Remember the Far Side cartoon in which a dog owner gives a wordy obedience lecture to his pooch, Ginger? All the dog understands is, "Blah, blah, blah, Ginger." Well, when Krista Cantrell chats with a mutt, it not only comprehends what she says, but chats back.
The Arizona-based animal trainer claims she can talk telepathically to beasties. She has been hounded by humans -- mostly owners of racehorses and show dogs -- ever since word got out that she could mediate between critters and their masters, help diagnose ailments and reveal a pet's pet peeves. "Krista has a true gift," says Roxanne Gustitis, one of the hundreds of Phoenix-area dog owners who paw out $100 for a half-hour office visit. "She's definitely authentic."
And convincing. "If I didn't have the stats to back up her claims, I wouldn't be talking to you," says Vince Francia, marketing director at Turf Paradise, the Phoenix oval. Once a hardcore skeptic, Francia charted the performances of 11 also-ran thoroughbreds who neighed in with Cantrell in 1995. In their next outings, he says, seven finished first, three second, and the other third. "Trainers may not believe in Krista's powers," he says, "but they believe in her results."
Lynn Posen was a nonbeliever until she hired Cantrell in a last-ditch attempt to save a horse a trio of veterinarians had given up on. "I thought, What the hell," says the former trainer. "It would be no worse than putting my money on a table, dousing it with lighter fluid and lighting a match." Cantrell, she recalls, gazed fixedly at the animal and slowly traced her hands above its body without touching. Posen remembers her saying, "There's something in the intestinal area -- a gray film -- affecting this horse's heart."
Though the vets on hand sniggered, Cantrell advised tubing the horse with buttermilk, yogurt and aloe vera. "We did," Posen reports, "and the horse not only got better overnight but almost won its next race." As it turned out, the horse had been overmedicated and couldn't digest its food. "Krista's remarkable," says Posen, who now swears by her. "What she does is like magic or voodoo."
Cantrell says she can get inside the head of just about any animal, and has had "valid conversations" with everything from fractious stallions to finicky spiders. She plugs into their wavelengths in English. "I don't have an ear for any other language," she says. "Animals pick that up right away. They know I'm a lost cause." She doesn't actually "speak" to them, instead communicating through paranormal powers she says she was born with. "To understand dog behavior," she writes in Catch Your Dog Doing Something Right, one of her three canine counseling guides, "you need to look through their eyes."
She's somewhat nebulous about how, exactly, she accomplishes this. "I connect with a space where there is no space and visualize the pictures that animals see," explains this practitioner of the ancient Chinese art of Qigong. "Think Tao: If you can describe it, it isn't."
Cantrell herself is eminently describable: Like the animal therapist Jessica Lange played in last year's Broken Flowers ("It took a lot of courage to say that," one of her human clients tells his lapdog), she's tall, watchful and comfortably middle-aged. Unlike her, she's given to bursts of Annie Hall-ish enthusiasm. Marching sturdily into a sentence, she'll stop uncertainly and scold herself for sounding silly ("Oh, Krista!"). She not only wouldn't harm the flies she gabs with, but catches and releases them.
Evidently, clairvoyant communication is not only quick, but it can be long-distance. From her home in Cave Creek, Cantrell consults with horses at tracks as far away as Australia. "Why not?" she asks. "Time and space are man-made constructs." Yet "pet psychic" is a label she doesn't much care for. She prefers "cognitive animal behaviorist" -- which perhaps reflects the "cross-paradigmatology" major she fashioned for herself as a psychology student at the University of Minnesota. "What's important is the dialogue," she says. "With racehorses, it doesn't matter if they win or lose. Otherwise, I'd be lusting for results."
Typically, a steed will reveal he would rather run short than long, that he wants a new name ("Call me Jet") or hates his bedding ("Give me straw, not pine shavings!") One of Posen's sluggards -- a mare named Katie -- told Cantrell she missed her old Mexican groom and his rosary beads. "Katie, we're in big trouble," Posen cut in glumly. "I'm Jewish." Still, every morning from then on, Posen draped a rosary on the nag's halter. "I called her Katie the Catholic horse," she says.
Cantrell, whose Web site is www.kristacantrell.com, "refuses" to read the minds of humans. "Your life is your own," she says. "I don't have to come into your private circle." To enter an animal's, she first asks permission: "Hello, my name is Krista and I've been asked to find out what you think and feel." Invariably, the animal lets her in.
Not so long ago Annie DeChance asked Cantrell to rap with Hannah, a 10-year-old agility competitor. DeChance has another mutt named Joey, but Hannah was the one with the "issues." Steno pad in hand, Cantrell waved her arms like a sea anemone to clear the air and tuned in to Hannah's thought patterns. After absorbing some important psychic information, she exclaimed, "Oh, my! Annie, how come Joey gets all the attention?"
DeChance appeared stunned. Before she could respond, Cantrell said, "Probably because Joey is a clingy dog and pushes himself on people."
As DeChance nodded, Cantrell growled, "I don't get equal time!" The behaviorist was channeling Hannah, who was obviously concentrating very hard -- she was sprawled on the floor, eyes closed. "Hannah," protested DeChance, "I do special things with you that I don't do with Joey." "I want more special time!" Cantrell (really Hannah) snapped.
DeChance: "Can I promise you a special walk once a week, just the two of us?" Cantrell/Hannah: "Walks are boring!" Eventually, a compromise was reached: DeChance promised to take Hannah on a monthly trip without that damned Joey.
If all this sounds far-fetched, well, maybe it is. "There are really only two types of animal psychics," says Joe Nickell of the Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine that investigates paranormal and fringe science claims. Type One, he says, can't communicate with animals but believe they can. He calls them "fantasy-prone personalities." Type Two can't communicate with animals either -- but they know they can't. He calls them "charlatans."
"We have to be careful we don't fire an arrow and then circle a bull's-eye around it," Nickell says. He cites the Barnum Effect, a principle by which vague statements are later interpreted as having been specific. "You can't just count the hits and ignore the misses." But what about all the ecstatic testimonials? "The person who thinks he can't be fooled," he says, "has just fooled himself."
Even if Cantrell can read a horse's mind, she can't necessarily change it. Years ago she asked the underachieving racehorse Tundra Native: "Is your food OK?"
"Yes," he replied, "but I want molasses. My last owner gave me sugar beets."
"Will molasses make you run better?"
"No," he whinnied insouciantly. "I'm just putting in my time."
Cantrell advised Tundra Native's trainers to let him show-jump. Which they did. "After that," she says, "he was happy as a clam." Are clams truly happy? "I don't know," says Cantrell. "I've never talked to one."
Source: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/w ... ame/1.html
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