Animals "talk" to us all the time, we just need to be willing to listen.  ~Declan

Published: March 27, 2013 Updated: March 28, 2013 9:02 a.m. As posted on the Orange County Register

Animal psychic talks to animals (and says they talk back)

Actress at first thought the field was a little weird or hokey, but then learned by doing.

By LORI BASHEDA / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Where do you go after you've been written off "The Young and the Restless" by bathtub electrocution?

What's next after you've starred in the Stray Cats' "Sexy and 17" MTV music video, dancing on TV screens across the nation.

A rockin' career as an animal psychic, that's what.

Yeah, yeah, she knows: To some folks it might sound a little La-La Land L.A.

She says as much right in her book, "Straight from the Horse's Mouth: How to Talk to Animals and Get Answers" (Crown Books).

"I thought ... as some of you may think now," Amelia Kinkade writes of her foray into the world of animal communication, "that the psychic business is either a hokey sideshow act or a solemn mystical affair full of incense-burning Gypsies and weird witches with crystal balls."

But then she met a psychic named Gladys who talked to Kinkade's cat, Rodney. Rodney told Gladys he was jealous of Kinkade's boyfriend and wasn't going to behave unless he got a girlfriend of his own. Kinkade brought home a rescued feline. And Rodney stopped terrorizing the neighbors every day with his caterwauling.

Intrigued, Kinkade found a flier the psychic had given her for an animal communication workshop. Again, the naysayers fought with the rational side of her brain.

But she went anyway.

When it came time to ask a dog in the class what his favorite food was, a picture of spaghetti and meatballs popped into her head. After the others in the class guessed more traditional dog favorites, like bones, she meekly confessed her vision.

Bingo! the dog's owner shouted.

The next thing she knew she was talking to the queen's horses at Buckingham Palace and Barbara Walters' dog on "The View."

Well, not exactly the next thing, but pretty soon.

Things took off in 1996 after she was listed in "The 100 Top Psychics in America" (Pocket Books). Soon she was hitting the talk show circuit, telling "Extra" host Leeza Gibbons that her dog's favorite toy was a rubber chicken. (It was.)

You can watch the videos for yourself on YouTube.

On Saturday, Kinkade was at Sycamore Stables in San Juan Capistrano chatting up some horses.

She was invited by Gabi Gross, a veterinarian who began working in conservative medicine 25 years ago, traveling internationally with performance sports horses (her most famous client was Kentucky Derby-winning trainer Jack Van Berg). These days Dana Point is her home base. She runs Equolution, a nutrition-based counseling practice, focusing on "mind, body and spirit" of horse and rider.

Gross attended one of Kinkade's animal communication workshops in Anaheim.

Kinkade arrived at the stables looking like she could still be on TV: stylish and trim with wavy blond hair, snow-white teeth, matching purple eye shadow and nail polish, and rubber floral-print cowgirl boots.

She has a slight twang left over from her childhood. Kinkade left Texas for Hollywood at 18 to live with her aunt, Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche on "The Golden Girls," and take a crack at acting. Her most famous role was the bloodthirsty Angela in the '80s cult horror film series "Night of the Demons."

Debbie Williams was waiting for Kinkade with her horse, Luke. Kinkade stood outside Luke's stall and reported to Debbie that he said it's been a journey of grief.

He had a girlfriend, Kinkade reported, and they tried to have a baby, but it didn't happen and then they took her away, breaking his heart, and after that his intestinal troubles began.

Williams was shocked.

Indeed there had been a young mare they were trying to breed him with about six years ago but it came to nothing and she was shipped away. After that he began to have colic.

Kinkade said the horse also told her that he liked someone named Carol.

"And Carol likes him," Williams said.

Is there a Timothy, Tabitha or Kimberly? Kinkade asked.

There wasn't.

Williams had one question: "Does he feel I spend a sufficient amount of time with him?"

Kinkade said the horse told her that he missed Debbie at night and wished she would get a cot in the stall.

Williams laughed.

"I literally have to push him back in" the stall every night when she leaves, she said. "And I've told my husband I should put a cot in the stall."

A few stalls down, Kinkade met Evelyn Nichka.

She wanted to know why her horse, Tracker, was skittish on the trails. Kinkade told her he wants to follow a lead horse. He also wants more massages.

"I haven't had a massage in years," Nichka laughed. "He gets one a month."

"Well he wants one a week," Kinkade said.

The price for such intelligence: $300 a reading. Kinkade said it doesn't have to cost a dime, though.

"Everyone can learn to do this. The same as if you can learn to play the piano or learn Japanese or downhill ski."

She teaches workshops, explaining how it works.

"I silence myself so completely I don't have a thought. I don't have an emotion. I'm just gonna listen."

The animals, she says, talk by showing her pictures.

"It's learning how to function as a radio that can pick up frequencies from other beings," she said. "There isn't an animal out there that doesn't want to talk to us."

So what does she say to people who think this is bunk?

She tells the story of a country radio DJ who asked her on air who his dog's favorite person was. Kinkade mind-melded with his dog and then proclaimed: Aunt Beatrice!

Hot damn. He told his listening audience that he had brought Kinkade on the show to make fun of her and now wanted to apologize.

Kinkade is teaching an animal communication workshop at Glen Ivy Hot Springs on April 12. She is also looking for pet guinea pigs, both figuratively and literally (if you happen to have a pet guinea pig).

She asked if she could borrow my rabbit for her students to test their telepathy. I told her she could, but if Bun Bun starts piping up about wanting a boyfriend, the session's over.

For more: ameliakinkade.com