Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depresion-Proofing Young Children--for Life
(McGraw-Hill, 2006) by Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry

Creating Optimism:
A Proven Seven-Step Program for Overcoming Depression
(McGraw-Hill, 2004) by Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry

By Rupert Sheldrake. Arrow Books

Reviewed By Alicia Fortinberry, MS

How did we even feed ourselves before mobile phones? It's a long day, you just got home from work and realized that you're out of eggs, your usual fall-back meal. The kids are starving, and so are you. But you've got such low blood-sugar you are a danger on the road, no way you are going to get into the car and go to the shops.

But wait! Hubbie has a mobile! Triumphantly you pick you pick up the phone. He is driving home and you give him your shopping list. He arrives, as promised, bringing home the proverbial bacon (and eggs). Could so-called 'primitive humans' have made the same request using ESP? Have we gained a potential tumor-producer and lost a powerful asset?

The answer to that, and to many other questions of existence, such as why your dog goes berserk the moment you even think, "walk," or your partner always seems to know when you've snuck a chocolate bar and broken your diet, may be in a wonderful but highly controversial book that's come out recently, "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: and other unexplained powers of animals."

Author Rupert Sheldrake makes a very convincing argument for the fact that dogs and other animals have what we sometimes call ESP. Sheldrake explains how animals, including humans, might know what their 'owners' (or other animals they feel close to) are thinking. He says animals (including us) are all part of a 'morphic field' that connects them to those they have a close bond with. This 'morphic feld' can act as a 'group mind' and even let us (or those of us who have retained this ability, which when it comes to directions does not include me) know where we are and where home is at any given time.

I don't know about the term 'morphic field,' but some ability that we can't yet explain certainly seems to give, for example, Aborigines, an extraordinary sense of direction. Sheldrake offers examples of this in his book. I have heard and read reports that also indicate an ability of Aborigines and other traditional people to know when a member of their group is sick or dying even when they are away from them. And many animals, especially dogs and cats, display this ability.

The book is also valuable in that it shows the incredibly close bonds that exist between humans and their animals, and how important these are, and have historically been, to us. We have lived with dogs for perhaps as long as 100,000 years, according to recent research, says Sheldrake. Dogs probably helped us evolve better hunting practices about 80,000 years ago. Cats and horses were domesticated 'only' about 5,000 years ago.

For those who love good animal stories, as I do, the book is full of them. Some of my favorites are about how animals control us. For example, the author tells of an English cat clinic that simply stopped scheduling appointments for cats and let their owners bring them in whenever they could. It seems that many cats know far ahead of time when they are going to be taken to the vet and vanish. Dogs, poor souls, let themselves be taken but start to shake and whine upon approach, even if the vet is close to shops the owners take them to frequently. When the dog is being taken to a nearby shop, and not the vet, the behavior is quite different.

A story I'm also fond of involves a bonobo, a member of a species that's very close to us and chimps in evolutionary terms, and is quite clever. It's told by Betty Walsh, senior chimpanzee keeper at Twycross Zoo in Warwickshire, England:

"One bonobo had a long bamboo cane, which she was poking members of the public with, so we wanted it off her. I had a bag of four cakes which we were going to have for our tea, and I thought I would give her a cake if she gave me the stick. But she saw I had four cakes and she broke the bamboo stick into four pieces, one piece for each cake."

The book also point to ways in which animals may have helped hunter-gatherers as healers, and how they still play that role today. For instance, besides being seeing eye dogs, there are 'helper' dogs (and some cats) who warn people before they have epileptic seizures or pass out from hypoglycemia. Some of these dogs can even press telephone keys and bark into the receiver for help. Dogs and cats have also been known to constantly lick or 'worry at' skin lesions which turned out to be dangerously malignant. And of course there are many, many studies that show that just having pets around keeps us physically and emotionally healthier (read more about pet therapy in our news story "Dr Rex to the Rescue").

Sheldrake suggests we look more closely at these 'hidden' talents, both in ourselves and in animals. Would we be more 'tuned in' to each other if we relied less on technology, as animals do? What about engaging more dogs in cancer research? What about using dogs to predict earthquakes, since they seem to know before seismic events occur?

Some of the author's assertions have been challenged by other researchers — often using the same pets as the author does to prove their point — and the theory that animals have any kind of ESP is seriously doubted by, perhaps a majority of experts in the field. However at least one researcher has said that dogs and cats are so clever that it's impossible to tell whether they're fooling Sheldrake or the other investigators.

However, perhaps becoming more congruent with our own nature involves rediscovering our close connections to, and perhaps talents shared with, the other animals in our world. Then, perhaps, we could simply 'send' the thought to our trusty hunter in the field that we wanted him to bring home rabbit for dinner tonight. ESP is probably safer than cell phones!

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About the Author

Alicia Fortinberry is an award-winning health writer, and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with her husband and long-term collaborator Dr Bob Murray, she is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).