ABSTRACT
Last week I only scratched the surface of this fascinating subject, so this week will carry it a bit further. (Incidentally, the sensitive cat drawings adorning these pages were done by Andreas Deja.)
I suggested that there is a telepathic link between man and animal. You’ve all no doubt heard of the experiments in communication between man and porpoise, man and chimpanzee, etc. Barbara Woodhouse, the famous trainer of dogs, tells some delightful tales of her experiences along those lines. In Just Barbara , an autobiography, she writes:
The importance of your tone of voice when speaking to animals (or human beings for that matter) was made very clear to me when I was in Gambia a few years back. I went to the Abuko rainforests where the nature reserves are. In a cage, was a hyena which had continued, ever since its captivity to throw itself from one end of it to another hoping to escape. It did this twelve hours a day. Nothing could persuade it to stop, in its misery and fear. I asked the keeper who was there if he would allow me to go and talk to the hyena. He said I could, so I went over to it and in what I call my ‘little voice ’ (which is a fairly soft high-pitched tone) I said, ‘Come along, come along. ’ It stopped throwing itself against the cage and came up to me. It raised its nose to mine, put its
ears fl at against its face in what I call the ‘soft look ’ which means that the animal welcomes you, and actually wriggled as it came up to me, laid its head against my chest and breathed up my nose. Then it lay down at my feet. I was so amazed at the reaction of this animal that I asked the keeper if I could go out to the reserve where there were many more hyenas and he said I could. I was not allowed in with them, so I stayed outside the wire, and again used my ‘little voice ’ to call them which, incidentally, my mother always asked me to use in the old days if there was any unhappy dog in the boarding kennels. She would say, Go and talk to the dog, Barbara, in your ‘ little voice ’ — it always makes them happy. ” Well, I called the hyenas, and one by one, they all came up to me, laying their heads as near to mine as they could and breathing up my nose. One got near enough to push up the wire and lay its head on my chest, and then the whole lot came up, breathed up my nose and laid down at my feet.
