides you and Jean and the people here, they shift. It means a lot to them. And then they start teaching. They start moving into a teacher role. Well some, of course, are conscious of their teacher role from the beginning and reach out to people. Others aren’t necessarily. So, yes, I’ve seen some huge changes. Like Windwalker the cougar. In his later years, he became a teacher and became aware that there was a way for him to have a higher purpose. It was very moving to see him, how he consciously looked at each person and wanted to reach them. And felt more connection to his wild brothers. So, yes, very special.

Susan: So in a way, the way I see the work here is trying to help all of us awaken and become more conscious. I personally believe animals can and humans can. And that, like you just said, an animal might—especially if it’s been captive bred and here and never had any real purpose in life or understanding of why it was here—that we can help them raise their own awareness of who they are, and they can become more of who they are. I’ve seen this with animals here. I’ve seen them begin to change over time, to become richer and deeper and more responsive. And with the people. So I fundamentally see my job as increasing awareness of all life, for all life, so that we are all in this together. If that make sense to you?

Penelope: Definitely makes sense. The “all in this together” is probably the most important thing that people can learn.

Susan: And we say it, but it’s a common phrase now.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: They can use it in the commercial. But if you really think about it, how profound it is.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: And how joyous it is.

Penelope: Yeah. And looking at the animals, that’s the difference. Not just we humans are all in this together. There are billions of other beings on the planet besides humans. We are all contributing and functioning together. Humans are the ones who have forgotten, who have let that go—to their detriment. And so, as we realize that more—and Earthfire helps people to shed that light—we all raise in consciousness. We all get better because of it. We all get happier.

Susan: There’s such joy in companionship when you start to tune into that and really believe we’re all in this together. I mean, what a fantastic family.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: Of life, that we’re part of. You said something to me once that was really interesting, which is that it’s not the animals who need the help so much as the people. We humans are the ones who really need the help.

Penelope: Yeah.

Susan: Would you like to share some stories of animals you’ve known here?

Penelope: So, today I had the honor to meet more animals at Earthfire that I had not met before. I haven’t been here for a while, and so there’s new animals who have been rescued. And some of them have pretty traumatic backgrounds that we saw today. And they each have their unique story. I’d like to talk about the three coyotes that we talked to and each of their unique ways of looking at the world. And so now I’ve lost his name—oh, he gave himself a new name. Give me the old name—

Susan: Shaman.

Penelope: No, the old name of Whistling Down the Wind.

Susan: Wild Boy.

Penelope: So there was a coyote. He’s called Wild Boy—was called Wild Boy. Susan wanted to me to address that he was very wild. And he did not seem very comfortable here. You were afraid to let him out in the garden because he was so wild that you couldn’t even get him back in. And you seemed a bit at wit’s end. Now, what do we do? Well, how do we handle him? How do we work with him?

Susan: Give him a good life.

Penelope: Exactly. How exactly how do we give him a good life? Even Jean, who is so good with the animals and so intuitive and communicates so well with them, he felt like, well, what do I do now with this? I always start out with animals by just connecting with them and finding out what they want to say, what they want to communicate. So he started communicating to me about how much he disdained people. Now, again, each animal is unique and not too many tell you what he told me today. And he was pacing around his enclosure, and just said, “I don’t like people. I don’t like being around them. They’re so stupid.” And he said, “They don’t know anything. They think they know things. They know nothing. I don’t belong here. I belong free. I belong out in the wild and never around people and cages.”

And then Susan, you brought up that there’s great dangers out there in this environment. That people poison coyotes and shoot coyotes, and they don’t have an easy life. And so I explained that to him, gave him the images not only of how good it is to be a coyote and be with other coyotes or be wild, but also that there’s a lot of dangers. And he was listening to me very well. And then he also felt he needed to express more about who he was. And then he started to feel like he started to get unsure after I showed him, because he sort of had this idealized image. He’d been rescued as a tiny coyote, and he really had no experience as a wild coyote or with a pack. And he sort of had an illusion that it was just all fantastic out there and it was horrible in here because he was around humans and in a cage, as he said. And after I said that to him, started listening in a different way, I could feel him get a little bit insecure—a feeling of, “Oh, maybe I don’t know everything there is to know.”

And then there was a change happening to him—just to feel like he could express himself to humans, that he could just say, “Hey. Back off. Leave me alone. I’m the smart one and you guys are not.” And so I could feel a shift in him. And Jean also noticed that there was a shift in his behavior. He started to listen more. He started to get a little bit softer. And I said to him, “The people here care a lot about you.” And he had to express that, “No, they don’t. They don’t care about anything and they don’t care about me. Otherwise, they would do what I want, you know?” But he kept shifting as he realized that, and he checked in with his sister, his fellow inhabitant. Tender is her name. She had a whole different perspective about what it’s like to be here. And he sort of bounced it off her like, “She’s saying the people care about us,” and Tender said, “Yes, they do. And they keep us safe.”

And so he had this back and forth with her a little bit at the same time, a back and forth with me. And by the end, Jean and I could both feel that he was willing to be worked with. I said, “Well, you know, we do have to protect you from the dangers. You’re not a wild coyote. You’re not trained by your parents how to live in a pack and live out in the wild. And so you’re in a different situation.” And I pictured to him that he could be out in the coyote garden. He could have some more freedom if he would also come back into his enclosure, so that he could be safe and taken care of. And he started to shift. And by the end of our conversation—maybe 20 minutes, half an hour, I don’t know how long it was exactly—I feel like he will be a whole different individual. He’s a very sharp being, very intelligent. He didn’t miss anything.

You know, he had his own attitude, though. His attitude was kind of in the way of him seeing just like it is with humans. His attitude was in the way of him seeing the full picture about how much people cared, why they wanted to both let him have the freedom of the enclosure where he had natural ground and grass and the beauty of the environment, but that he also needed to be protected. And so he got a bigger picture because you could feel his attitude kind of crumbling—his disdainful, “I know it all,” very macho kind of attitude. Like, “I’m the big one and you’re the nothings.” And that kind of shifted and he started listening. And I will see what happens with him, because it’s up to him, too. Obviously, it’s not up to me. But the conversation helped him, helped him to see a different perspective.

And so after that, he wasn’t pacing around. He was looking at us like, “Maybe they do understand something.” So that was of real interest. I liked him a lot. I mean, he’s sharp, you know, really a bright, bright individual.

So, you’d been calling him Wild Boy and he didn’t like that. He didn’t identify with that as a name. So I asked him, “What is your name or what name would you like? Humans need to have a way to connect with you with a name.” And he said, “Call me Whistling Down the Wind.” He said, “If you must call me by a shorter name”—because he noticed that you generally had shorter names—“you can ask my permission to call me Windy. But I prefer Whistle Down The Wind.” So that suited him. I really could feel the essence of him and his dignity being respected with that name. And I could feel that made a big shift in him, just having the right name that got his feeling of who he is.

Susan: Like being seen.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: Like we all need to be seen, it’s critical to all beings to be seen.

Penelope: Exactly. To be understood, to feel that we’re not just there, not just a thing.

Susan: It makes a feeling of connection.

Penelope: Yeah. So his sister, who is called Tender. I communicated with her. And she had also been communicating while we were communicating with her brother, Whistle Down The Wind. And she felt really opposite to him. She didn’t have any kind of negative attitude. She was scared. In general, she had a lot of fear—not just of people, but of everything, of the environment, of everything. So she felt very good that you protected her. She felt like you and Jean really understood that she needed protection, and that it was scary for her to go out in the enclosure and where the ground was and the grass was. But as long as she knew that she could get back in, that you would make sure she was tucked in, she was okay. But she had none of that attitude at all.

I, of course, have communicated with many thousands of animals, and they’re all individuals. This shows the uniqueness. Here is a brother and sister who both came from the same rescue background, [and they had] completely different attitudes. One cocky, and the other one very, like, “Protect me, please.” And feeling very good about the protection.

She also felt very good about her name. You know, I asked her, is that a good name for her? And she said, “I feel from you, when you say that name Tender, your heart comes out.” She could feel your heart and how much you cared for her. And that meant a lot to her. So she wanted to keep that name. She said, “I like that name Tender.”

And then our last coyote that we were to talk to—now, this is a more complicated one that went on for a while, and I continued later to do some healing work with him. His name was Shaman. He came in with that name from the person who had rescued him, kept him for a while, and then couldn’t keep him any longer and asked Earthfire to take him. And he was extremely traumatized when he came. He was very afraid. And Jean told me he did spend a lot of time with him in the cabin with him, getting him used to being near people, letting him sniff him and letting him contact him when he wanted it, until finally, after months, he was able to connect with him. So the problem that Jean was bringing up was that after all this time—after, he said, a couple of years—what happened was that Shaman bit him. And was it a number of times where he said ran up his arm and bit him?

Susan: Very sudden.

Penelope: Yeah, a very sudden shift—just shifted all of a sudden and bit him. And of course, this is something that Jean is so very used to—connecting with the animals and handling them. It was very surprising for this to happen, because he had had such good connection with him before. So he wanted to know what happened.

So, I asked Shaman the coyote about that. I said, “What happened?” And then his whole awareness started to almost like explode. First, I saw his mother and father and clan—well, his group of coyotes—and an explosion. Just like, “People are dangerous”—an explosion of light and like a loud sound—and “People are dangerous! They poison you. They blow you up. They do horrible things to you.” And his mother warning him, “Don’t ever trust people. Don’t ever trust people.”

Then he ends up being in with people, and suddenly one day, this all got triggered. And evidently his mother is a spirit—of course, she died a while ago—and she came in as a spirit and said, “Don’t trust him. He’s a human. Don’t trust him. And that’s when—and this hit Shaman like this. And I could see light exploding, and he bit Jean. And he got very confused. There was tremendous confusion. I could see tremendous confusion about who he was. He was not really connected to that feeling of [being] connected to the earth that you see in wild animals or well-balanced animals who are in sanctuaries who are very connected to the earth and feel good about themselves, feel they have a purpose in life and enjoy themselves. Instead, with him, there was a feeling of being split, being scattered. I felt that I needed to work with him more and do some healing work. I need to spend more quiet time with him.

But there was an opening for change. He was listening to everything, and it was almost like a plea for help. You know, just like, “Please, I don’t know how to handle all this. It’s all conflicting. This feeling of humans are bad. And here I am with humans. And this human was good to me. But no, he’s bad because he’s human. Very confusing. And what am I doing here, and what is this all about?”

So later, I continued with him by myself and in the quiet, and I discovered more about him. When I started to do healing work with him, and the healing energy was starting to flow through, suddenly there appeared a Native American person. And he said, “My name is Quito.” And this was the coyote in a previous incarnation. And then he showed me—as this Native American person, he said, “This is my clan. Coyote is my clan. I am Quito. And Coyote is my clan.”

And then he showed me explosions of a different kind. And they were connected to a railroad blowing apart the land—going through the Native American people’s land and blowing apart the land. So it was not just explosions of hurting coyotes in their den or shooting them, it was explosions of hurting the Native American people. There was a tremendous feeling of woundedness and anger in Quito.

And he did tell me that he wanted to be called Quito, that that is who he is, and he felt much more grounded when he discovered his previous identity, and also that there was a healing that needed to be done sort of from the top down. And the top was the coyote clan. It was very interesting how he showed me the picture. The coyote clan was here. All these communities that extended way out over the land in Idaho, all through the Great Plains, Dakotas. Just a huge, huge clan of coyotes and spirit coyotes. And then there were the Native Americans, and they were conjoined with but underneath the coyote spirits. But they were all one. But it was this giant configuration like this. And then there was the present coyote form of Quito down here. Sort of confused, but now getting more understanding of what’s happening.

And so the healing energy kept washing through, washing through, and I felt it was a healing of the land, of the Native American people who were connected to the Coyote clan—and in general, you know, because the healing energy just goes into the earth and it extends out into the earth. It keeps moving, moving, moving and goes where it needs to go.

I also felt like this being, Quito, had discovered his purpose for being here. And his purpose was this connection, both with Coyote—native peoples who knew they were connected to coyote and all animals—and the land. And this again was all connected with Earthfire and the mission of Earthfire.

So he kind of settled in and I feel a lot of the splits in his psyche that I could see in front of his face and all through his energy fields started to sort of wash away. They didn’t even, like, mend. It’s sort of like they needed to kind of wash down. And so he came to a place of stabilizing more in who he is. So I feel he will definitely be happier, but I don’t know the timeline—it’s his timeline—but what his timeline will be on really understanding his connection with people even better. And also this healing of the anger and abuse, really, of the past. And so it’s very, very beautiful. So that was, of course, very, very powerful.

But I feel these three coyotes are very connected. They’re completely individual. They don’t have to be connected physically, but they’re all very connected. They’re all here at Earthfire. And each of them drew me here today to tell their story and to be able to be more helped by the loving energy that you have here and the good communication. So it is really special for me.

I love coyotes. I had a very special friend here, Willow, who taught me how to howl properly. She coached me on it when I was here before. I would howl, and she would say, “Not quite right. Here you have to do it again.” And she’d show me. And then I’d do it. She’d say, “Better. You’re getting better.” And so I’d be practicing out there with her howling, and she had a special connection with me. She wasn’t real friendly with people. She didn’t like people very much at all. She was kind of like our friend Whistle Down the Wind, who really had a sort of disdainful attitude, but both being very, very sharp, didn’t miss a thing. Willow used to look at you, and she got everything, everything about you. And he’s like that, too. So Willow and I had a really good time, a good connection. And she’s still looking over Earthfire and helping things to continue in the mission of connection.

And they each connect in their own way. I mean, you have to respect that. See, that’s the thing: respecting wild animals as they are. You know, this is the key.

Susan: It’s not just respecting it. It is delighting in it.

Penelope: Yeah, well.

Susan: Delighting in how they each see things in a different way.

Penelope: People just look at them as things and I think once you start to respect them as well, there’s something there. There’s somebody there. Okay. Then you start to see the joy—you know, their joy in living and their uniqueness, their funniness. I mean, you laugh, I laugh. We laugh at their way of being. It’s just so delightful. You can’t help but laugh. You just go, “This is amazing!” While you deeply respect them, you still delight with them. Yeah, they’re incredible.

Susan: My own experiences—I love coyotes. But every single animal I connect with is incredible.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: Coyotes are incredible with their intelligence and resourcefulness. Bears are incredible. But every single once is incredible in their own way. Every single bear—two bear brothers here, totally different. The coyotes, totally different. It’s such a joy, because it means the world is so full of richness, variety, and interest in discovering them. It’s just wonderful.

Penelope: And if people take the lessons of connecting with animals like you have here at Earthfire and apply them to the wild animals, they will have similar results. Animals start connecting to you if you sit quietly and with respect. I have had some scary times with animals where I have just communicated with them. I’m not going to do you any harm. I’m just here to be with you. Or if you want me to go away, I will go away. Whatever you want. And to see the connection that they have and how they stop and they look at you, it’s fantastic. To me, every connection with a wild animal is so holy. I mean, it’s all in connection with any animals. I mean, I love all the domestic animals. Of course, my own animal family, and the wild animals, they can say yes or no. And when they choose to say yes? Wow, what an honor.

Susan: And they’re interested in us?

Penelope: Yeah.

Susan: They want to connect if they feel safe.

Penelope: Yes, yes.

Susan: That’s what’s so sad. People are afraid of them and don’t understand. They want to connect.

Penelope: For the most part. There are animals who do not want to connect.

Susan: Yes, but generally speaking.

Penelope: Yes, they would connect if they knew that people would respect their need to be free, alone, or together, or whatever. If they would respect them and listen to them.

Susan: Right.

Penelope: Then you have a whole different ballgame.

Susan: That’s what I meant. They’d be interested.

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: In good circumstances.

Penelope: They’re interested, they look back and they go, “What, an intelligent human? What, a human who communicates? What, a human who is connected?” And then they go and they look at you, and you sit there and you just delight in it. Just go, wow, this is so special to connect with this robin, or to connect with the squirrel or this bear or whoever it is.

What I feel has been lost—what people would be so much happier if they found again—is this basic connection to who they are as beings on the earth and our communication with all of nature. Now, I communicate with animals. I communicate with all of life—with trees, with the forests, with the rivers. Many people have a love for animals, their own domesticated animals. And they still feel separate from them, still feel they really can’t communicate with them. They wonder what their dog is thinking. They look at the animal as if they’re a strange being instead of a friend that they can communicate with. We’re born with the ability to understand other beings, we’re born with the ability to get what’s behind the words. We don’t have words when we start off. We’re taught words.

Behind the words are the thoughts and the feelings. We are born with the ability to get the thoughts and the feelings of other beings. And this is not just our fellow human beings. This applies to the animals, the plants, the rivers, the mountains, the air. All of these are living beings. Everything is alive. Everything communicates. Now, how did we forget that? Long story, but what happens in people’s socialization is they are separated and told words are the only thing. Anybody who doesn’t do words, there’s nothing else there. Well, there’s a whole world behind the words. And the animals are communicating that world, their thoughts and feelings. And we, as fellow animals, we have thoughts and feelings, too.

Now, what happens when people disconnect from the rest of nature? Their own nature? Nature is inside of them. We are part of nature. When they disconnect from that, they get miserable. They go to other substitute things. So they take drugs or they eat too much or they don’t. They sit on computers and look at screens forever. When we have lost our essential connection to the earth, to our fellow animal beings, we become more miserable. So then people get attitudes like we need to keep that all out. It’s out there. Nature is out there, and we don’t want it anywhere near us.

Well, nature isn’t all out there. It’s crawling. It’s all over us. It’s in us. And the thing that I’ve found is that people get so much happier when they can understand their fellow beings. So they have a little dog that they love or a little cat, or they see a bird in the garden that comes around every day and sings to them. And when they start to understand what their dog, cat, or bird friend is communicating, they get so much happier.

We’re taught to be disconnected. We’re taught that we’re separate. We’re something different. And they are lesser. Well, that’s all false. And it makes us miserable. So when we start to look at animals as fellow beings, as our friends who walk the earth with us, who have an important role—as every being, every species, every being has an important role—and that we’re all connected to each other, then people start to get happier. I mean, there’s all kinds of studies now about nature. Walks make people much happier—talking to the trees, smelling the air. I mean, these are all the things that are so basic and have been lost.

So I would say the basic thing that I’m doing—that I have done always—is that I never lost the ability to telepathically communicate. Telepathically is simply to bridge the gap, to feel the feelings of another, to get their thoughts, to get what their viewpoint is. When you can do that, then you feel happier. It is delightful to hear a robin tell you what they’ve been doing during the day when you can ask them and you can listen, and you can get their images, and you can get their feelings, and you can get their motions of taking care of their babies or whatever it is, or your own animal friends. When you don’t understand them—why is my cat jumping up on the counter when I don’t want him to? Well, get the feelings of the cat. Ask him what’s going on. What do you feel? And suddenly you start to feel the joy of jumping on the counter. And this incredible feeling and how natural it is to you.

So I feel that getting this back, recovering it, it’s something that’s in us. It doesn’t just belong to a few special people. People think, oh, it’s a special ability. No, it’s a birthright. It’s in us. And once we sit down, be quiet, let go of all the socialized thoughts that we can’t do this and that it’s only words that count, and when we stop all the chatter and just open to another being of any species, we start to get who they are, how they feel, and we are connected to them. We start to feel not as a separate being, but as a fellow being—as a friend, as family, as kin.
The Native American people and native peoples all over the earth understood this. Our ancestors understood this. This is not something new. This is something we desperately need to recover for our own mental health, for the sake of the environment, so we don’t poison ourselves and the entire earth. This is something we need to understand, because when we respect this ability in ourselves and we communicate with animals, we don’t do the same things anymore. We don’t walk in the same way anymore. We walk in a different way. We walk in a connected way. We don’t walk with cell phones in front of our faces, ignoring everything else around us. We look around and we go, oh, there’s a lizard. I wonder what that lizard is thinking. I wonder what his life is like. And suddenly, we’re connected in a whole different way. In a delightful way.

It requires a completely different orientation for a lot of people who are rushing around and very desperately trying to make it through their lives rather than living a life that’s full of deep delight and pleasure with the Earth. It definitely requires a different orientation.

I will tell you that it doesn’t matter where you live on the earth—doesn’t matter if you live in a city, in an apartment building, or if you live in a tent on the ground—you can connect. You can connect with the animals around you. You can connect with the earth. It’s all here. It’s part of us. Our bodies are made up of the earth. When we connect with the earth again, we feel better. So I would say the joy is open to you. And when you can connect in this way, you won’t think about disconnecting. You won’t think about salving your wounds with a lot of drugs or alcohol or watching the TV for 10 hours a day. You’ll want to be with the animals, with your own animal friends. You’ll want to experience life in a more connected, natural way that nurtures your soul.

Susan: And be part of the community.

Penelope: Yeah, the whole community of life on Earth. When we disconnect from it, we kill it, and we kill ourselves. When we reconnect, we are full. We are full—fuller and learning in a whole different way. Listen to the birds sing now. It’s so beautiful. How can we be without that? I won’t be without it.

Susan: Some of the communication is really very beautiful and simple, like “It’s a lovely, warm, sunny day to enjoy myself. That worm was delicious.”

Penelope: Yes.

Susan: It’s not like a hugely weird, esoteric scene.

Penelope: No. I remember one person. She followed me around and she kept asking me, “What is that cow saying? What is he thinking?” And I was going, “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The cow is just feeling, enjoying the earth, chewing on the grass, thinking nothing.”

“Well, what is he saying to you?”

Nothing. You know, unless you ask them something or you engage in some way, they’re not spouting up all kinds of ideas all the time. You know, they’re feeling, they’re enjoying life. I mean, this is one of the main messages from animals: enjoy life. What else is there? We’re here. Enjoy life.

You know, a lot of times people think it’s very complicated. And then you have these communications—like I communicated earlier with the coyote—where there is a whole history, and they need to communicate that. And they have trauma, too. And they have to recover and heal from things, too. It’s not all pretty out there. Sometimes it’s very difficult. And the interaction with humans can be very difficult, as you know from rescuing animals. I want to emphasize that it can be very beautiful. Join in the beauty part, and then the animals can relax and be who they are on the earth. If we can learn to relax and be who we really are, then they can relax more to.

Susan: Thank you.

Penelope: Thank you, Susan.

Susan: Thank you for being you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for your loving. Thank you for your hard work in your own life. It’s good, you’re on this earth.

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