Finding Lost Pets with Pet Psychic, Hilary Renaissance

In this episode I chat with lost pet psychic, Hilary Renaissance. For over 20 years, Hilary has been helping pet owners worldwide locate their lost or stolen beloved pets. She is also able to use her psychic abilities to consult on behavior issues, health and wellness concerns, as well as  helping pet parents share messages with their pets that have crossed over the rainbow bridge. We chat about when she realized she had this ability,  why we should be mindful of some of the expectations we may have of a pet psychic and how she can help us improve the relationships we have with our pets. She also shares some of her amazing  success stories!

Helpful Resources:
https://www.calmpet.com/

Transcript

Charlotte Bayne: 0:01

Dogs make the best companions for humans. This podcast aims to help make humans better companions for their dogs. Welcome to the rural podcast, a modern lifestyle podcast for dogs and their people. I'm your host, Charlotte Bayne. I've been caring for other people's dogs for more than 15 years. And while I've learned a lot in my career, I definitely don't know it all. So I've collected an ever evolving roster of amazing dog people. And I learned new things from them all the time. How're you guys, thank you so much for joining me for another episode of The Baroo podcast. In today's episode, I chat with lost pet psychic Hilary Renaissance. for over 20 years, Hilary's been helping pet owners worldwide locate their lost or stolen beloved pets. She also consults on behavior issues, health and wellness concerns, and she's even helped pet parents share messages with their pets that have crossed over the rainbow bridge. She shares with us her journey to discovering she had this incredible ability, what you should and should not expect from a pet psychic, and why it's not a magic trick, she can just pull out of a hat. She also shares some pretty phenomenal success stories. So let's jump into the chat. All right, well, first of all, I really appreciate you popping on and chatting with me. I'm pretty excited about this conversation because you have such a wonderful gift. And one of your specialties is helping parents pet parents find lost dogs. So I Yeah, and I would love to hear a little bit about your journey. And how this came to be how you found this gift and and how did you know that it was specific to finding lost pets?

Hilary Renaissance: 2:02

So amazingly, you know, when I was growing up, I'd never heard of pet psychics or animal communicators. You know, I lived in a small town and I didn't know what even what a psychic was. And so I had a lot of psychic experiences, but I just kind of, you know, processed them and didn't think much of it. But then when I was about 16 years old I was laying on in my bedroom with my cat. And all of a sudden, I realized that I had picked up the message from my cat Otto, that he was hungry, and that he had an upset stomach. And I thought about it. And I thought, How did I know that? I mean, it wasn't really feeding time or anything like that. And I just kind of accepted it as is. And I was laying there. And then all of a sudden, I felt also this real sense of love from my cat motto. And again, I didn't really think much of it or know what to think of it because it wasn't talked about then or it wasn't a thing, right. And so I kind of let it be. And I just kind of accepted that I always had that what you might call gift, but I didn't really talk to anybody about it. Because there wasn't, there wasn't really language to talk about it back then. And then it wasn't really until my 30s that I heard that other people were doing this weird profession, like animal communication. And you know, when I was growing up, you know, there was no, like, if you went to your high school guidance counselor, they didn't say, Hey, do you want to be a pet psychic? I mean, I didn't even hear. And so when I first heard it, you know, I heard the people doing this animal communication gig, I thought, you know, this is going to be like a fad, like, you know, like mood rocks or something like that, you know, I thought, Oh, this is just not gonna last and people aren't going to pay for this. And, you know, I thought it was kind of laughable, right? Um, and so but then I started thinking about it more, and you'll have to laugh. But I actually decided to go to a professional animal communicator myself. And she did a good enough job. But I thought, wow, I could do a much better job.

Charlotte Bayne: 4:17

So funny.

Hilary Renaissance: 4:18

Well, I think that the difference was is that in, you know, this was in, you know, about maybe 2025 years ago, and I think that people were studying it, but they didn't really know how to learn it. And so a lot of people who were doing it weren't doing a very good job of it. And they were kind of fudging it, I would say or saying, oh, a lot of your kitty loves you so much. Well, you know, that's kind of evidence. So I thought, you know, if I could get some real details and really help people, then I'd really feel good about it. But I didn't want to be one of those, you know, psychics who you know, was kind of fudging and slurring along and saying things like, Oh, your kitty loves you so much or you know, right kind of I really wanted to help people. So I actually took a few animal communication classes, and I did a really good job. And I was actually picking up on things that you couldn't know otherwise. And to me, that's the sign of a good pet psychic, you know, you don't want to do something which, you know, you can really get a detail like, you know, that cat, you know, has a friend outside who he fights with, like, yesterday, I worked with a woman and her cat was peeing outside the litter box. And she called me because she was about ready to get rid of her cat. And she didn't understand why your cat was paying. And so I communicated with her cat. And I found out that there was a light colored cat out there, who outside their house who was coming to the window, and her cat was spraying to mark the territory and scare the cat away. Well, of course, I got what I always get from my clients. And she said, Well, I didn't tell you this, because people always want to keep me in the dark, they want to make sure that I'm good earning my pay, oh, interest, I didn't tell you this. But we have this light gray cat that's been coming to the window and my cat and that other gray cat got in a big fight. And I heard them fighting. And, you know, my cat scared him away. And I said, Well, aha. So that was a real detail that I could get. I mean, it wasn't something I could Google or that she'd shared with anybody I knew. So it was like, that's a real thing. So to me, that is the mark of a good pet communicator, or animal communicator, or pet psychic, or whatever you want to call it is somebody who can get real details. So I actually did a, I did my own kind of internship for a year where I worked with people for free. And it really was a learning experience for me, because what I learned is, is it's actually harder to work with the people than it is with the pets. And the thing is

Charlotte Bayne: 6:56

always the case.

Hilary Renaissance: 6:59

Because people have all these expectations of me and a lot of them are wrong. And then a lot of them also are, you know, prickly with lost pet situations, which I'm good at. They're already in crisis. But yeah, so they don't really want to call a psychic, but they're desperate. So it's like, I'm this kind of like, you know, in between a rock and a hard place, situation for them. And it's difficult, you know, it's also really difficult to navigate with them, you know, particularly if I have to tell them, their pets have crossed over. You know, I mean, it's like, I just meet them an hour ago. And I have to say, you know, hey, I think your cat's crossed over, you know, I could be wrong. And you know, but I have to gauge how is how is that person going to respond to this? It's it's almost like being a crisis counselor in a lot of cases. So anyway, I, I did that for a year. And then I started kind of charging for it. And I hope that kind of answers your question.

Charlotte Bayne: 7:55

Yeah, it absolutely answers my question my when another part of the question is how did your people around you and and people in your life react to you wanting to I'm sure you had like a regular kind of job before doing this? How did they react to you are changing in line to work in the psychic realm?

Hilary Renaissance: 8:17

Nobody I've been actually, all my friends and family were really open to it, I kind of tend to hang out with an alternative crowd. And so I was also kind of at the dawn of the, you know, marketing on the internet, and I kind of got in at the right time. Because, you know, there weren't really other people who were out there calling themselves a pet psychic. There were people out there who were calling themselves animal communicators. But I really heavily, you know, went with the term psychic, because I consider myself psychic. So I was kind of one of the only people out there and getting in early on Google was really helpful to me. And then the other thing that really, really helped me or helped me launch my career was AI in about 2004, a news reporter contacted me, and he was skeptical that I could locate lost pets. And he was kind of coy about it. And I and I was really skeptical of him because I had an a friend who's actually kind of a popular, very popular and well respected animal communicator who's been on quite a few TV shows. And I had heard her stories of being on both David Letterman and have on being on Jay Leno's talk shows. And one of the things I learned from her is, is that there seems to be a formula that TV hosts do. They'll give you two. They'll give you two things you can get right and one thing that you can't get wrong and it's usually a trick question. And they also don't want you to give canned answers. So they will often like you can negotiate with them about what you're going to do ahead ahead of time, because you know, it's scary to go on TV and you want to be prepared. But they don't want you to give canned answers. So they'll get you out there live on stage and ask you totally different things than you negotiated or agreed upon.

Charlotte Bayne: 10:14

They're trying to catch you in your fault somehow, you know,

Hilary Renaissance: 10:17

yeah, they're their job is to be entertaining, their job is not to make you feel comfortable, right. So I was very well aware of this as a possibility. And so sure enough, I tried to negotiate with the guy and said, you know, we can talk about some of my most recent cases, because I'd actually recently helped find a stolen dog in Mississippi. So I was really excited to talk about that. Because, you know, that was a big deal that you could find a loss arm in a stolen dog in another state. So you can actually if you go to my website, you can watch this. So he gets in, but we had negotiated beforehand that I didn't want to do a lost pet case on TV. Because I can't be sitting on TV and nervous and trying to be a psychic all at the same time and take in all this information. It's just not conducive to doing weight loss, pet work. So anyway, you can see him on the interview with me sitting in my living room. And about a third of the way through the conversation. He hands me a last pet poster and says, can you find this cat? You can see my face drop. I'm like we I'm thinking to myself, I didn't say it out loud. I'm thinking to myself, we agreed not to do that how it works. Yeah, no. But I kind of got through it. And I said, you know, I just can't do that right now. But what was great about it was the guy was really a good news reporter. And he was kind of a funny guy. And so he had actually kind of put up a scoreboard, about what you know, Score one for the pet psychic, or Score one for those skeptical reporter. And he did he followed the the, the format, he did exactly that. He I got two out of three, right. Wow. But but it was really funny the way you did it. And it was amazing, because there's usually a lapse between when they do those stories. And when they put them on TV. And it was like a, I think, maybe a six month lap. Well, as soon as that happened, all of a sudden, I started getting calls from people. And apparently the world word had gotten out that I was out there doing this even before the show aired. And it was a really great TV clip. And it was picked up by CNN and went via, you know, on CNN, it was picked up by all these affiliate stations. And so people started calling me immediately from all over. And I was swamped for at least two years. I mean, it was pretty amazing. So of course, I put that interview up on my website. And I use it as a marketing piece because it really does show. The good thing about it also in that TV show was it actually shows a clip of the TV reporter talking to a sheriff in Mississippi about how I had helped to find the dog that was stolen. And to have a TV or a you know, a sheriff, who is you know, a law enforcement person testifying or saying that a pet psychic help with a stolen dog that adds a lot of credibility. So it really did help me a lot. And so it but it was also kind of funny, and it's entertaining to watch. So it's probably one of the things that really launched my career. Well, I'll

Charlotte Bayne: 13:35

put that I'll for sure. Put the link to your website in the show notes so people can go to it and watch. Watch the clip. So what does what does it look like to when someone comes to you and they are desperate to find a lost dog? I know this is just one of the services that you offer, but they're desperate to find a lost pet. What does that look like on your end? What is the process for you? Are you allowed to share that with us? Or

Hilary Renaissance: 14:03

sure I can totally I can tell you all about it. I actually have a little spiel with that I go through with all my clients and explain to them upfront what I can and can't do. Because in talking to people over the last 20 years I've learned people have just a really wide variety of expectations of psychics and even an ins because I think people don't know or maybe it's their first time talking to a psychic or whatever. But this is what I tell people when I work with people pets I work differently the most animal communicators are other psychics, you know, most other psychics will stay with you on the phone while they're communicating with the pet. But I find I get better information by getting a little bit of information from the person about the pet and how the pet went last and then doing a meditation that's off the phone. It takes me about an hour. I get really relaxed and then I've tried to communicate with pets and as you can imagine, lost pets are difficult to communicate with because they're often scared or upset or, or they don't understand what's going on from them from a human's perspective, right. So what I do basically is I interview the person, I say, You know what happened to you, you know, how did your pet go missing, I get the name of the pet a picture of the pet, I get the street address of where the pet went missing, which gives me as kind of a context as to what to look for in the area. And then I get off the phone and I communicate with the pet. And the kind of information I receive from animals is more like an impression. So it's not picture perfect, like you would see on a TV screen. So for example, with a lost dog, I may see a lost dog hiding underneath the deck of a red tall house with a white SUV type vehicle parked in the driveway. And there's a big green hedge in the yard. And in this case, you know, the dog thinks he's about five to eight houses away, and around the corner from where he took off. But unfortunately, he's heard fireworks. And even though he's heard his people calling for him, he's afraid to come out. Now it can really vary. And one of the things that people always want me to do is give them a street address. But I can't do that. Because I bet you know why dogs can't read.

Charlotte Bayne: 16:13

Write, and they can't be like, Hey, I'm over here at Barbara's house. Yeah. Right.

Hilary Renaissance: 16:17

And so there are some people out there offering MT mapped out saying services, which I don't do, and I don't for legal reasons, I'm not going to tell you why I don't believe it works. But I personally don't think you can do it.

Charlotte Bayne: 16:30

What is that it's a what map

Hilary Renaissance: 16:33

dosing is basically, it was a, it's a technique that they originally was originally started to help people find oil, and water and things that are constant underground. So it was used by you know, they'd see an old geezer with a stick, and he take the stick, and he looked for water in certain places. And it was used by oil companies, it still is I mean, it does work for those things. But I personally don't believe it works for animals, because first of all, animals are sentient beings, and they're moving around in their heads, their spiritual sense, when particularly when they're lost, can give you lost, basically, they're lost. And so how could you use a map Dowsing for that? Now, that doesn't just say that, you know, you shouldn't, I'm not saying, you know, don't use map doubters. I'm just saying I don't personally use that service. But anyway, so that's the kind of information I get from dogs and cats. One thing that I can't get, as I said, is, you know, a street address. And that's hard, because a lot of times people will call me with animal, you know, we'll call me and I'll get well, you know, your dog was picked up by somebody, and, you know, they drove in a car. And of course, when a dog gets in a car, you know, they're not driving themselves, and they can't say, oh, you know, we got on the freeway, and then we got we turned off at the McDonald's. And then we went right at the Capitol building. And so if I'm getting something like, you know, the dog is possibly about an hour's drive away, and a beige house in a big neighborhood, that can be a real problem for people. So because there's lots of, you know, beige houses in neighborhoods, you know, about two miles away, or an hour's drive away. So I kind of can give people a starting point. I always say I'm best at finding animals that are close by, because then, you know, we have landmarks and you know, we can go for things like yesterday, I worked with a woman and her re she contacted me and said she got her cat back. And I said that the cat had been scared away by a raccoon and was actually hiding in the gray house next door underneath either porch or deck. And there were these big trees that were kind of overshadowing the trees or deck. And so I got an email back from her today that she got her cat back. So I love those kinds of cases. I'm a little bit more upset when somebody calls me and says, you know, my cat's been missing for 15 months, and I suspect it was stolen. I'm like, Oh, dear, but I have found stolen pets, many of them and I found pets, you know, all over the world amazingly. So. I know. I mean, I last year, I found this is a really strange story. A woman contacted me and she was in Iraq. And I was like you're in Iraq and she was missing two Husky dogs. And I was like Husky dogs in Iraq. How does that happen? And I won't go into it. But yeah, I she got her dogs back. And I was right about where she was where they were. It was kind of amazing that they

Charlotte Bayne: 19:37

took it off running because those Huskies they can run for hundreds of miles when they Yeah, yeah,

Hilary Renaissance: 19:43

they had and they got into another compound. And I don't quite remember all the details because it was about a year ago, but I put it up on my website. They got into some compound and we're being taken care of by these two guys. And so she was able to do her own context to figure out who those people were and somehow negotiated to get the dogs back. So that was really cool. Anyway, so So

Charlotte Bayne: 20:08

essentially you get you have like a, it's almost like you have a TV screenshot of what of where they are what what's happening. So you kind of it's a visual for you, right? So it's you get the pictures essentially,

Hilary Renaissance: 20:23

well, I'll tell you what I am actually this there's actually a Latin word for it, I have three things. I'm clairvoyant, which means clear seeing in Latin, I'm Claire audience, which means clear hearing in Latin. And then I'm Claire sentient, which means clear knowing in Latin. And I put all those things together, because I do hear sounds. And I do all of a sudden just know something from an animal's perspective. It's like all of a sudden, I know, like, for example, when I was working with that woman with a cat yesterday, I didn't see an image of the cat or the raccoon, I just knew all of a sudden that there was a raccoon out there. And it was that the cat felt that there was some kind of predator who had hissed. And I know enough about raccoons and how they behaved that I was able to pretty quickly put that together. So it's like that. But the kind of information I get is more like an impression. So it's not picture perfect, like you would see on a TV screen. And I'll tell you why. Cats and Dogs don't go to school, like you. And I do. And you know, remember when you were in grade school, and they'd like show you a picture and in lead said, that's a truck or that house or whatever a dog, right, we had, we forget that we had years of learning this and going to grade school to figure out immediately what those things are. Whereas dogs and cats don't. And when they're scared, they're also a lot of times not looking at things real clearly, or they're peering at things or they're upset. So it's more like I'd get a picture, I get a picture. And I have to figure out what it is. And I always say to myself, the more that I don't know what I'm looking at, usually the more right I am, or more correct I am. Because it meaning because it means that I'm having I'm seeing things from the animals perspective. And when I sometimes I have taught animal communication classes in the past. And one of the funniest things I do in the class, is I put up on a big picture board pictures, I draw what I saw. And then I asked, you know, from a loss pet, and I asked my students to interpret what that was, and nobody can ever guess. So one of the things I draw is a big square, and a hole, and then a headless person, and they do it in a stick thing. So what were what what is that? Well, it turned out that that case was a cat had gone into an RV lot. And that hence the big box things. And that there was a hole near the there was a whole lot of RVs at a car dealership and like the back of the car dealership, you know how they sometimes will keep a whole inventory back there? Well, this was a big lot with a lot of RVs. And it was kind of like torn up grass and those kinds of things. And and then what the whole thing with a person without a head that the cat was showing me was that there was nobody in the car.

Charlotte Bayne: 23:16

piece all of those things.

Hilary Renaissance: 23:19

But I got it, I got it right. And so I had already seen that there was a you know, I googled the area. And I'd already seen that there was a car lot there. But it was an old picture. And so I didn't know what that there are V's there. But I said I and I could finally then figure out by like working with the cat. And I figured out that the RV was beige, and that there was a long tunnel near it. And that there was some bumpy grass. And so my client was able to find the cat there in the RV, in in under in a hole underneath an RV. Basically. That's where the cat was so

Charlotte Bayne: 23:57

incredible. Yeah, it's

Hilary Renaissance: 23:59

kind of an interesting thing to do. But I think that one of my, my sick most successful things that I do that other animal communicators don't do is you have to realize that animals aren't going to see things on your perspective. And I think that a lot of animal communicators don't take that time and that's why I take an hour to do that off the phone. Because Don't you know, going back and forth with an animal is really hard. And I actually am very proud that I this last year I actually helped find two snakes. Oh my

Charlotte Bayne: 24:31

gosh, my sister she's terrified of snakes.

Hilary Renaissance: 24:35

Well, I laughingly say I'm now a member of slithering when the Harry Potter series yet but the reason I'm really proud to communicate with her found snakes or get information about them is because snakes don't rely on visual clues. And you have to if you're going to communicate with a snake, you're going to have to go with them and take the journey of these things. What did the you know what was this Breakfast that I was on, like, was it slippery? Was it Bumpy? Bumpy? Was it cold? What did the air feel like? Did you go up or down? What is the temperature like now? You know, are you dormant for a while because snakes do go dormant for a while, oftentimes in a new situation, you know, is our is the ground vibrating? Those kinds of things. So, like, just recently, last year, I worked with a woman and it was actually her mother had contacted me and she had her, the daughter kept on I don't know why, but she did. She's in Utah, and she kept a big rack or like shelves, racks with like snakes in it. And that each snake had his own plastic tub with that kind of Campster, like chips, or whatever it is. And she had left one of the lids open to the thing, or to the tub. And the snake had gotten out. And the snake had been missing for two days. And they had looked high and low, all through their house. And so she asked me to communicate with the snake. And I was like, Oh, dear, here we go. This is going to be hard, because yeah, you know, but I didn't know. But I couldn't obviously see inside her house through Google. And I didn't I kind of wanted to go in blind because I wanted to figure out what were the, the the surfaces the snake had gone on. So I got that the snake had gone down the tub gone down onto the ground and and then gone into this kind of like what felt like bumpy vinyl floor, and then had gone into kind of a dark, cool room. And it stayed there for a while. But then the snake had decided that he was hungry. And he had actually come he knew how to get back. And he had actually climbed back up to the tub and was on the bottom of it. I told this to the woman. And I said she says no, she's I've looked there 100 times I said, well go look again. And guess where the snake was, I don't know how the snake was sticking on the bottom on the top lievable. I know. But that's where the that's where the snake was. So I mean, but it was me not I wasn't seeing visual things. And I think that you have to realize, if you're going to communicate with animals, you have to take them from, what's their perspective and how they see the world. And it's only taken me a long time to really get the confidence in that. And also not feel the pressure from people because, you know, people call me and they want their pets back now, and they're skeptical. And so I always want to do the best, but it puts a lot of pressure on me. And so I have to say, you know, just center myself and say Do the best you can and you know you're gonna get it wrong sometimes because not all animals know where they are. Or sometimes you're you're just sometimes getting, you know, random thoughts and from the animal. And I always say, you know, if you're gonna work with a psychic, be prepared for some things to be wrong. It's just like, you know, if you're going to what the what they say in a, you know, if you talk to a policeman and you say, you know, if a policeman interviews a bunch of people about what happened at a crime scene, they're all going to give you a different perspective. And that's true with animals. And the best way to explain that is, or I heard it described, explained by a woman named Carol Gurney, who's an animal communication teacher, when she said, you know, imagine that you're in this boring office cubicle, and you're daydreaming and you're daydreaming that you're in Hawaii, and you're drinking a margarita or Mai Tai, or whatever it is, you're drinking there, and you're on the beach, and there's palm trees? Well, if the psychic turns into you, at that time, you're gonna get the pine trees and the margarita and the beach. Now, of course, it's hard. And it's hard to sort that out. And it's hard to say in psychic terms, are you dreaming this? Or is this some kind of random thought you're having? It's hard to focus on that. So you know, a lot. I'm proud to say a lot of times I get it right. But I'm also unprepared to say or just to say, you know, I don't always get it correct. And that's not because I don't try it's because that's the nature of psychic information.

Charlotte Bayne: 29:07

What is amazing what are some of the you were mentioned that there people have unrealistic expectations of what you can and can't do? And they kind of bring all of that to the table? What are some of those the things that people tend to expect from you?

Hilary Renaissance: 29:21

Well, the one, I can tell you what it is right now at this time of year because there's cycles of it. The funniest thing? Yes. And it has to do with right now with economics, everybody got their Christmas bills, on their credit cards, and they're all poor, or a lot of them are and so I tell people, you know, I have to do, it takes me an hour and I can't deviate from that. Well, I get a lot of people saying things like, can't you do a 10 minute reading, and people don't understand that. This is not something I can just pull out of a hat. You know, it's not a magic trick. And so you can't divide it like that. And I it's hard for me to deal with that because it comes in cycles. And I've gotten already a few this year. And so there's that expectation of it. Yeah. The other expectation is that I'm seeing things from God's perspective, or an aerial view. And then I'm all knowing. And so this is, this is one of the funny things that I get, I'll talk to people and I have a scheduled amount of time, and I take the time to, you know, figure out what their questions are beforehand, like, why is my cat peeing? Or, you know, why? What does my cat think of my husband or those kinds of things? So I'll really carefully go through those questions in the allotted amount of time. And then people get all caught up in it. And then at the end of the session, they'll say, it's always some sheepish question they have. Like, they didn't want it to ask, but they, and they only had a certain amount of money. So or a certain amount of time, but the question comes out, and it's it can be everything from, you know, something benign to like, you know, well, what is my cat? Think of my other dog too? Well, I didn't tell you, but I'm thinking of putting my dog down for euthanasia, right, want to tack that down at the end of the session? And they'll say, can you just pull that out of your hat? And I always say, it's kind of like this, you and I could be having a conversation and really deep conversation about, you know, for example, what do you think of Donald Trump, and we could talk about that for an hour. And then at the end of the conversation, you know, I go and I talked to my friend Rita, and I can tell her, you know, everything that you are think about Donald Trump, but if she were to say, hey, what do you think about world peace? Or what's his read it? You know, what do you think about world peace? Or, you know, what's your favorite car? I won't know that. Because I'm not all knowing. And so people seem to think that I'm going to be all knowing like God, right. And that's not true. It's like having a conversation back and forth. And I only know what people tell me or what they don't. And I also, I don't know what they don't tell me. I mean, I don't know what animals don't tell me to so nice point of that. So I hope that answers your question.

Charlotte Bayne: 31:59

Absolutely. How can your work your work with animals help us be kind of better companions to our, to our dogs and our cats? Well, what about relationship? Yeah, well,

Hilary Renaissance: 32:14

I'm, I, I'm kind of a problem solver. So I am a Capricorn with a you know, a Moon in Virgo. So I like problems. I, I'm not kind of one of these people who wants you who wants to chat with your pet and say, Oh, she loves you so much. I find that very boring. It doesn't hold my attention. To tell you the truth. It doesn't really hold animals attention, either. And so I I know, sorry, everybody. I know. So I like to solve problems. And one of the things I actually had, I think I mentioned this, I had a client yesterday. And she contacted me because her cat was peeing outside the litter box and had been spraying on her spraying on the windows and doors and all over the house. And she had come home from a vacation and there was pee everywhere. And she was thinking about giving up the cat. And a lot of unfortunately, a lot of cats get surrendered for that, you know, I mean, they get taken to the shelter. And I hear this all the time I hear, you know, my husband won't put up with this anymore. Or you know, I can't live with this anymore. I you know, it's too upsetting to me. And so and I understand that. So what I do is I try to get the cat's perspective on why it is that the cat is peeing outside the litter box. And I've just I've kind of like broken it down, in my own mind, because I know cats so well is to what their behavior is. And most cats who are peeing outside the litter box are doing it for a reason. They're solving a problem in a way that they know how to. And so as I said, you know, with the woman with the cat, who was spraying outside the litter box, it turned out that the cat was seeing this light gray cat outside the house and was out there. And so the cat was paying to make sure that the other cat couldn't get in. And so I got validation from the woman. Yeah, she knew that grey cat. So that was good for her. So she was really interested to hear what I had to say. And so I gave her some things that she could do, tailored to her specific situation, so that you could get rid of the problem because I you know, cats or not, most cats don't want to pee outside the litter box. They're only doing it because they're solid, they're defending themselves. Or sometimes they'll do it because they're upset about something or they have a bladder infection, or they're trying to tell their owner something and they feel like the owner isn't listening. And they know that the animal you know, they know that the person isn't listening. And so I tried to figure out what we can do. So I believe if you take away the root cause of the problem, hopefully the symptom will go away. So in this case, the root cause of the problem was that the cat needed a way to defend the house. So he was doing the best thing he could, which was P all over the place. And so the symptom, you know, so that was a symptom was the P and so I worked with the woman on what are the things that we can do to take away some of the problem? Obviously, you can't get rid of that cat outside. So what can we do? And so I worked with her on that, and I gave her some suggestions, and I'm pretty sure it's gonna work, I can't make it work in all, all all cases, right? You know, like, I have a real long term client, and she takes in, for example, rescue cats who had been outside, and she doesn't let them go outside, because she's really adamant that they, you know, there are dangers out there. And I understand their perspective. But, for example, her cat has been peeing on her bed chronically, for the last six months or so. And it's gotten so bad that, you know, she's like putting like tarps over her bed, you know, because she doesn't want it to be peed on. And you know, her cat who's peeing on the bed, really is trying to say I want out, and his, and my client is adamant that that's not going to happen. And they live in a pretty small apartment. And on top of that, the cat can see all these birds out the window. And so the cat is like, I see the grand birds out there. And I remember how great that is. And I don't understand why you don't want me to go out. Right? So we've had to really work with that. And finally, she's just, you know, I've said to her, you know, you can't take the cat out of the cat, in this case, particularly a cat that's been living outdoors for so long. And so you know, you're either going to have to get used to it, or you're going to have to find rehome, the cat to where the cat can go outside. So I gave her that perspective. I mean, I'm not Harry Potter with a magic wand, and I can't force a cat to do something. But at least I can give I get when I'm able to give my clients some perspective on it. In that case, I'll see other things that I help animals with. I also do like to do, I do actually do readings where people ask me for things that are not problem solving things. I don't

Charlotte Bayne: 37:07

know. My next question, what are some of I know you do other you do? You do readings where you can just communicate with your dog. And you also communicate with pets that have passed on? Is that correct?

Hilary Renaissance: 37:22

I do, I'm communicating with the spirit world is kind of light and delicate, I always say you have to, you have to go in like you're an angel. And I always and people are skeptical on top of that, they don't believe you're gonna be able to do it. So one of the things I've learned is, I have to give them that aha moment, immediately during the session, or they're just going to be sitting there listening for me to lose, I'm going to lose them because they're not hearing anything that they can't think is, you know, that is not true, or they're they're waiting for that aha moment. So I have to give them that immediately. Or I've lost them. And so that's one of the reasons I don't like doing them, particularly with people who come to me and say, really negative things up front, like I don't believe you, or you know, people and I get a lot of that. I mean, I get a lot of people Why are you here then yeah, why are you here, then it's like, okay, if you're gonna tear this apart, you know, I always say, get, get what you can out of it. And it is true. There are some animal communicators out there who really are not communicating with pets, so I get it. But then if you really are going to somebody who you think is a real psychic, and you trust them enough for that, and you paid them for that, then, you know, be open to it. But I'll never forget, the first one I did was for a young lady in New York, and she had lost her and I'm using an euphemism name. This is not the dog's real name. I'm calling the dog Tinker, for privacy sake. And she had sent me a picture of tinker. And unfortunately, Tinker had died. And she wanted to know, she felt really unfortunately guilty about that she maybe had not taken good enough care of the dog. And it's been really hard for her at the last minute to make that decision about euthanasia. And she wanted to know if the dog was angry with her or not. I get that a lot from people, you know, did I do the right thing? Should I have waited? You know, it's really hard because you know, you're getting information from your vet, but you don't really, you know, it's like you're having to put that all together. So anyway, my client asked me about tinker. And I got that aha moment right away. It was great, because I got that the woman had actually bought herself and this is kind of iconic. She'd bought herself a dog stuffed toy that looked like her dog and was sleeping with it in bed with herself. Now you can't google that. You can. That's not something you can do. So I so I said, you know, hey, I got that you got this really wonderful stuff toy and you know that you've been sleeping with this and she was like, really? You got that? And it turned out I was totally right. And so I had a client for life. That's, and she still calls me, you know, 20 years later, just off of that one aha moment. So I always try to get one of those. But sometimes I can't sometimes it's real vague. But I always do my best in that case. And I think that it's, I think it's really healing for a lot of people because, you know, it's trauma, it's traumatic to have to make those decisions about, you know, whether when to have your dog or cat euthanized. And a lot of people feel guilt afterwards, one of the, obviously one of the stages of grieving is guilt. And that really hits pet owners bad because they made that decision to have, you know, their pet euthanized. It's not like oh, you know, somebody, you know, shot shot him in the head from the street, and I had no control over it. It's something that they made that choice to do. So I do. I do those kinds of readings. I like them. But they're also I always feel like I'm walking on again, I feel like I'm kind of like walking on eggshells until I get people to trust me. And that's one of the things I've had to learn to live with in this is that I can only do my best. And I'll say that a million times.

Charlotte Bayne: 41:11

Yeah, we can all only do everything we do. Why did you write the expectation be any different from a psychic?

Hilary Renaissance: 41:21

Right? Well, yeah, but but there's but then people can come back at me. Well, you're advertising this. And this is what you signed up to. Right? Yep. So and I have a personal sense of pride and, you know, responsibility to give them what they want. I want to get I want people to be happy. And so I feel like I'm letting you know, I don't want to let people down. And I don't want to let myself down either. So it's it's a hard thing, but I do my best. So

Charlotte Bayne: 41:45

yeah. You do a fantastic job. You had a we were talking we mentioned that you also people also turn to you just to have conversations right with their with their pets. So what are some of the things that people can look for when you when they just want you to tune into their pet just to kind of is it medical? Or is it just? Um,

Hilary Renaissance: 42:08

yes, people have asked me for Alright, so if you if you go to any animal communicator or pet psychics website, there's going to be a description a disclaimer there that says I'm not a veterinarian, I can't solve medical problems, you're gonna find that on anybody's and I, I have that same disclaimer up there for a reason, first of all, to protect myself legally, but also because, you know, I can ask an animal Where does your body hurt? And you know, what does this feel like? And I have actually, accurately diagnosed cancer I'll never forget the first one I did where I was working with this lady and her Rabbit was peeing on her bed. And she didn't know why. And so I got that the rabbit was peeing on the bed, because the bed smelled like the woman. And the woman, the rabbit was in a lot of pain and rabbits can be pretty stoic about that kind of thing. But I got that the rabbit was in a lot of pain. And it felt to me like the rabbits bones were deteriorating. And I I use that I guess the word the big C word came up to me right away. Yeah, I just empathetically got it this cat who can't this rabbit had cancer. And so, you know, I said, Well, you need to take your rabbit to the vet. And she did and unfortunately, that the rabbit did have cancer that had spread through his body. So, you know, I can ask an animal, you know, where does it hurt? I can also ask an animal, you know, gee, would you want this kind of treatment because you know, that's a hard decision or executive decision that the person is going to have to make and it's expensive, and it's time consuming. So I think it's really good to get the input of the animal will have to laugh, but I get a lot of people whose cats emotions, and cats and dogs emotions mimic some of the the owners emotions. So I get a lot of people who have they call me and they say, My dog has separation anxiety. And it turns out that the person is very anxious themselves. And I believe that the cat or dog came into their life because a lot of people aren't really willing to take care of themselves but they'll take care of their pets in a way that they won't take care of themselves. And so I believe that the journey of having this pet and learning to take care of the pet and and have empathy for the pet situation is a way to learn to help themselves. And so I often have that conversation with people it's like you know, this is really an opportunity for you because you know, you carry you're having all this empathy for your pet and you know, really wanting to see or you're really seeing how this is like messing up the pets life and they could be doing better. And how is that for you? Do I mean, I'm sure your friends and family are seeing you the same way? And could you give yourself some of that compassion? And what can you learn from that? So that's, that is a that's something that comes up quite a bit, I'd have to think about it more. I mean, I've answered, I get so many different calls, I'm sure how many. And they're all different. Do you? Well, it really

Charlotte Bayne: 45:22

like as Do you? Is there a point where you're just like, I can't? Does it take a toll on your system? You know, like, in any other job? Is there a point where like, I can't take on this take anymore on

Hilary Renaissance: 45:33

the most, we'll have to laugh. But the most pets I've ever done in one day is 12. Whatever. I know, it was 12 hour days plus all the time to talk to people. So sure. That was I was regularly doing like 12 hour days sometimes after I'd been on TV and 2004. Yeah, I don't like to do that. I personally like to do about maybe four a day. Because that's about all I like, but I find myself starting to get pretty cranky at about the 8/8 pet. But I will do it. I will do it. So you know if I will. That's like an

Charlotte Bayne: 46:14

eight hour day if you put all of the if you took put the actual like tuning in part with the conversations and all the other stuff. That's a good solid eight hours.

Hilary Renaissance: 46:22

Yeah, it is. It's definitely an eight hour day. So yeah, that that. I guess that kind of sums up the kind of questions I can ask animals. One of my most recent success stories was last year last summer. And it was a big, I mean, not that I don't have other success stories, but it was a kind of a really dramatic story. We love it because it was once again, there's people love the stories where there's no way that she could have known that. And this is that story. In a nutshell. The lady called me up her name is Kathleen and it's you can see it on my website. This is not a euphemism. That's her real name. And her dog cash had gone missing. And they had been staying in a hotel in Temecula, California, and the dog had run off. And she had been looking for the dog for several days. And there have been no sightings whatsoever. And around Temecula, California, there's a lot of desert land and you know, it's good, then there's a whole bunch of different, you know, things there, but it's kind of sparse. And she had, she really didn't know what to do. And she put up all kinds of posters. And she contacted me and she's like, I know you can do this. And I was like, Well, this is going to go, this breed of dog is the kind that will run. And they often hide. And I knew that I knew, and I knew that this was a member. It's kind of a cattle breed dog. And they if they get spooked by something, you know, they may go out and like sniff on stuff. But if they get spooked by something, they're often going to take off and go hide. And so I was like this is going to be difficult because there's a lot of open space here and there's lots of places for dogs to hide. So anyway, I communicated with her dog cash, and cash told me he was about two miles away. And he'd seen this beige building, and it looked like kind of like a cargo building or like one of those cargo containers. And there was a big tarp around there. And then there was I forget some of the there was a couple other details that I mentioned. But they were turned out they were there. And then I said that there was this hole and the dog had gone into a hole and couldn't get out. Well. I didn't hear from the woman for several days, but then I got a call from her. And she said Hillary says I was determined she says I knew you were right. And so it turned out long story short, that she had found the cargo building and the tarp and the other things and the hole and what the hole turned out to be was a drilling pipe for I don't know sewers or something like that. But it went down 200 feet and her dog was at the bottom of that 200 foot pipe and that's I don't even know I don't even know that you could have that there. But she had had to fire hire somebody who does like Plumbing sneaking or something with one of those cameras to get down there to the bottom of the hole. They found the dog down there and had to pull the dog out and there's video on my website in my found pet blog thing of her getting the dog back and her screaming cash cash and I'm going to give you a steak because the dog had been down there in that hole probably going to die. There was no way the dog could get out of that hole is a slippery pipe inner thing you know. So I think it's like some kind of PVC pipe pipe or something you can't climb out of that there's no trick you know, there's no friction and it plus it must have been really sweaty or cold cold down there at times and really hot down there at times. So it was it was like literally her efforts and my efforts together. Help find that dog and I'm sure that I would have died otherwise,

Charlotte Bayne: 50:01

that gave me chills and poor puppy. I'm so glad he was reunited with his parents. That's so scary, but also amazing that you did.

Hilary Renaissance: 50:13

I know, I know. And then, let's see another one. This one's on my website. It's actually the one that the TV reporter reported on was the guy who were the police chief was involved. So this was back in 2004. But I tell this story quite often, because a woman called me up from Mississippi. And I didn't, at that time, I wasn't really googling stuff. And I didn't really know she was in Mississippi. But it turned out I thought she was in Tennessee, but who knows, it didn't matter to me, the dogs don't know what they're in Tennessee or Mississippi either. But I, she told me that her dog had gone missing. And she thought the dog was just kind of gone and gone out on, you know, grand run around, or Safari or something like that. Well, I got that a man had picked up the dog and was keeping the dog. And the the details of it were that the man had, he was keeping the dog in the shed with a red motorcycle. And it turned out that there was only one red motorcycle registered in her town. And she she's kind of a woman with clout. And I won't say why she's with clout, but she has a lot of clout. And so she got the sheriff to kind of go out there well, that these people were kind of sketchy about the whole thing. And everybody were people were saying, Yeah, that guy has your dog. And she was able to get that information. The sheriff was too but nobody was able to go on the property because there was wasn't probable cause. So long story short, though, she got her dog back. They she in the sheriff put so much pressure on the guy that he finally that he was seen dumping the dog onto her lawn in the middle of the night. Put it that way.

Charlotte Bayne: 52:00

So what uh

Hilary Renaissance: 52:04

well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. It's interesting. It's an interesting story. There's a lot of nuances to it. But anyway, so. But the good news about that was that this sheriff was like, in on the process and knew about it. And so he was able to talk to the TV reporter and share that. And so that's, that was a, that was a really great story where I again, I think that the guy, unfortunately, might have been doing it out of vindictiveness to my client, and I don't know, what if it would eventually have happened to the dog. Got it. But but the dog had come back with all kinds of parasites. And unfortunately, you know, we were able to work through that, and the dog didn't lose his his leg because the dog had been kept in standing water in the in the shed. And so the dog had all, you know, it was it was just a sad story,

Charlotte Bayne: 52:59

anyway, but you, but she was able to get the dog to back to help, for the most part, yes,

Hilary Renaissance: 53:05

she was able to get the dog back to help. And actually, I helped her with that, because there was questions about whether the dog wanted his leg amputated or not. And I said, this, I know this is gonna sound weird. But I said that the dog felt like what was really going on was only in the dog's feet. And then if they were to just treat the dog's feet, and not the whole leg, that the problem would go away. And I turned out, I was right about that. They did treat the dog feet and the dog didn't have to lose his leg, which was great. In it, it was a it was a great experience, because it did get a lot of notoriety. And the woman does have a lot of clout. And so she had me come to her area, and teach a workshop in her area. And so I got to teach a workshop there with her and her family and all the people that with these wonderful Southern accents.

Charlotte Bayne: 54:00

So when you're teaching a workshop, just this is my last question. I don't want to keep you too long. But when you're teaching a workshop, what is that? What does that entail? So if someone comes to you, and they're like, I want to learn how to be an animal communicator? Yeah, or, or animal psychic? What? How was that? How do you learn to do that? It was that this might be for a whole nother podcast episode. So forgive me if it's too, too, like labor intensive, but I would love to know, because I would love to know how I could do that. Because I think I have a little bit of that in me so well, everybody does.

Hilary Renaissance: 54:35

I mean, I believe it's this is what I believe. I believe that it's like some people have more aptitude than others. That's a fact. Like I have aptitude, but you might even you might have some, but this is the way I tell it to people. You know, if you were a child and you were told first of all, like I was that, that you know, psychics were unreal, or they were frauds you'd never tried to learn. And so when when you are learning thing, probably 99% of the problem is getting past your own barriers that you can do it. And one of the things that I see time and time again is is that in a group situation where you have a whole bunch of people doing exercises together, and you're getting all this support, people can do a pretty good job that first time, everybody can, but then they get out of the class, and when they're not with the people, and they go back to their own biases, and they can't plus, it's stressful for them to even try. So you have I personally, one of the reasons I'm not teaching classes right now is is so many other people are, but the real reason is, is because you know, people want to do those classes over the internet, because they're cheaper that way. And teachers make more money that way. But I personally think you have to do it in a group, and you have to have that group support. Whereas if you're all on a zoom call, or something like that, people are distracted, it takes it adds an added layer, and people don't get that success. And then they walk out of the class thinking, Well, you know, maybe everybody else can do this, but I can't. So the number one criteria for me, and teaching a class is getting everybody together in a group, which is hard. And I personally don't have a lot of time to organize that stuff. So I mean, I have taught classes, but I'm pretty much probably not going to do it again. Just because it's just because it is time consuming. And a lot of people will back out at the last minute or whatever. And it's just like, I don't have time for that. But to tell the truth, you know, you can teach people skills about how to give and send, send and receive information. And the most important thing to know is is that, you know, you have to take that time to get relaxed. And so it's good if I can lead people through a relaxation exercise, and then I really do just try to get them to either send or receive because a lot of times people get in their heads, and they think I've got to get it all right away. And then that's, that's when they start getting back into their rational mind. And then they can't get anything. So it's really breaking down for people how to do this process. And either you've got to be sending or receiving, but you can't be doing both at once multi multitasking just doesn't work in this case. So you just

Charlotte Bayne: 57:18

set the intention that you're gonna, you know, in this hour, you're gonna send information or set the

Unknown: 57:24

or receive anything from it information. Yeah, yeah, you have to send and receive and breaking that down for people and then giving them questions to ask and having them write it down. And one of the funniest things that I see, and this is probably the end of this conversation, but one of the funniest things I see is is that people will actually, you know, I'll have people ask a question, like, what's the most important thing to you, dog? You know, you're this dog that you're communicating with, because that, and people will actually get stuff? That's really correct. You know, it might not be real detailed, but they get stuff that they couldn't have known otherwise. But they always almost everybody says, but I probably could have known that anyway. Yeah, so they just didn't have access. Yeah. And they do it again and again. So I actually had this after my second my second class, I actually had gold stars that I could get put in camp people for like, you got this out the other thing, but still people cycle back to ya know, though, that I probably should have known that, you know, and so it's they're getting into their own biases about psychic. So you have to have a lot of practice doing animal communication until you all of a sudden start trusting yourself. And that's just a process that everybody has to go through. Not just, you know, not just me, and not just you, but I would say everybody, I've seen that many times. Right. Okay, I have one

Charlotte Bayne: 58:43

more quick question. Okay, zillion more, but the one more quick question. So what could you know, when you when you just said some, you know, what is the most important to this particular dog? Have you found that there's something like across the board that's of high importance to dogs in your work? Or is it just very, to dog like, some dogs would be like a ball, some dogs would be food or something else would be something completely different? Or

Hilary Renaissance: 59:08

I would say support? I would say most dogs? Yeah, I would say most dogs, the most important thing is their people when they're communicating. I mean, that's, I would say that's universal. And then I would say it's different per dog and per breed. I mean, it's funny, I was talking to a guy the other day and he has a Pomeranian and I, we were laughing because I always say the breed has maybe about one brain cell amongst the whole breed. I love them. They're not the smartest dogs. And so if you ask you, they if you ask them to think like another dog or to think outside the box, it's just not possible for them. You know, they don't they want to be I would say the breed mostly wants to be the little prince or little princess and that's the most important thing to them. So you could say with and if they're not being If they're not getting to be the little prince or the little princess, then that's where you start having problems like them peeing or fighting with other dogs. But for the whole breed, I would say it all boils down to, you know, am I the princess? Or am I not the princess. That's, that's it. And we were laughing about that, because the guy rescues not only Pomeranians, but he rescues pitbulls, which also have a different set of kind of, you know, breed specific wantings. You know, they they really, they're very in the moment, and they love smells, and they love people, and they love the pack. You know, they want everybody to be together. And they feel like it's their job to make sure that the pack is together and that they're there with their humans. I mean, they're very family oriented dogs. So to them, if you're communicating with them, they're going to it's going to boil down to issues of how can we all be together? And how can I get as many smells as possible? You know, I mean, okay, you know, that's what it would all kind of boil down to, but there can be all kinds of other issues.

Charlotte Bayne: 1:00:59

That is so fascinating. God, Hillary, you're amazing. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to add? Are you I'm definitely going to after this conversation hit you up for a session. So I Lalanne Yeah. Okay, let's talk afterwards. But all right. Anything else that you want to add? I

Hilary Renaissance: 1:01:19

just Thanks for Thanks for having me. This has been great. I've been a great run Moderator. So pat yourself on the back.

Charlotte Bayne: 1:01:28

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Baroo podcast. If you're interested in a session with Hillary Renaissance, you can check out her website, calmpet.com. And not to worry, I will put a link in the show notes. And as always, if you enjoyed the episode, please don't forget to rate and follow the baru podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow us on Instagram at baru podcasts. If you have a story of canine companionship that you want to share with me or a question or even a comment. I'd love to hear from you. You can email me Charlotte at the baru.com All right, you guys. Thanks so much. Let's chat next week.