Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are
Coming Home byCynthia
Sue Larson September 21,
2000
I felt extremely fortunate to see Rupert Sheldrake in person
at Copperfield's Book Store in Santa Rosa, California on September 20th.
Rupert had come all the way from his home in England, to help promote his
most recent book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming
Home.
Rupert's quiet demeanor belied the profound effects that his thoughts and
ideas have had upon the world since he published his first book, A
New Science of Life in 1981. Sheldrake's concept of morphic fields
and interests in "radical research" have rocked the world. Sheldrake began
his evening talk by stating,
"Science as it's usually practiced is too
narrow. At any given time, science works within a paradigm or model.
Things that don't fit in are anomalies. There are a lot of things that
scientists can't explain, and I believe we can learn the most by studying
them."
Sheldrake explained how his concept of morphic fields is
that nature is organized in series of levels, in which higher levels
incorporate lower levels. There are organizing fields for everything we
observe. There are crystal fields for crystals, tissue fields for tissue,
society fields for society. Sheldrake explained,
"These fields evolve in time, and have a kind
of memory."
Sheldrake elaborated that there were three main areas of
unexplained behavior exhibited by dogs that showed up in his analysis of
more than 2,500 case histories:
Telepathy
Animals can read their owner's minds. Dogs
often behave as if they know the moment that their owner begins
preparations to start coming home, and cats can often tell whether they
have a veterinary appointment scheduled that day. Pets often know who is
at the front door or calling on the telephone before the door is opened or
the phone picked up.
Sense of
Direction
Animals can find their way home across great
distances
Premonitions
Animals can sense earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions in advance
Sheldrake proposed that the well-known ability of animals to
predict earthquakes and other natural disasters could easily be harnessed,
by setting up a toll-free phone number where people could report any
unusual animal behavior they observe, along with their geographical
location. Such a reporting system would be simple and easy to set up, and
could potentially save thousands of lives. There are numerous accounts of
wild and tame animals behaving in very peculiar fashion prior to
earthquakes in China, California, and Italy... yet few countries are
taking advantage of this natural reporting system.
Some of Sheldrake's most interesting findings are that dogs
and cats and other pets frequently know when their people are coming home,
from the very moment the people make the decision to come home... even when
it is an unusual time, and they are traveling in a different mode of
transportation. Sheldrake videotaped dogs waiting by their front doors,
and noted that when their people were not on their way home, dogs would
spend only 4% of the time by the door. From the very moment that their
people began the trip home, however, the dogs would spend an average of 78%
of the time by the front door. Even more interesting, these results were
reproduced when skeptics were the ones to conduct the experiment!
While cats do not wait by the front door as often as dogs do, they are able
to know in advance when their owners are planning to take them to the
veterinarian. Sheldrake contacted veterinary offices in London, where he
lives, to find out if they had observed any problem with cat owners keeping
their appointments. Not only had 64 of the 65 offices noticed such
problems, but some were no longer making appointments for cat owners,
explaining, "cat appointments don't work". It wasn't simply a problem with
cats noticing their baskets... they would actually hide as soon as they
sensed their owners were on the way home.
Cats have also been known to react to phone calls, in extreme cases by
knocking the phone off the hook and meowing into the receiver when their
beloved owner phones home... even from across the world. Many cats seem to
know when their owners are on the phone, just as many people report they
can tell in advance who a caller is.
Cats have another interesting talent -- they often seem able to inspire
their humans to open the door at precisely the moment they are ready to
walk through it. Sheldrake speculated that they don't like to be left
waiting in the cold or rain outside! I pondered this, noting that just an
hour earlier, I'd opened my front door precisely as the babysitter walked
up the step. We were both amazed by this, and now I wondered at the
connection between us that may have inspired me to go to the front door
(hands full of dirty dishes and trash I'd collected from the floor) and
open it.
Sheldrake pointed out that since humans are animals too, it stands to
reason that our psychic abilities may be dormant or atrophied... not as
well-developed as in animals... but "are part of our animal inheritance".
Sheldrake expressed his disappointment that a lot of parapsychology
research deals with experiments that do not emphasize emotional bonds and
significant things... which is a shame, because most psychic communication
is between those who deeply care for one another and involves important
information (not symbols on cards).
Sheldrake invites people to come visit his web site at:
