What do I mean, "...miss crucial, pet communication signals...?" While many people love idea of having animal companions, we also have daily responsibilities such as jobs, attending school, families, and other priorities. And usually, our pets end up last place on life's totem pole.

Another issue that certainly plays a key factor in how capable we are to understanding our animals' needs and wants is whether or not we have indoor or outdoor pets. Though indoor pets may pose a little extra patience with regard to training, I highly recommend (as does Humane Society ) keeping pets indoors with family.

What most individuals do not take into account is that once a collective choice is made to adopt an animal, that is precisely what is being done: we are adopting a living, feeling, creature into our lives; thus, we must consciously realize that by adopting an animal, he or she is to become a permanent addition and family member.

We certainly wouldn't adopt a newborn and place him outside on a chain all day until we returned from work, would we? Therefore, we must always remember to treat our animals just as considerately and compassionately as we would our own children.

By Bill Knell

“I see dead people.” Uttered by actor Haley Joel Osment in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, it has become one of most famous lines in movie history. Although film was based on a fictional story, we have all seen those people on television who claim they can see or communicate with dead. Would it surprise you to learn that dogs may also possess that ability?

One of oldest known paranormal beliefs is that dogs have ability to see or communicate with dead. It would be easy to believe that people have come to that conclusion based on a dog’s natural behavior. We’ve all seen dogs stand still and stare or react to something we were unable to see or hear. However, there may be much more to it then that.

Most of pet people I have known had some sort of a weird dog story to tell. The most common involves death of a beloved dog owner. The dog owner would die and it always seems like his or her pet would know about event before anyone else. My mother often recounts story of Grandpa Bill.

For last few years of his life, Grandpa Bill languished from a terminal illness. When he wasn’t in hospital, he stayed with us. It was during those stays that Bill became very close to an Irish Setter adopted by my mother. Rusty and Bill were inseparable. Whenever he sat in our back yard to get some sun during summer afternoons, Bill would play with her by throwing a ball for Rusty to catch or using her favorite old sock as a pull toy. Rusty slept at foot of Bill’s bed and would start barking anytime he coughed or experienced shallow breathing.

During final days of his life, Bill was back in hospital. It was during that time that Rusty started acting strangely. She would pace back and forth in front of bed in a spare room where Bill slept when he stayed at our home. She would circle lawn chair he used to sit in when he played with her in backyard. It was really eerie! However, stranger things were yet to come.

Although we knew he wasn’t going to live much longer, it came as a bit of a shock when Bill finally passed on. We thought that he would probably live another few months based on what doctors said, but that wasn‘t to be. A nurse checked on him around three in morning and found he had passed on. Around same time and without explanation, Rusty awakened everyone in our household. She began to howl uncontrollably. Less then an hour later, we received sad news of Bill’s passing by phone.

I was too young to remember most of what happened, but I do recall that my parents were freaked out by whole event. My mother was a no nonsense kind of person who had no use for anything paranormal, yet she recounted this story several times to me in later years whenever subject of strange animal behavior would come up. Anything but a storyteller, I always felt that she spoke of those events as a way of trying to understand them. I suppose we could just toss it all off to coincidence, but odds do not seem to be with that considering how many other people have experienced similar events.

Most everyone who has ever lived in any kind of a suburban neighborhood has some sort of a story to tell about that one weird house that everyone would stay away from. In my case, it was about seven houses down from mine in a neighborhood on Long Island. All of houses on our block had been built in early 1950s. With slight exceptions of larger or smaller models, most of homes looked like they belonged together. All except one. The weird house in our neighborhood had a dark wood exterior and was landscaped with small trees instead of bushes and hedges. It stood out and most of neighbors were not amused.

If it’s a true saying that strange houses attract stranger people, you could prove it by weird house on our block. From moment they moved in, first family to live in that house made no attempt to fit into neighborhood. The parents and three children were weird. They hated to answer their door, had two dogs that were as mean as they were big and never kept up their property.