Do You Need To Wait Before Communicating With a Pet Who Has Passed?

Is it possible to communicate right away with a pet who has crossed over the Rainbow Bridge? Do you need to wait two days or two weeks or two months before you can reconnect with your departed pet? Shannon of Animal Love Languages weighs in on the debate.

My answer comes from the hundreds of conversations I have had with departed pets. This is the feedback I have received from departed animals during Rainbow Bridge pet medium sessions.

But there is something interesting I can add here that you, the pet parent, may want to consider.

Sometimes departed pets tell me that while they are ready to talk and reconnect with their humans right away, they realize their human needs to wait. There are various reasons for this.

Let's say you have just lost your pet. They have passed and you are deep in grief. This is normal and natural. Your tears allow all that love to flow up and out of you, keeping you present and connected to life as it is right now. Your grief might feel so raw, so rough, so tangibly real, that you simply need to feel it so it doesn't get stuck inside you and turn toxic.

Then, after a couple of days or weeks or months have passed and all the moving parts of you - body, mind, heart, spirit - have adjusted to the loss of your pet's physical presence, you may be feeling calmer and clearer and more ready to ask your questions, hear about your pet's experience of crossing over the veil, receive their wisdom about next steps in your life together.

But we, the humans, we don't know that in the non-linear, heart-centered way our pets know it. We get stuck in our heads and forget that the body is the only part of us that wears out and needs to be discarded or exchanged for a new one.

So we get stuck missing our pet's physical body. Our pet understands that their body simply wore out and was no longer serviceable for the purposes it was needed for.

For our pets, there are two distinct stages to the transition process of death.

The first part of the process is dying. This is the uncomfortable part. Whether it is instantaneous, such as through an accident or predation, or more drawn out through an illness or the natural process of aging, there is likely going to be at least a few less pleasant moments as the spirit and the physical body part ways.

In the case of a longer illness or the natural aging process, pets will begin to leave their body and return, leave and return, leave and return, usually starting a day or few before their actual death moment. (Many humans do this too, by the way. I saw this firsthand as I helped my own father transition recently.)

Although often when this transition happens we are too emotional to stay present enough to witness this. And this too is normal and natural.

So our pets hop out of their body and across the veil and are quite ready to pick up where they left off with us, sans body of course, without skipping a beat. We, on the other hand, have a lot more adjusting to do before we feel safe and calm enough to open up that deeply to have that energetic spirit reconnection.

There is one potential exception to this norm. When an animal experiences a very sudden and unexpected passing, such as a roadway accident for example, there may be an initial period of adjustment.

In these cases, I simply ask the animal "Are you ready to talk?" And in every case, no matter how the pet passed, I always also ask the animal "Are you ready to talk?"

When in doubt, the best way to know whether your pet is ready to talk from the other side is to ask them. Animal communication is, after all, a conversation. It is a real-time connection. I do this for every single one of my Rainbow Bridge pet clients. I have never yet had a pet who wasn't ready to talk to their person. Yet I always ask, just to make sure.

Are you missing a soul pet who has died? There is no time limit on grief or the desire to keep your connection alive. I can help you reconnect and rekindle your soul bond.