Melissa Kaplan's
Herp Care Collection
Last updated January 1, 2014

Speaking out for animals

Animal psychic says she understands pets' pain

Tim Tesconi, Press Democrat, May 16, 2000

Animal psychic Marta Williams was talking to this horse the other day and he explained why he's been acting so unusual.

"'My rib, rib, rib is out,' were the words I heard when I tuned in psychically and asked him why he kept bucking," Williams said in recounting her session with the rank horse.

Williams said after relaying that information to the owner, an equine chiropractor was called. She said the chiropractor subsequently found the fourth rib on the horse's left side was painfully displaced. Once the rib was put back, the horse returned to his old wonderful self and stopped bucking.

The horse was in Minnesota and Williams was in her comfortable cottage in Graton when they "talked" telepathically. From her Sonoma County home, Williams said she talks to animals, mostly horses, dogs and cats, across the country or in other parts of the world. She never physically meets most of the animals she talks to.

All she needs is the animal's name and a physical description to cosmically connect. Most sessions cost $45, which includes a report to the owner on what's bugging his out-of-sorts pet.

Williams, 49, is a full-time animal communicator. When not talking to animals, she's teaching humans how to talk to animals.

She's heard all the references to her being the Dr. Dolittle of Graton.

"The Dr. Dolittle routine gets a little old. I've heard it so much," said Williams, a professed animal lover. She has two dogs, two cats and a horse.

Williams just returned from a teaching stint in Holland where young veterinary students were among those in her animal communication class.

"They were looking for other ways to find out what's wrong with the animals they will be caring for," said Williams.

Williams is among a growing legion of people earning a living by talking to animals. She considers animal communication part of a new science but admits she doesn't know how it works.

It definitely feels like magic but magic that works," said Williams.

She's called upon to find the cause of a dog's incessant barking, a cat with a urinating problem or the reason a horse hates horse shows.

Most mainstream veterinarians and veterinary medical associations give no credence to claims by animal communicators and pass them off as charlatans.

"The American Veterinary Medical Association does not officially recognize animal communicators in veterinary medicine. We say a trained veterinarian or animal behaviorist is the best person to pinpoint health or behavioral problems in animals," Sharon Granskog, spokesman for association, said Monday.

Like most animal communicators, Williams dislikes the term animal psychic.

"Psychic carries such a negative connotation. People think of psychics and they think flaky, spacy and new age," said Williams, educated as a scientist. She has degrees in resource conservation and biology and worked many years as a wildlife biologist.

Ten years ago she became interested in animal communication and took classes to hone the intuitive skills she says everyone has. To her amazement, she found that she could not only talk to animals but could understand when they talked back. Telepathically, of course.

Williams said she was a snickering skeptic herself and understands why most people toss off animal communication as quackery.

"I was the biggest skeptic of all," said Williams. "When I started out in this field, I was my own worst critic and was convinced that I was making everything up."

Sarah Reid, a Santa Rosa businesswoman, also was skeptical but is now a believer that Williams can converse with animals. Reid hired Williams to talk to her horse, Seraverdi, a half Polish Arabian and half quarter horse. She was concerned about Seravardi's overall health and happiness.

"I purposely didn't tell Marta specific things that I knew about Seraverdi because I wanted to test her," said Reid.

Reid said when Williams told her that Seraverdi told her in emphatic terms "I am not fat" she knew the horse had communicated with her.

Reid said the horse's weight had been a problem for some time and privately she had teased him when they were alone in the stall. She said she would poke his fat rear end and threat to cut back on the feed.

"I just told her I wanted to check out a medical condition. There's no way she could have known about the private discussions I had with Seraverdi about being fat," said Reid.

Williams said the scientist in her made her prove over and over again that telepathy was real before she made animal communication her profession. She compared what animals told her with background information provided by the animal owner.

"It took months of repeated, verifiable experimentation before I became convinced that animal communication could be highly accurate and that even I could do it," she said.

News researcher Michele Van Hoeck contributed to this story.