How Your Pet Picked You and the Lesson You Are Meant to Learn Together

When people talk about soulmates, we usually mean a special bond we feel with another human. 

But pet soulmates are just as real - and just as much a part of our soul family!

My pet parent clients often ask me for help understanding the lessons their pet wants to teach them. And for my clients who are seeking to reunite with a departed pet through pet reincarnation, they also ask about how they can identify their reincarnated pet in their new body.

In this episode, I take you into the spirit dimension and talk you through exactly what the pets have shown me about how they pick "their" person. You will hear about:

🌟 Why it is NEVER an accident that a particular animal is in your life!
🌟 What the pets do to find you out of all the other people looking for a pet 
🌟 What your pet does next after they locate you and pick you
🌟 Why you never have to worry that the pet who is meant for you won't find you

This episode addresses some of the most frequently asked questions I get from pet parents and animal communication students so you definitely don't want to miss it!

Chapters

• 0:12 Animal Communication
• 16:01 Soulful Journey of Animal Connection
• 26:10 The Power of Animal Communication

Transcript

Shannon Cutts: 0:12

Hi Shannon here, Welcome. I am an animal sensitive and intuitive Reiki master practitioner and an animal communication teacher, and my passion is sharing animal communication with you. Animal communication has changed my personal life forever for the better, and not just because it has helped me be a better pet parent to my animals, to be a better guardian and steward of wild nature that's all around me, to help me be more sensitive and empathic even to the animals that I share this planet, my world, with, but really because it has become the best self-development, self-evolution program I have ever found. I have discovered so many bells and whistles within my own human organism. Of course we have our physical body, we have our mental body, we have our emotional body, we have our soul body, our embodied spirit living in our soul body, and so most of us, as we are soul body, and so most of us as we are going through our journey, we only really get training, we only really get education about how to use our physical and our mental body. Even our emotional training is woefully underserved in most cases and we don't get much, if any, training in the soul aspect of who we are. And so what I have learned since I have embarked on my own personal animal communication journey is nothing short of life changing. I have not only learned that all of these different bodies where my energies reside, they all have relationships with each other and they're designed to work together, but I've also learned that there's no accident why and how we cross paths with significant others in our lives, regardless of species. What that means is, it is no accident the animals you invite to share your world. It is no accident when you think, oh well, my animal just wandered into my life. And what I say is and this is bolstered by hundreds upon hundreds of animal communication conversations I've had what I will say to that is wandered in by design.

Shannon Cutts: 2:44

The other day I was speaking with a pet parent client and she had just adopted a cat and this cat was very beautiful and very friendly and very good with all ages and very good with dogs, which not all cats are, and so this cat was very much in demand. Lots and lots of people wanted to adopt this cat and she discovered him, knew he was her sole cat, but there were already like 20 different applications in for this cat from other families and she just said to herself I'm just going to go ahead and do it anyway, because something in my heart just knows that this is my cat. And so she went ahead and filled out an adoption form anyway, even though she was thinking well, I'm number 21 on the list, how will I ever even have a chance to adopt this cat? Well, it turns out, this cat had some special needs and the other adoptees, the other potential adoptees, couldn't meet those needs, and she ended up being able to adopt this beautiful, beautiful cat. And so there really are no accidents. If we're meant to be together, we will be together. Does that cancel out free will? Does that cancel out other aspects of being an embodied soul who may make lots of different choices along the way? No, it doesn't. But if we truly have the heart desire to be together, we actually rehearse our meeting here in the physical plane. We rehearse it beforehand when we're in the soul state.

Shannon Cutts: 4:21

And what I really love about the work? Well, there are so many things when I say what I really love about this work that I do, but one of the things I love the most is right from the start, right when I was doing my very first animal communication sessions, I was so super curious about how animals choose people Like how did my petal bird choose me? How did my tortoise malty choose me? How did our dachshund flash Gordon? Why did he choose our family? And what the animals often show me looks a lot like a really old school job board, kind of like, if you can imagine, back in the days when, instead of online job boards that we can go to, we had like old school cork boards on the wall and little pushpins and there would be like newspaper cutouts for different jobs. And what the animals show me is that they're all crowding around these old school job boards and they're peering over each other's heads or they're dipping under each other's toes and there's all different species together and they are all looking for their person. They're looking for the perfect match because, of course, no matter what species we are, we always come into these physical bodies to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better.

Shannon Cutts: 5:44

Some of us may call that learning life lessons. For me, there's only one lesson. The lesson is always about unconditional love. The lesson is always about growing closer together, learning to grow in wisdom and love each other better and love ourselves better and love this planet better and learn to share better. And so each animal is coming in with their own lessons that they need to learn so that they can evolve, that they can love even more.

Shannon Cutts: 6:17

We may think, oh, animals, they already love us unconditionally, absolutely. Of course they do. And underneath all of our limitations and all of our lessons and all of the things that have happened to us along the way, we actually do too. Our default is unconditional love. We just have some peeling away of some layers sometimes that we need to do in order to fully get there, in order to fully share the unconditional love, the unconditional loving being that we are. And so animals show me this old fashioned job board and they're all just peering around each other.

Shannon Cutts: 6:54

And when an animal finds their person, the perfect match for them, the one that they know like their background, where they are in their soul, evolutionary journey, their strengths as well as their weaknesses, their opportunities as well as their obstacles, and they see a job posting seeking a cat who is a young adult, who is full of energy, who is friendly, who is scared sometimes and needs some help opening up, when that cat finds the person who is skilled at helping shy animals open up, who is confident, who has a cat-friendly home, all of these different points that we're looking to kind of match up so we're going to have the optimal environment for the lessons that we want to learn, so that we can grow in wisdom and learn to love better. When an animal finds their person, their person's application, I see them literally grab it off the wall and hold it up and yell I found mine, I found mine. And then they go take it over to the soul relationship, the soul contractor, soul agreement coordinator, and they say I've found my match. Now, chances are good.

Shannon Cutts: 8:17

There isn't actually a physical job board in the light dimension, because there are no bodies. There aren't physical creations the way we experience them in the 3D, there's only particles of energy. I love what Einstein said Energy can neither be created or destroyed. However, it can be transmuted, it can show up in so many different forms and so in the spirit space likely there is a light based version of what the animals show me, but they're showing it to me in a format that is easy to share with the pet parent who's wondering why did my animal choose me? Or what would it have been like if we hadn't found one another?

Shannon Cutts: 9:00

What I want to share, based on what all of the animals have shown to me is that this part is prearranged. What that means is you have said yes to that animal and that animal has said yes to you in advance, and so when you meet one another, one of the ways that you recognize each other is this feeling that you have of we're just meant to be together. Many pet parents they talk about just knowing, or they share a story that seems so wildly improbable. And here I will stop and share a story from my own background, and it involves how my rescued box turtle, bruce, came into our family. Now Bruce has since rewilded himself and that was also part of our soul contract, and that is a whole separate story. But basically what happened is that I had added my red foot tortoise, malti who is now 10, to our family.

Shannon Cutts: 10:04

Malti was really, really little. She came to me as a five-week-old hatchling, and so I had gotten in the habit since I was not living in a space at that time where I had an outdoor area where she could stay safely on her own without me supervising. I had gotten in the habit of taking her outside every day to walk around, stretch her legs, experience the great outdoors, get the UV light that she needed to grow in a healthy way but also have that safety and that protection of me watching over her. Well, I had just got distracted for a moment and Malti somehow wandered away and I was so upset at the time because I thought to myself she's so little, like she was the size of like the inner part of my palm, and I couldn't imagine how I could ever find her again, and I was so angry at myself and I was just felt like the worst pet parent in the world. I can't even keep track of a tiny little tortoise. She can't walk very fast.

Shannon Cutts: 11:04

And this was in my pre-animal communication days, as far as, like I was not yet working as an animal communicator professionally. But I was hiring animal communicators and I reached out to my usual communicator and she really wasn't available, and so I had to go and search for a different animal communicator. And I reached out to my usual communicator and she really wasn't available, and so I had to go and search for a different animal communicator and I found a communicator who was willing to work with me and was willing to work with tortoises, and I discovered that a lot of animal communicators really didn't feel comfortable working with any other animals other than dogs and cats, and so I really had to hunt for a communicator who believed that tortoises could communicate. And once I found a communicator that was willing to work with me, one of the first things she said to me was that Malti didn't get lost. She deliberately went off to have an adventure and to decide if she wanted to be a pet tortoise, if she wanted to live a wild life, and this was something that was so new to me.

Shannon Cutts: 12:03

I had no idea at that time that there was anything other than a lost animal. When an animal went missing. I was really just learning exponentially through this experience, and yet I couldn't stop blaming myself. I couldn't stop saying to myself you're just a terrible pet parent. You are so careless. How could you take your eyes off of her? Now she's lost, she's in danger, etc. Etc. So this experience really woke me up to the independence of each animal inhabiting a body, regardless of species. We get to choose. We have the right and the ability to choose, and, malti, it would take me seven days to learn that what the animal communicator told me absolutely was accurate and that there were two fundamental reasons for it, only one of which was Maltese desire to experience life as a wild tortoise and decide if she wanted to have the pet life.

Shannon Cutts: 14:06

The other reason began to reveal itself just only a handful of hours after I had lost track of Maltese physical location, because my mom came over right away, because, of course, I was hysterical. So my mom came over right away and we started creating missing tortoise posters and we started walking around the neighborhood posting them everywhere and we started accosting our neighbors and strangers on the street and asking them to keep an eye out for this tiny tortoise. And not long after we posted our first poster, I got a phone call and the woman on the other end was very excited and she said I think I found your missing tortoise. So of course, mom and I got so excited and she told us her location and I was like, wow, if Malty is at that location, that means she is much faster on her feet than I thought. So we went running literally like jumped in the car and sped all the way over to where this woman was and her dog had found a tortoise trying to kind of burrow under some bushes and the woman whose house it was picked up this tortoise and handed it to me. And I looked at this tortoise and knew immediately it wasn't malty, and the woman whose house it was handed me this tortoise and said oh, you lost a tortoise. Well here, do you want this one? And this was a huge teaching moment for me on so many levels. But, looking back, the thing that impacted me the most was this small still voice inside me say and I didn't say this out loud, but I said to myself what does she mean? Do I want this tortoise? This animal is not hers to give, nor is it mine to take. And I just said, no, this isn't the animal that I'm looking for. And I went along my way.

Shannon Cutts: 16:02

Now I spent seven days searching for Malti. I searched everywhere. We had neighbors out searching. My mom would come over and help me search. We're out beating the bushes in this area near my house, where she had gone off I'd say gotten lost, but she'd gone off to have.

Shannon Cutts: 16:19

Her adventure was this undeveloped piece of land that they were just starting to transform into what would become kind of a row of townhouses. But it was not. It had not been developed yet, and so it was lots of brambles and lots of briars and just lots of weeds, and then surrounding that there were houses and I was just searching and searching, and searching and then we had these epic rains and I would be out at night with an umbrella and a flashlight and I was looking under cars and I would have people stop me as I'm like moving their trash cans and crawling underneath their trucks and ask me, what are you doing? And I would say I lost my baby tortoise and would show them a picture and they would have these really weird reactions like okay, good luck with that. You know none of the compassion that you might expect If I had said I lost my pet cat or I lost my pet dog. It was kind of like you're looking for a pet tortoise, okay, good luck with that.

Shannon Cutts: 17:21

Anyway, I kept looking and I looked, and I looked and I looked and I looked and I had started working with two other animal communicators and what was so interesting is all three of these communicators told me to look in the same direction. I just wasn't able to find Malti. Well, on the seventh day I was feeling so exhausted and discouraged and I kept saying to Malti inside myself, even though I didn't know that I could communicate with her, I kept saying I am going to keep looking for you until I find you. But I was feeling so exhausted, just really wiped out bug bites, I was sunburned, I was waterlogged, I was miserable. And I got a message from one of the communicators that said walk to the north and you will find her. She's not far away. And this gave me a little bit of hope, a little bit of renewed energy.

Shannon Cutts: 18:20

But I still wasn't feeling very hopeful and right about then I got a phone call and the woman on the other end said I think I found your missing tortoise. We found this tortoise about to step off the curb on a really busy street and we're driving over to your house. Now everybody knew the house where I was renting the garage apartment, because it was this beautiful stately manor with this very fancy chicken coop on it. So I had given my corner, you know kind of the street coordinates, and they all knew exactly which house I was living at. So the woman said well, we're driving over to your house Now. We have your tortoise. She got out of the car.

Shannon Cutts: 19:02

It was this really sweet young couple and she gets out of the car and she's holding this tortoise. And I look at the tortoise and it's not multi and I'm all set to just say, no, I'm sorry, this isn't my tortoise. When all of a sudden I realize, oh my goodness, I recognize this tortoise. This is the tortoise I met on the first day. Malti went missing. This is the same tortoise. How is this possible? And this young woman was so happy and so excited and I said, oh, this isn't my tortoise. And her face just fell. And I looked at this tortoise and I thought, wow, where she found this animal is quite far, several blocks from where I first met this animal. And so I reached out my hands and of course I'm feeling so low and I'm feeling so discouraged because I haven't found Malti, and I said give him or her to me and I will foster until I can make a suitable arrangement.

Shannon Cutts: 20:10

And I took Bruce, turned out to be Bruce in my palms. He turned out to be not a tortoise at all, he was a box turtle and they can hinge their shells up so that they close completely. They're really remarkable animals. And he was just. He just had his shell open, just enough so I could see his eyes and I just, something in my heart just oof, I can't even describe it. If you've ever you've just had a soul meeting with an animal you know Turns out this is exactly the species of tortoise that and I use the word tortoise and turtle and box turtle very interchangeably species wise, taxonomy wise he's a box turtle. So he's technically a turtle, but we could get into that another time. That's a whole separate conversation. But he and I were meant to be together because right after I said yes to Bruce I walked outside, walked two blocks to the north in the direction that all three communicators had told me to go, and found malty underneath a flowering bush beside one of my neighbor's driveways.

Shannon Cutts: 21:24

And I share that story for so many reasons One, because it opened up my eyes to how real animal communication is. Three different communicators, one in California, one in Arizona and one in India, all told me the same exact information about Maltese coordinates and all three of them were correct. Two, because I learned that animals make a choice to wander away. It's not they got lost. Sometimes it is, but it can also be. They made a choice. Three, because if Malti hadn't gone missing, if Malti hadn't gone off for her great adventure, I would have never had the opportunity to meet Bruce. And four, because the primary, the lead communicator that was helping me locate Malti.

Shannon Cutts: 22:26

I then asked her to do a communication with Bruce because I just I told her. I said I've got this vibe based on how he reacted when he was inside my home. He crawled up on top of this giant stuffed alligator that was Maltese little baby hiding area and he crawled to the top of the alligator and this is a very large stuffed alligator and he stared at me like I'm home now. And I told this communicator I said I'm just getting this vibe that he wants to stay, that he's acting like he's home now, like he accomplished his objective. And she said he did. He loved your energy, he loved your respect. He actually had heard my inner dialogue with myself about this animal is not yours to give or mine to take and he really loved that energy and so he took off in the direction of your house. He could feel your energy and he took off in the direction of your house and that's why he was trying to cross that busy street to get to you.

Shannon Cutts: 23:28

Because the second location where he was found was much closer to me than the first location where I met him. And so I learned that animals choose their people in a very tangible way and that he had chosen me, and she also said to me he really needs your help, he's very hungry, he's very scared. That dog that had alerted the woman to his presence initially was just one of many dogs that was harassing him. He was a wild animal that had been taken out of the wild and rehomed several times. He had a very sad story he was hungry, he was scared, he was lonely and he had kind of lost a belief in his own ability to survive on his own in this urban area, and so he needed nourishment, he needed safety after all of the distress that he'd been through.

Shannon Cutts: 24:21

And the communicator also said he's in your life to help you learn how to manage your energy. And I didn't know what that meant, but that sounded very intriguing and also very much like something I really wanted and needed in my life. And it turned out that, bruce, by opening up my eyes to so many different facets of our soul relationships, our soul contracts, our soul agreements with one another across species boundaries, if I hadn't been so open to experiencing so many different facets of Maltese Big Adventure, I probably wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today and I would have missed out on the ride of a lifetime, because animal communication is awesome. It has just opened me up. Bruce taught me how to manage my energy. He taught me how to communicate with him. That's a whole other story that I could just spend hours telling.

Shannon Cutts: 25:24

He rewilded himself seven years after we met because he was ready at that point. He was ready to go back to the wild. I wasn't ready to let him go, but he was ready to go back to the wild. He was confident, he was nourished, he was strong, he was brave, he knew who he was and I had become an animal communicator. I was just about to step over that threshold and become an animal communicator, and if we hadn't met, if Malti hadn't taken off for her great adventure, we would never have met. And I look back now and I think she knew. She knew that part of her role and part of her place in our family was to help me cross paths with Bruce.

Shannon Cutts: 26:10

And so there are so many nuances to what happens when an animal enters our life, even if they happen to take off for a period of time.

Shannon Cutts: 26:23

There are so many reasons for it, and animal communication is a pathway through which we can grow in wisdom and learn to love better on so many levels by waking up to the full consciousness that we have, regardless of species, whether we're a horse or a turtle or a tortoise or a bird or a dog or a or another species. We have a physical body, a mental body, an emotional body and a soul body with full capabilities in every level, and so that is just kind of a spoiler alert, if you will, for the wonderful adventure that is animal communication and why I believe that animal communication is the best self-evolution, soul level self-evolution program you could ever find. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I would love to hear your own stories of how your soul animals found you, how your paths cross, how you knew each other was the one, and I've got plenty more stories of my own to share with you as well, so I look forward to welcoming you back. I send you all my love and bye for now.