How do cats know when it's time to go to the vet, even before the cat carrier comes out? How do dogs know when their owners are returning home at unexpected times? How can horses find their way back to the stable over completely unfamiliar terrain?

With a scientist's mind and an animal lover's compassion, world-renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake presents a groundbreaking exploration of animal behavior that will profoundly change the way we think about animals -- and ourselves. After five years of extensive research involving thousands of people who have pets and work with animals, Dr. Sheldrake proves conclusively what many pet owners already know: there is a strong connection between humans and animals that defies present-day scientific understanding. This remarkable book deserves a place next to the most beloved and valuable books on animals, including When Elephants Weep, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and The Hidden Life of Dogs.

With that said, I did enjoy the book and find Sheldrake's proof more than adequate. Many animals are sensitive in ways we don't understand.

There was a story, from the book, of someone who was going to commit suicide by overdose. When they went to open the bottle, their springer spaniel jumped in their lap, bearing it's teeth and growling fiercly. The person was so shaken that they put the pills away, at which point, the springer jumped back in the lap and happily lapped at their owners face.

I knew of a young girl who was walking home, down a deserted street, when a sedan approached with a man demanding that she get in the car. She began to walk faster... the car sped up... the demands became angrier... The car stopped, and a man got out and came towards her... She said the only preyer she could think of at the time. "God, please help me." Suddenly two dogs appeared and began barking at the man. Shaken, but not disuaded, he reached for the girl, and a beagle juped up and bit his wrist. That was enough, the man got back into the car and it sped off.

It has been over 6 years since that incident and the girl still goes to the farmhouse near where this happened to visit Molly and Dolly.

By the way, that was not their names when all of this happened... You see, no one had ever seen these two dogs before... before that fateful night when a young girls prayer was answered... by two dogs who appeared from nowhere.

This story was related by Paul Harvey on his program *The Rest of the Story* December 8, 1999

Have you ever found yourself staring at someone and they turn and look directly at you. How do they do that? How do pigeons find their way home from hundreds of miles away? How do some dogs react when their owner merely has the thought of coming home?

Good questions.

This book doesn't provide all the answers, but it establishes the reality which is a significant step.

44 of 50 found the following review helpful:


On the Provability of Unexplained Animal Powers  Sep 20, 1999
This book is a must for all of you who have "always marveled at your pet's unexplained powers, but have never dared inquired about them." Indeed, there was no one to consult. Institutional science dismisses these many instances as chancy, or explains them away in a mechanistic fashion; and the only other explanations were thus far provided by folk legends and superstitions. Unfailingly picturesque, but more often than not whimsical. DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME, an elaboration of the author's groundbreaking SEVEN EXPERIMENTS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD, addresses just such questions, after years of painstaking research and the accumulation of convincing evidence.

This is far and away Dr. Sheldrake's most accessible book to date, which is not to say it is a vulgarization. Far from it. In his characteristically sober yet charming prose, he has miraculously dodged the danger of compiling a list, but has rather presented the world with an anthology of mind-expanding instances of powers of animals. Some ideas are particularly compelling, such as "an animal-based earthquake warning system". Once more, he deals a blow to institutional science by beating it on its own turf, and that is, by piling up impressive evidence, a database, etc., so as to substantiate his claims. In all likelihood, many more "cases" will be added to his database after the general public has read this book. Perhaps tens of thousands. If institutional science will continue to ignore these phenomena, rather than join the author in the research, it will have de facto discredited itself in the eyes of the world. The Appendices are also valuable, C in particular, in which the author provides the Cliff's Notes to his own books. The concepts he summarizes are so fascinating that they should prompt the unfamiliar reader to read all his books, where the ideas are given the space they deserve.

Dr. Sheldrake's overall aim to resacralize the world is well-served by this book. Most pet owners have always felt there was something "more" or "other" to their pets than mere companions. This book will confirm their hunch, and prompt further investigations. Indeed, as the author says, "We have a great deal to learn from our companion animals."

43 of 50 found the following review helpful:


Fun and Informative  Nov 22, 2000 By richard_t "richard_t"
Sheldrake has spent a lifetime studying animals but looks outside the box of conventional wisdom in this engaging book about family pets. He suggests that the animals we know best, the cats and dogs who live in our homes, can teach us the most. He looks closely at several categories of oft-reported -but sometimes disregarded- types of animal behavior: predicting when their owners will return home, empathy, telepathy, sense of direction, and premonitions. Using replicable and rigorous experimental methods he demonstrates that something indeed is going on here, something they can not be easily described by conventional explanations. Sheldrake posits psychic connections that he calls "morphic bonds" exist among some creatures, including bees in a hive and schools of fish, and may well exist between some animals and the humans closest to them. Sheldrake clearly explains that such bonds do not occur among all pets or even among the same pets in all situations, but they definitely do seem to exist.

This is a fun book for animal-lovers, full of engaging anecdotes about dogs, cats, horses, and birds who enjoy strong emotional bonds with their owners that allow them to accomplish seemingly-unbelievable feats. But it is also an eye-opening book, for Sheldrake has applied some scientific techniques to both debunk fraudulent claims and to confirm those that have no conventional explanation. His "morphic bonds" are persuasive, especially to those who have lived closely with animals and observed their behavior in close quarters.

19 of 23 found the following review helpful:


Telepathy as a Common Biological Function  Aug 12, 2005 By Lee Charles Kelley "dog trainer/mystery novelist"
One Amazon reviewer of DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME wrote "Budiansky's THE TRUTH ABOUT DOGS states that other researchers were unable to replicate Sheldrake's amazing results. I like pets just as much as anyone else, though I don't feel the need to glorify them with powers that their small brains are incapable of possessing."

First of all, Stephen Budiansky--whom I admire--thinks dogs are social parasites (though that's not why I admire him; I like his unique approach to the subject matter). And the truth is, at least one other researcher, who was furiously attempting to discredit Sheldrake's theory (hardly an objective approach), actually ended up replicating his results exactly.

And having a small brain has absolutely nothing to do with what Sheldrake posits to be a common biological function of all social animals. He theorizes that it's a fairly ordinary form of communication that pre-dates human language and which doesn't require any kind of highly developed cognitive architecture.

Granted, Sheldrake focused on the dogs who'd been reported to already show this behavior, but the thrust of the research detailed in this book was not to provide definitive proof that dogs are "telepathic", but to start people thinking in that direction. And some of the data is quite remarkable.

By the way, my dog could care less when I'm coming home. He's always asleep when I get there (though he's always happy to see me). But I've had other experiences that show Sheldrake is on the mark. For instance, I found that if I'm walking my dog and thinking about going into a store up the block and picturing the possible behavior in my mind, he'll give up his usual path and pull me toward that store, even if I've changed my mind in the meantime.

I've also found that when teaching the down/stay at a distance, followed by the recall, if I imagine the dog coming toward me before I give him the release and the recall signal, he'll almost inevitably break the stay and come running.

I'm not a complete moron, so when I first noticed this happening I figured that I must have been doing something with my body language to cause this behavior. So I very carefully monitored and controlled my posture, my facial expressions (even though I was fifty yards away), etc. Nope. It wasn't my body language.

Huh, I thought, could it be these mental pictures I'm creating in my mind? So I trained myself not to create those mental images and whenever I kept my mind blank the dogs inevitably stopped breaking the stay until the release signal was given.

These experiences are far from being scientific proof but they do make you think.

I also recommend THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST for Sheldrake's theories on morphic fields.

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