Obsessed with animals from an early age, I spent every spare minute of my childhood volunteering at the local riding stables and pestering my parents for more pets. Naturally I wanted to work with animals, so I took the obvious route of qualifying as a vet and worked first in practice and then as a veterinary epidemiologist for several years, studying disease in populations of animals. However, my growing disillusionment with how many in the veterinary profession think of animals, compounded by the way in which the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in 2001 was handled, led me to search for other ways to help animals of all species.

Ever since I first heard of ‘animal communication’ I wanted to be able to do it myself. However, for a long time I thought that it was something that only particularly intuitive people could do – that scientists like me, with ‘logical brains’, were somehow excluded. It took innumerable workshops, books, distance learning courses, and finally the ACT2 programme, to convince me that this is something we can all do. All it takes is practice, and the ability to quieten one’s mind and ‘listen’.

I prefer to call the process ‘interspecies communication’, because it occurs between two individuals of different species. The purpose, and my intention, is to increase understanding between a companion, farm or wild animal and its carer. This is brought about by picking up feelings and impressions from a photo, which are then translated as best I can into words and conveyed to the person. This allows the carer to gain an insight into the situation, and to work towards a solution to behavioural or medical problems.

As a vet, I am particularly interested in working with physical problems, and I try to pick up feelings from the animal that can help the veterinary surgeon responsible for the case to target their diagnosis and therapy in the right direction. However, because physical problems cannot be separated from mental and emotional issues, I work holistically at all levels of the physical, mental, emotional and wider energy systems in order to interpret what is going on. I use acupuncture and Reiki in the treatment of my own patients.

I live in central Scotland with one human, three dogs, two ponies and a small flock of poultry. I feel very privileged to be able to use interspecies communication to help animals of all types to live more peacefully and happily in this human-dominated world.