I continue to read Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home... by Rupert Sheldrake. It is listed on the Old Sudbury Bookstore under the section on Dogs. http://oldsudburybookstore.com/id16.html

I have heard of seeing eye dogs but I have never heard of dogs that can warn a person that they were going to have a seizure. Apparently many people who are epileptic rely on their dogs to warn them ahead of time that they will have a seizure so that they can prepare themselves to stop from getting injured or to remove themselves from public situations.

Many many stories in this book relate the unexplained power of not only dogs but many other animals. From a cow able to locate her calf miles away from unfamiliar surroundings to a Mina bird able to locate her sick companion in a hospital room to a dog able to track down its owner across the English channel at war in the field in France.

If these stories are to be believed the explanation is difficult to track down. Dr. Sheldrake proposes a kind of field; a morphic field that connects all living things like a kind of elastic band that can be stretched and used to navigate and to communicate. Even though there are limited data to show that some humans at least still can use these powers for the most part humans have lost this ability.

I am near the end of this book and it has been a fascinating read indeed. The writing style is unassuming and for the most part the data is presented and a hypothesis that could explain the phenomena is introduced. The area of paranormal is often controversial and this book introduces as many questions as it does answers. But you have to start somewhere and as Rupert Sheldrake says even physicists will lend credence to his theories. -sak

I am continuing with the review of  Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home... by Rupert Sheldrake. It is listed on the Old Sudbury Bookstore under the section on Dogs. http://oldsudburybookstore.com/id16.html

The author collected many stories from pet owners that lend support to the amazing powers of these animals. I think all of us have heard stories about cats or dogs that have made unbelievable journeys home when lost a distance from home. An actual experiment was setup and performed with one such dog. It seems that the dog not only had a sense of direction but in some cases could hone in on alternate locations.

Alternatively there were also many stories of human to pet and surprisingly pet to human telepathy. In these cases the sense of danger or the sense that there was something wrong seemed to get communicated mysteriously. Some of the collected stories recount how a human reacted at a distance when their pet was ill.

All in all this book is an excellent repository of amazing animal stories and a very good summary of the research done in this area. The author presents a hypothesis and carefully expands on it into the many branches of extraordinary animal abilities. This book is an excellent resource since it goes the mile in categorizing the diferent types of animal powers. There is also much discussion and speculation of the extension of these powers into humans and the hint that we have somehow lost these inate abilities. I will continue to read this great book and report back soon. -sak.