Kelly Benoit speaks woof.
Or, to be more accurate, she says she feels the emotional resonances emanating from animals, particularly dogs.
On this sunny day in Trinity Bellwoods Park, Ms. Benoit feels Titan, a chocolate brown mutt who seems obsessed with the remains of a flattened tennis ball, wants to become a hunter or a search-and-rescue dog.
He's definitely not suited for therapy work with seniors and children.
"He's too focused," she says. "The focus and concentration in him is unbelievable."
Which is good for Titan, as his owner is training him to be a hunter.
Ms. Benoit, 28, doesn't like to call herself a psychic because "people expect too much when you say that."
She prefers to call herself an emotional mechanic.
Strengthening the bond between canines and their companions is one of the goals of her new Internet-based company . For $50 (U.S.), owners send in a picture of their beloved pet to be analyzed. Ms. Benoit looks at the photo and jots down what she sees: whether the dog is playful or passive, joyful or unhappy and any other psychic impression she may receive.
Now that she's got a read on Titan, she worries that his whistle-tooting owner may start to push the dog too hard.
"No matter how much you train them, sometimes they're still, 'I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do,' " she says. "If he doesn't like this, he won't do it.
"Some owners cross the line," she says, citing examples of pushy owners she has encountered on the show-dog circuit.
She recently did a reading of a dog named Ness, for instance, who wanted to perform, but wasn't the favourite puppy in the family and picked up on her owner's resentment.
"I told the owner, you judge her enough. You're too rough on her, expect too much and don't love her enough,' " Ms. Benoit says. Since the reading, the owner rewired her energy and now Ness prances around the show ring like the Queen.
Ms. Benoit says she first discovered her ability to intuit the needs of animals a few summers ago when she felt that her sister's dog, Miss Hoppers, was calling for her. When Ms. Benoit arrived to see Miss Hoppers, the dog collapsed of kidney failure.
Since launching her business a few months ago, she has read about 15 dogs, mostly Rottweilers (her services have been featured on a Rottweiler owner listserv). And she says she has had 15 great testimonials, which indicates to her that the path of animal communication is the right one.
She also wants to work with abused animals that have been moved to new homes, hoping to use her ability to communicate with the owners about these dogs' pasts and to foster an understanding between the pet and his new family.
"Unless you're a dog person, people think it's weird," she says. "Just because you do something a little different."
But Ms. Benoit says she has always been the rescuer, advocating on behalf of the bullied and disempowered.
"Once I've made a connection, they don't leave me alone. An animal knows it's been read. It looks at [its owner]afterward and acts like, 'Don't you get me?' "
She considers herself a third-generation clairvoyant, but insists she doesn't have any abilities not inherent in the rest of the population.
She has also worked with humans, using alternative health treatments, such as iridology (examining irises for health and emotional problems), meditation and intuitive self-healing. (She has also written a self-help book entitled A Journey Into Healing and is working on a second coffee-table book.)
But reading animals is very different from reading the energy fields of humans, she says.
The people who came to her in her previous practice often just wanted a quick fix, a magic pill to repair whatever problems they had in their lives.
"Animals are easier. They don't expect anything of you," she says. "They just want to be understood."