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Pet psychic tells her extraordinary ‘tail’ in ‘Open Mic’ book
Professional animal communicator and psychic medium Shannon Spring is a colorful conduit between the human and animal worlds. She receives messages from pets, and other animals, and passes them to their human caretakers: Answers to behavioral, emotional and medical challenges.
Spring’s Open Mic For Animals: Evidential Fairy Tails includes chapter after page-turning chapter about her inter-species success stories. Everything in the St. Petersburg Press book, insists the Sarasota-based author, comes down to one simple principle, what she calls The Golden Retriever Rule.
“Treat them the way they treat us, which is with unconditional love,” Spring explains. “With respect. And always, always, see things from their perspective. What is fun for you might not be fun for them. So always ask yourself ‘If I switched places with my dog, with my cat, with my horse, would I like having me as a pet parent?’”
Animals, Spring insists, are “always thinking and feeling, way more than people know. Be kind to your animals. It’s fine to play around and joke, but be aware our words and actions carry a lot of energy that then does affect their quality of life. And their longevity of life.
“There are so many genuinely kind, devoted pet parents out there that want to do right by their pets. And they might not be doing right by their pets, and just don’t know what they’re doing wrong. I don’t want to be bossy, I don’t want to be intrusive. I do want to be helpful.”
With a B.A. in Human Development and Communications from Boston College, a Masters in Education from The Citadel Military College, Spring is also a graduate of the National Speakers Academy. Through her company Just Humor Me, she gives keynote addresses and presentations – “from boardrooms to ballrooms, headquarters to hideaways” – on the role of positivity and humor in creative problem solving.
“I know how to help to get people who haven’t laughed in years to laugh again,” she says. “Because I have felt like them before.”
Similarly, Open Mic For Animals is often hilariously funny. Most animals, she has discovered, have a highly-developed sense of humor. And every one is different. “We all know that animals are very entertaining,” she points out. “But being entertaining is different from stand up comedy funny. Or from having a few good, sharp one-liners.”
Her journey to finely-tuned medium was not without its share of wrong turns and heartaches, as she makes clear in the early chapters. “I didn’t want it to be a book just about how I became an animal communicator. I wanted it to truly be a transformative story of ‘in order to do this work at the level that I’m doing it,’ I had to clean up my life’s litter box.”
Spring, who has trained with mediums all over the world, senses the energy of animals and is able to translate it. And yes, she’s encountered skeptics along the way. She often reminds people she’s the messenger, and not the message, and sometimes jokes that she’s good at her job because she’s “willing to be punched in the face.”
At the end of the day, though, “I just don’t care any more. Because I do know how it works. And if someone would just show me the due respect of letting me explain how the process works, I will answer their questions.
“They show up wanting to make fun of something – OK – but ultimately the animals have the last laugh. The spirits have the last laugh, and so do I.”
Animals, she says, “know everything. I’ve had animals bring up childhood traumas for people, I’ve had them bring up ‘Hey, the husband’s cheating on you’ or ‘Your employee is stealing from you.’ And also, they know how we feel about ourselves.”
Her own dogs – Grover, Kermit and Mayor Puppypants – each have their stories, and moments to shine, in the book. They all talk with her on a regular basis, helping through life’s ups, down and bumps in the road.
Open Mic For Animals is warm and fuzzy, and funny and friendly – and eye-opening.
“I wrote it because there are still so many people who don’t know that animals are a lot more than cute and cuddly,” Spring says. “Or – worse – something just here to serve people. I wrote to give animals a voice, and to have people take a look at themselves and say ‘What am I offering to animals?’
“You can see on your pets’ faces, the same way you can see on your children’s faces, how you are doing as a parent. Are you fun? Are you honest? Are you healthy? How do they feel when they’re around you? Animals are constantly teaching us who we are, and inviting us to be the best version of ourselves. Just like children.”
Open Mic For Animals: Evidential Fairy Tails is available from Tombolo Books, St. Petersburg Press and Amazon.
