The amazing Jackie Weaver has beaten cancer, appeared in numerous magazines, made several television appearances and has had eight books published! She now lives in Wrexham with Buddy the cat and Chico the dog. We caught up with her and found out all about what she does.
I’ve heard you described as an animal psychic. Is that an accurate description or do you like to describe yourself as something else?
I’ve somehow become known as the ‘Animal Psychic’; other people call us animal communicators. All it means is that we can get into an animal’s mind and communicate and give information to the owners.
When did you first realise that you that you could do this kind of thing?
Well, it’s been there all my life – I mean, many other people are psychic and don’t realise it. If I go back to 2005, I had terminal cancer. I had just to accept I was going to go which caused my mind to totally open up. Once I got better, as a treat, I booked an animal communicator to come and talk to our animals. Amazingly, through my dog, she told me that I could do this too!
When this person told you what your pets were feeling and thinking, were you getting any signals about that yourself? Did you have to be trained to tune into that?
Yes, you’re taught how to use that part of your mind. It’s recognising that the information is coming from elsewhere and it’s not your own imagination.
The person didn’t look at you and think ‘you have a gift’?
No, people reading this will wonder what the simple questions are: sometimes the phone rings and you know who it is, you think of somebody and you’ll bump into them the next day, you have dreams that come true. These are signs of being psychic. Sometimes just knowing something’s going to happen and it does, yet you have no idea why you know, again, that is psychic. I use a photograph so I can work with people all over the world, whether it’s Australia, the US, anywhere. I know it sounds really strange using a photo, but all we’re doing is using our mind to tune into the animal so you need something to see who you’re talking to.
Let’s keep going with this transatlantic theme: say they’re on the other side of the Atlantic, you’re here and they ring you up and say, ‘Jackie, there’s a problem with my dog’. Can you diagnose that with just a photo?
You can work from description as well. I’ll give you a lovely example of how I just go with the flow. I was doing some work for the lovely actor, Matthew Rhys, who is the star of The Americans. I chatted to two horses for him.
On the phone?
Yes. I was in Shropshire, he was in Cardiff and the horses were in California. I had the photograph of the horses. I was chatting away giving Matthew information and in my mind’s eye, I could see one of the horses showing the underside of their right front foot.
You’re mentally linked to the animal?
Yes, I just had this picture so I said to Matthew: ‘Has your horse got a problem with his right front foot?’ and he said: ‘No, I don’t think so’. I said: ‘Well, he’s pointing to it for whatever reason; just make a note of it’ and that was that. A few days later, he went out to the stable in California and there was the horse with a big dressing round his right front foot. And he’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness’.
And he didn’t know about it until then?
No, he didn’t. The horse had a foot infection and abscess. Matthew was in Cardiff, I was in Shropshire so the only person that could have told me was the horse because even Matthew didn’t know.
Wow. Would you be able to communicate with pets that have passed away?
Yes, I also do spirit work. Animals live on in spirit the same way people do. There will be many people reading this who’ve been to human mediums and were given information about their relatives who the medium would not know and it’s the same with animals. I was working for a lady in France the other day. About a year ago, she booked me to chat to a little song thrush that she’d had as a rescue bird, but it’d died and she was convinced her cat had killed it. I explained to her that the bird’s body was not marked or damaged (as a cat would have caused) and it seemed as if her bird had flown into something. The cat reinforced that when I talked to it afterwards.
I’ve had some other crackers. Let me have a think, ‘Spirit help me’.
Sorry, what were you doing then?
I was just asking ‘Spirit’ to connect me to remind me.
Spirit?
Heaven, you know, all animals and people that pass over. That’s how I do spirit work.
You connect to the animals via this Spirit?
I just asked my guides to remind me of something so they can give me a story...
Somebody had a lurcher rescue dog which had been fine, but it’d became really distressed after it had fallen and hurt its leg. It withdrew from them completely, wouldn’t sleep in its bed and started behaving very strangely in general. The lurcher told me that the people who had owned him previously had put down other dogs that had gone lame and this one had automatically thought the same thing was going to happen to him. When I explained to it that this wasn’t the case, everything was fine.
Amazing! Can you tell me about the work you’ve done on TV?
I’ve done more TV shows than any other communicator – I’ve been on Paul O’Grady Show, Loose Women and ITV’s This Morning.
Yes, I saw that. Philip Schofield was quite sceptical.
That was good cop, bad cop! They’ve had me back on three times, once as a pet grief expert so there you go. On Loose Women, I had to chat to different animals and explain what I was doing. Appearing on Paul O’Grady was great because Hugh Bonneville was on with me. I’ve been on The Big Questions which gave me an opportunity to give what I do a proper voice.
Tell me about your success as an author.
I have written a set of eight books. Seven of them are all genuine animal communication stories. My last book about pet grief is totally different; it can help anybody and they do not even need to believe in what I do.
Pet grief is a huge area that people dismiss. You are expected to go to work the next day and just act normally. I wrote it about how to cope before and after the loss. I explain to people that, when your animal is very ill, they can be feeling so emotional and may make rash decisions they may end up regretting.
Bearing this in mind, in good times when the animal’s healthy, it’s a good idea to ask beforehand what would happen if they were to become ill or pass away. This helps you gain a bit of strength and control.
There are many techniques you can learn and it’s very useful because sometimes we can’t just burst into tears at inappropriate moments even though we are grieving.
Those are things that you have realised yourself are they, as opposed to being taught?
Yes, I’ve studied Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). These are useful things and I’ve honed them so what I’ve learnt what helps with grief through my own experience.
We treat pets as though they were our children and they become completely reliant on us so when they do pass away, it is completely understandable to feel devastated – as you would if you were losing a child. It’s a huge loss to come to terms with.
I understand that
Guilt doesn’t serve anybody – there’re so many people who feel guilty about putting an animal to sleep so again, I address that. People suffer needlessly – it takes bravery to let loved ones go and there’re ways of letting the guilt go as well.