When the opportunity to interview Animal Communicator Ellie Laks was presented, I jumped at the opportunity! Who doesn’t want to know what their pet is thinking? Or other animals too! Ellie is a remarkable animal communicator and the visionary founder of The Gentle Barn. In this episode, she opens up about embracing her intuitive gift of animal communication and gives tips about how to understand your own animals.
She shares her extraordinary journey of connecting with animals from a young age, leading her to establish a sanctuary in 1999 that serves as a peaceful haven for creatures in need. Her insights reveal the emotional and ethical challenges faced in animal rescue, providing a heartfelt exploration of the compassion required to care for animals who might otherwise be forgotten.
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About Ellie Laks
Ellie Laks founded The Gentle Barn in 1999; it was a dream of hers since she was seven years old. Animals were always very healing and nurturing to her as she faced the challenges of growing up, finding herself, fitting in, feeling understood, etc. She majored in special education and psychology, and with her special love of animals and children, The Gentle Barn was a perfect way of putting all her talents and passions into one. She’s the author of two books about her experiences. Find her books or see more about The Gentle Barn through https://www.gentlebarn.org
Although the animals always spoke to her, she began doing formal animal communication sessions for others in 2021. See more about it and book your session at https://ellielaks.com
About Dr. Liz
Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.
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Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work
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Transcript
0:00:03 – Dr. Liz
Hi everyone. You’re going to love today’s interview with Ellie Laks. I am telling you, if you love animals, you’re going to love it. If you admire people who love animals and wish you could be like that, you’re going to love it. If you wish you could know what animals are thinking, you’re going to love it. Okay, which I don’t know how you could be a human and not wonder what animals are thinking. Really, she talks all about her journey from childhood and hearing animals call to her. You know all how she grew up. Some of the dark places she hit, feeling like she was weird, not normal, becoming a dog walker and dog sitter and then finally opening her sanctuary and eventually coming into her own and really owning her gift as an animal communicator, slash animal psychic. She is personable and genuine and honest. She has quite the wisdom to share with us around animals.
Now, before we jump right into it, I do want to say that an animal communication session would make a fantastic gift for whichever holiday you’re celebrating. The holiday season is coming right up. It’s like almost on top of us now by the time this airs. So consider that as a gift for the animal lover in your life or a donation to the Gentle Barn to help support the animals in somebody’s name that you love and care about. Or one of her books. She has two books that you can buy and put under the tree or wrap up for Hanukkah for somebody. So there’s three options there that make wonderful gifts. Just throwing ideas out there for you, trying to make life easier for you, out there for you, trying to make life easier for you.
If you’re listening to this and it’s not the holiday season, I’m sure there’s some kind of anniversary or birthday of somebody coming up that you love in your life, that loves animals. Or buy them for yourself, maybe great gifts for yourself. Now let’s jump in. I hope you’re healthy and safe Peace. I hope you’re healthy and safe Peace. Hi Ellie, welcome to the Hypnotize Me podcast.
I’m so excited to be here and I’m sure this is going to be a fantastic conversation. Thank you for having me. Yes, I was very excited to see your email across my desk. I was like I think this is a sign that I have to keep podcasting. Yeah, I just aired like episode 300. And I was like maybe I should stop. But I was like no, no, no, not yet I have to talk to Ellie Lacks about the animals first talk to Ellie Lacks about the animals first.
So so glad you’re here. So let me just start at the beginning. What were you like as a child?
0:03:15 – Ellie Laks
I was obsessed with animals as a child. My mom likes to talk about how, the minute I could walk, I was literally running down the sidewalk after somebody’s dog or cat. And then I got a little older, I started venturing out into the woods to play with the wild bunnies. And then, even a little older, around six, I would go down to the lake and into the woods finding salamanders and turtles and ducks and watching tadpoles turn into frogs. And when I found animals that were injured or lost, I would bring them home. So my poor parents, like I, literally had a goose that wintered with us because the lake was frozen. I brought in a bunch of fledglings to be able to raise them so they could fly away. Obviously, dogs and cats, a turtle with a broken shell, a bunny rabbit that was injured my house was always full of animals.
0:04:13 – Dr. Liz
Oh, that sounds like my girls are always bringing in some kind of little injured animal and luckily we have a wildlife sanctuary in the area and so I would call up the wildlife sanctuary. Sanctuary in the area. And so I would call up the wildlife sanctuary like can we bring this over, you know, and sometimes we’d have to keep it, you know, overnight or something, until they were open. But yeah, so you always had a kind place in your heart for for the injured animals.
0:04:40 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, I mean, for me nature was this magical kingdom and animals were these mythical creatures. I couldn’t even believe. I got to watch them and know them. And you know there was three of us kids and my mom had her hands full because we’re all two years apart. So I mean that’s a lot of babies at one time and you know, I think it was a lot of work just us, let alone the animals I kept bringing home. And she just kept telling me Ellie, when you grow up you can have as many animals as you want. So I really took that one to the bank.
0:05:18 – Dr. Liz
I love it. Great, great. So you made your way through high school. Did you start working on a farm at any point, or some kind of wildlife sanctuary, or what did you do after you know? Like just basic high school is done.
0:05:38 – Ellie Laks
Yeah. So after high school I went on to college and to support myself. During college I was a dog walker, dog trainer, dog groomer and dog boarder. So people drop off their dogs. They would live in my house, we would go on long hikes and they would feel like they were in a regular family instead of having to go to the kennel.
0:05:57 – Dr. Liz
And what did you study in college? Psychology and special ed. Ah, okay, so not really. I mean, psychology can be animal related, for sure, but nothing like animal sciences or veterinarian, nothing like that.
0:06:13 – Ellie Laks
No, you know, I made the decision early on to not be a veterinarian because I thought, you know, clients are going to or patients are going to come and their dogs are going to need a surgery and the people are going to say they don’t have money to just euthanize the dog. You know all of these sob stories of people not being kind to their animals or treating them right. They want to give them the cheap food instead of the good food, and I just knew I’m going to see problems that I’m not going to be able to fix and it’s going to destroy me. Also, you know, I’m not a scientifically inclined person. I’m much more like an emotional, spiritual healer, and so I wanted to work on the emotional side of animals, to be able to breathe the life back into them and show them love and teach them to trust. Like that’s the stuff that really makes me happy. Yeah, got it.
0:07:01 – Dr. Liz
Okay, so you had the dog walking. Makes me happy. Yeah, got it. Okay, so you had the dog walking, dog boarding in your home dog sitting business.
0:07:14 – Ellie Laks
And then what happened?
Well, and I started rescuing dogs from very high kill shelters around me and at first it was like you know I had all these clients that were paying their way and then, like one at a time I would take like a dog that was going to be euthanized from a high kill shelter.
But the more animals I took in, the more I realized how many animals needed me, and so I started taking more and more rescue animals in until it flipped and I had a house full of rescue animals and just one or two paying clients. Financially that was not a good move, but obviously I was living my bliss and rescuing these animals, um, and I actually dropped out of school because rescuing these animals from high kill shelters, leash training them, um, teaching them how to be real dogs and cats that no one else would take in because they were so mentally and physically challenged, and then being able to see them through to homes of their own, it was just such a rewarding experience that I started doing that more and more and less of my actual paid work and it kind of took over. So I started doing dog and cat rescue full time as a young adult, you full time as a young adult and I absolutely loved it.
0:08:25 – Dr. Liz
How did you fund this endeavor? Because I volunteered at cat shelter for the last three years. Like every Sunday my daughter and I go and well, now she’s at college, but before that, and it saved her life, by the way, like literally, I think it saved her life and, um, but I often think about it. But I think how, how would I fund that? Like I’d have to be a good grant writer or something Like. How did you fund this?
0:08:54 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, so I mean, um, my, my parents at the time I was a very young adult. My parents at the time were very generous to me and they helped pay my way, so I had support from them. Um, and I would take the animals and I would go to adoption days and weekends at pet stores and people would donate. Um, and there was not that it covered the costs of the animals, but you know there was adoption fee that people paid, went into the care of the animals and, um, yeah, I, I made it work.
0:09:23 – Dr. Liz
And I was still walking dogs. Okay, got it.
0:09:26 – Ellie Laks
In the beginning at least, yeah, yeah, and this is what kind of helped me transition from rescuing and rehabilitating and rehoming dogs and cats to founding the Gentle Barn. I was very specifically intent on rescuing the animals that nobody else would take at the shelters. So you know, the shelters were full of beautiful, young, healthy, adoptable animals and there were lots of other rescues that were taking those, but nobody would give a chance to an older animal that was incontinent or had arthritis or the animals that were so scared they couldn’t be touched and those were being euthanized. And so when I started going to the high kill shelters, I would very specifically take the ones that were on the euthanasia list that no one else would give a chance to Got it, that no one else would give a chance to Got it.
But then, when I took those animals in, I had to invest so much in resuscitating them that I felt like I was re-injuring them when I would rehome them. They finally trusted me. They finally blossomed and were happy yeah. And then I sent them to another place and it became so incredibly painful for me. I felt like I was doing them a disservice and I just didn’t have the heart for it.
I think rescuers that are strong enough to rehome animals. It takes a certain amount of discipline and it takes a certain amount of knowing that in the big picture that’s what’s right for these animals and I just didn’t have it.
0:11:00 – Dr. Liz
Oh, I’m so glad to hear you talk about this. It is hard because people ask me how do you? I’m luckily at a no-kill, volunteering at a no-kill shelter, so they do take the. You know several cats missing a leg and one missing an eye and one was blind and incontinent. They take the sick animals, they do and they keep them and some of them obviously are healthier as well. And sometimes it’s like so hard when, like one of my favorites gets adopted and I know it’s best for that animal. But people ask me, like how do you not end up with a million cats? And I’m like, well, it it does take discipline, it really does.
And I have an older cat at home who you know doesn’t want another cat around, so that helps. But it’s like, yeah, I’m super sad sometimes when I see one of them leave, like sad and happy for them at the same time. But yeah, I get it oh, it’s really hard work it is very difficult.
0:12:01 – Ellie Laks
yeah, I get it. Oh, it’s really hard work. It is very difficult, yeah, and I mean God bless you and so many other people that have the discipline and have their eye on the overall picture to know, no, this is our shining moment. That animal is going to their forever home. This is something good. I did it. I mean, I placed over 500 dogs just on my own wow, um, so many. But what was happening was really old ones that were just not adoptable, or the really scared ones that it took two years for them to trust me. Yeah, I was holding on to them and what ended up?
0:12:37 – Dr. Liz
oh, yeah, well sometimes those come back right and the shelter owner, who I love, she’s like well, they just love living here. That’s what she says. They’re like they love living here. This is where they need to be. You know, it’s like she has sort of this, you know philosophy around it, but it’s like that’s what you’re describing is they’re probably traumatized in the new home and they want to be back in the place that they trust.
0:13:04 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, so what ended up happening is I just I got and and dog and cat rescuers I mean, we all experienced this where there there becomes like this core group of, like lifers you know, or animals that you rescued.
They’re just not adoptable. And yes, but what was happening was I ended up with like I think it was, 12 dogs and 30 cats and I, I just had like this moment one day where I said to myself you’re becoming a hoarder. Um, you know, it’s not like I had a facility or a shelter or yeah, oh, yeah, yes, and I had, you know, like pregnant dogs or pregnant cats and all the bathrooms and, you know, all the rooms were full. And I just one day was like you’re becoming a hoarder. You need to either bring in animals that you’re willing to adopt out or you need to stop bringing more animals into your home.
But you can’t have more than 12 dogs and 30 cats. Like this is not okay. This is it, this is the line. And they were very happy and living wonderful lives. But I just, for some reason, I just saw that line and I was like don’t step over that line line. And I was like don’t step over that line. You know it was a conflict for me because I really wanted to take the animals that no one else would give a chance to, but every animal like that that I brought in, chances are I might not adopt them out.
0:14:33 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:14:35 – Ellie Laks
And so I ended up like just pausing the dog rescue for a minute and just really caring for it and loving the 12 dogs and the 30 cats that I had. And then there was like a transition phase where I had always had this dream, since I was seven, to have the gentle barn and be able to save animals that had nowhere else to go. And I thought you know why don’t I give birth to that? Because I can still be attracted to the animals that have nowhere else to go and who will otherwise be euthanized and are not adoptable. But they can come in and they can stay with us at the gentle barn, yeah, yeah.
It was a couple of years later that the gentle barn was founded in 1999. It was a couple of years later that the Gentle Barn was founded in 1999.
0:15:20 – Dr. Liz
Okay, so about how old are you then I?
0:15:24 – Ellie Laks
was 30 when I started.
0:15:26 – Dr. Liz
Okay, so you’d been, you’d done some college, some dog walking, some this, some rescuing. So about 10 years of that or so when you finally decided, okay, let me open this, the gentle barn, and transform into a sanctuary, really.
0:15:44 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, and the gentle barn also happened kind of in a slow way. I was having this pause where I was just taking care of the 12 dogs and 30 cats that I had. I had given birth to my son, so he, I had a little baby. So taking care of my son and all those animals, that was full-time work, yes. And then we discovered a petting zoo I’d never seen before and went in, make a really long story short, started bringing injured and dying animals from that petting zoo home to resuscitate them in my backyard. And one day and that went on for months- yeah.
And then one day I realized, oh my God, I just I just started my dream since I was seven. And so I started the gentle barn and then eventually opened it to the public and started doing programs for people. And this is where my psych and special ed background come in, because, yes, I’ve always loved animals and been very, very good at healing them, but I’ve also been drawn to hurting humans. And the Gentle Barn allows me to do both. I get to save and resuscitate animals and then partner with them to heal humans from the same stories of trauma, and so it kind of incorporated both loves of my life.
0:16:54 – Dr. Liz
Yes, beautiful, beautiful, and so it is still running beautiful and so it is still running.
0:17:05 – Ellie Laks
Yes, yes, the gentle barn is now a 25 year old national organization with locations in los angeles, california, nashville, tennessee and st louis, missouri. We currently, across the three locations, have 200 rescued animals, and we’ve taken animals that have nowhere else to go, dogs included, but, but also horses, donkeys, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, peacocks, llamas, alpacas. We have an emu and a parrot, and if we can find a home of their own, we do.
We do still have an adoption program but, if they have ongoing needs for the rest of their lives. We get to keep them and love them and then partner with them to help people. So it kind of is more aligned with who I am.
0:17:49 – Dr. Liz
Wonderful, wonderful one that you contract with that comes in and helps you care for the animals when they need, like medical attention or or the special, expensive food or whatever it is that they require.
0:18:07 – Ellie Laks
So it is on the top of my wishlist to have an onsite vet, and one day we will get to that point. Right now we don’t. Right now, we partner with like eight to 10 different vets. We have our mobile vets that come out to us. We have our brick and mortar vets that we bring animals to for surgeries or illnesses. We have our bird experts, our horse experts, um, and then our farm animals, true, true It’d be.
0:18:34 – Dr. Liz
That’d be like a unique vet to know about all those different animals anyway. Wouldn’t I think that through a little bit. A little bit, because they all have their specialties these days.
0:18:45 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, and avian and equine veterinary care is is a specialty. So to have those specialized departments and then have the farm animal vets that either come out to us or we go to them, and we also have acupuncturists, massage therapists, chiropractors, holistic vets, energy healers, and then I do animal communication on all the animals.
0:19:08 – Dr. Liz
Awesome, Awesome. So let’s talk some about that. The animal communication when did you gain awareness Like, oh, this is a unique talent, because I’m picturing like this little girl running around, you know, like loving all the animals, very clear, what they need. And I will say like I see a huge difference between, like myself and my, my youngest daughter, who’s like super tuned in to animals and I mean I don’t know 99.9% of the time I think she’s right, like she intuitively knows what they need, how to, how to. She can touch animals that nobody else can touch. Like you know, they have a little like feral cat sign on them like careful, and she will eventually make friends with them and be able to handle them and do stuff like that. And so it’s like to me it’s like all right, that’s another level, right? Then me who’s like sort of bumbling around, like cleaning the litter boxes, being careful, you know. But when did you gain awareness Like, oh, this is really a unique skill, that I have A gift. I would call it a gift actually.
0:20:25 – Ellie Laks
Yeah Well, the funny thing is, only recently did I realize it’s a special gift. So here’s my animal communication. I was very much like your daughter. Everywhere I went I could feel the feelings of animals in my body. I could hear them speak to me. I could hear their cries of distress. I knew what they wanted and needed.
I became a professional dog trainer at the age of 11 because it was so obvious to me what the animals were saying and needing and wanting, so I was able to help them with their owners, with the owners I love it owners.
0:21:03 – Dr. Liz
I did. I did dog training for about two years for for a shelter that I volunteered for and they, you know, taught me how to train dogs. And then, you know, did that and I didn’t continue doing it because I was like these owners, like’m a dog owner. Okay, like these owners. No, I don’t want to deal with the owners. I love the dogs, you know, but it’s so funny how you put that.
0:21:28 – Ellie Laks
Yeah okay, and you know my earliest memories. I mean I literally remember being six years old, seven years old, playing with my dolls in my room and all of a sudden it was like the phone rang and I heard in my mind help me. And I was like, oh, I’m coming. And I put my dolls away and I ran through the house and out the door down the street, took a left at the lake, right at the shore, there was this huge tree and there was this little fledgling bird that fell out of her nest at the bottom of the tree and I picked her up and I was like, thank you so much for calling me, let’s see if we can put you back at the nest.
But the tree was way high. So I was like, don’t worry, I’m going to take you home with me, brought her home, made a little nest out of mud and grasses and fed her till she flew away. And I thought that that was normal. I wasn’t thinking, ooh, I have a special gift. I was thinking, oh, everyone’s like this, yes, yeah, when I got to elementary and then, of course, high school and people were not like that and they started teasing me for being the way that I am.
I didn’t think of it as a gift. I thought of it as something that makes me crazy and weird and ostracized from regular people, and when you’re a teenager, you just want to be quote unquote normal, yeah. So I didn’t want my gift, I wanted to be like everybody else, yeah, and I wasn’t like everybody else. And that led me down a very, very dark road of me trying to deny who I am and try to fit in. The minute you do that. It’s just a long, slow suicide, yes, and it literally got me to the point where I wanted off this planet. And in thinking about it like how I would, how I would do it, where I would do it, how is it going to affect my loved ones, my family? Much to my shock, I realized that I wanted to stay and I literally said to myself then, if you’re going to stay, then you need to embrace who you are.
0:23:33 – Dr. Liz
Oh, beautiful yes.
0:23:36 – Ellie Laks
So I started climbing out of that hole that I had dug for myself and I started talking to animals, but I still had a shame and an embarrassment about it. I was talking to them, I was rescuing them, I was embracing who I am. I wasn’t talking about it to other people because I feared ridicule. Got it Okay and then I founded the gentle barn and I’m talking to all the animals that come into the gentle barn.
0:24:04 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:24:05 – Ellie Laks
And every once in a while someone caught wind of my gift and they would ask me for help and I would very gladly help them, but I still was keeping it on the down low. And then during the pandemic, and it was funny because I would hear about people who called themselves animal communicators, and I would never call myself that okay even though I could hear animals. And I was right. Yeah, I would never call myself an animal communicator.
0:24:33 – Dr. Liz
Just funny, just because like it just never occurred to you. Or you’re like yeah, eh, no, poo-pooed it. Or you’re still like deep down, scared of that.
0:24:46 – Ellie Laks
They’ll think I’m crazy or weird or whatever that is it’s like I had two things going on On the one hand, I didn’t want to tell regular people about my gift because I didn’t want to be teased, and on the other hand, I didn’t want to call myself an animal communicator because I didn’t want to be teased, and on the other hand, I didn’t want to call myself an animal communicator because I didn’t think that I was as valid or educated or proven or worthy as the people that were calling themselves animal communicators.
So I was kind of stuck in the middle, yeah yeah. And then my friend, joan Rankwit, who has a school, a virtual school, for animal communication and energy healing and she teaches people all over the world. Her place is called all animal communications with all sorry communications, with all life university. Okay, and her name is Joan Rankwit and she’s amazing and she’s my friend and we hiked our dogs together and the pandemic broke out and she, you know we would have long talks and she knew that I felt really embarrassed about my gift and one day she said to me look, I know that you’re struggling with your confidence and feeling worthy in your gift. Why don’t you join my school?
and you can get your confidence back. And I and I took her up on it and I joined her two year program and all of a sudden, I was in classes with people exactly like me, and and and and, and it helped me feel normal. All of a sudden, I’m not the only one surrounded by people that don’t get it. It’s in class with dozens of people that are exactly like me and it helped me feel normal. And, talking to animals through the two years, during the classes, I would get validated and I got to see, oh my God, like, oh, this really is a gift. I’m, I’m really good, I’m right on. Oh, it helped me not feel ashamed. Yeah, I graduated after two years.
Um, my husband built a website for me and now I’m doing animal communication for clients all over the world and I have fully stepped into who I am and who I’ve always met, been meant to be. I very proud to call myself an animal communicator. Um, I am and who I’ve always been meant to be. I’m very proud to call myself an animal communicator. I am not embarrassed about it at all and I thrive on helping people really see their animals better. It is the greatest thing in the world, oh, I love it, I love it.
0:27:13 – Dr. Liz
Wow, oh yeah, I see it as like such a gift, like, oh my gosh. You know, that’s always been um well, I don’t know if I want to call it a childhood dream. It’s always a dream like if we could just know what our animals are thinking. You know, it’s like how could any pet owner not have that dream, right, the? Um? I don’t know, this may be a related story, maybe not, but my older daughter, she really loves mice. We had pet mice when she was little and she really loved them, and so when she graduated college she got some pet mice and now she’s thinking about getting a pet rat and she told me, and I said, but you can’t talk to them. That was my first thought, and then I started laughing and she started laughing. She’s like mom, you can’t talk to dogs either, you know, and I’m like, well, sort of, yeah, you can, like you can know what the dog’s thinking really like they tell you with their bodies and their tails and you know, oh, so do rats, though.
I know she said that she’s like no, mom, rats are as like smart as dogs. I’m like okay, I believe you, like I get it, like you would learn them. And we both started laughing because it was like oh yeah, you got to talk to your animal somehow. You know I love it, but that’s just like like I don’t know pet owner level versus like what are they really thinking? They really are thinking feed me.
0:28:42 – Ellie Laks
Yeah. The first is I really want to commend you and see you for your ability to see your daughter and to really like take on her abilities and her intuition and how connected she is with animals and support her. I mean, that’s just so, so beautiful, yes. But the other thing that I wanted to say is look, we are all intuitive.
Every single living being on this planet operates with intuition. That’s our first language. Our sounds and our words are just things that we built on top of that. That’s true, but we live in a very westernized world where it’s high tech and fast paced and we sit in classrooms where they tell us to be quiet and sit down and wait for permission and listen for someone else to tell us what to do. And so you know our organized religions, our schools, our family of origin. There’s so much in our society that is stripping us away from our own intuition and making us not believe in it and not see it and not take stock in it. And it’s crazy because we have people that get in real trouble because they trust people that their instincts are saying don’t trust them, but they don’t listen to their instincts and they get in trouble.
They get hurt, they get taken advantage of, they get kidnapped. I mean, people are putting themselves in horrible situations because we are not taught to listen to our instincts. And when we do listen to our instincts, it will always protect us and guide us and provide for us. Yes, so we do have the ability to listen to our animals. Yeah, you have that kind of tightening of the gut when we know something’s wrong, but we’re not sure we do have those senses. The problem is that we’ve been trained to listen to people outside of ourselves and we’ve been trained to listen to quote unquote experts instead of ourselves.
0:30:40 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, I totally agree with you there and definitely there’s like different levels of that. I mean, I do believe some people are just naturally more tuned in to that, absolutely Like hands down, and others that struggle more. But it’s often this feeling of even people who struggle more. It’s like, oh, I wish I could get in touch with that intuition. Or sometimes it’s like, oh, my intuition is saying do this, but I don’t want to listen to it. And that happens with animals too.
0:31:12 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, and I mean listen. There have been a lot of times during my journey that I have not listened to instincts, and it’s always bitten me in the butt. Yeah, and I think that I’ve learned that lesson so many times that I have just said to myself I am committing to listen to my instincts, no matter what, no matter what anyone else says, no matter if it’s ridiculous, no matter if I can’t prove it. I am now going to listen to my instincts and since I’ve made that promise to myself, it’s really, really improved my life and my work.
0:31:46 – Dr. Liz
I bet Beautiful. Well, we are coming to the end of our time here, but this has been like an absolutely delightful conversation. I’ve absolutely loved interviewing you and hearing how you work. Ellie, I know you have a book that’s coming out or it’s already out.
0:32:06 – Ellie Laks
So I have two books already Two books. Okay, my first book is called my Gentle Barn Creating a Sanctuary when Animals Heal and Children Learn to Hope. And that is the origin story of the gentle barn. That actually starts in my childhood and explains why animals mean so much to me.
0:32:22 – Dr. Liz
Okay, does it also walk someone through, like how to start a sanctuary?
0:32:28 – Ellie Laks
It’ll teach you everything not to do.
0:32:30 – Dr. Liz
Not to do. Okay, that’s good to know. It’s good to know what not to do.
0:32:34 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, I learned lessons the hard way what not to do. Yeah, I learned lessons the hard way. Actually, me and Jay my, my husband and co-founder of the gentle barn, we actually teach a course to help people all over the world start their own sanctuaries.
0:32:47 – Dr. Liz
Ooh, wow.
0:32:49 – Ellie Laks
Yeah, so people can find that at ellilaxcom. But my second book just came out recently and it’s called cow hug therapy how the general barn animals taught me about life, death and everything in between, and it’s about my journey with animal communication and self-acceptance. It’s about self-care and how the animals taught me to do that better. It’s about grieving loss and how the animals taught me how to walk someone home with dignity, when and how to grieve, and then how to find my way from grief to gratitude. Oh, fascinating. Yeah, it’s about compassion, fatigue and really how the gentle barn animals taught me how to be a better version of myself.
0:33:32 – Dr. Liz
Wow, I have been having discussions actually with my best friend. We both have old dogs. For some reason, I’ve been reading these books written by vets, like in the 70s, 1970s. I don’t know how I find them or something, but I found that they talk much more about dignity in the animal than, let’s say, a current book that I’ve read, and I don’t know why or how that shift happened, but I would love to hear a little bit more about that, like how, how do we give these animals dignity? What did they teach you about dignity?
0:34:12 – Ellie Laks
Oh, my God, they, they teach me so much. And you know, I hope that you can read the book. Um, yes, therapy, but you know, there’s a story in the book that I talk about where I have, I have, I had a cow named buttercup and she gave. We rescued her pregnant. She was very malnourished and underweight and scared and just really indiplorable. Um, and to our horror, because she needed the energy for herself, she gave birth three months later to a very depleted and kind of underdeveloped calf and he ended up living seven months, which was wonderful, but then passing away seven months later.
And I was sitting there trying to find veterinarians, try to do energy healing, trying to tell the calf you’re going to live, you’re going to live, doing everything I could to resist what I intuitively knew was going to happen and try to get this calf to live. And while I was like panicking and doing everything I could think of, buttercup was very quietly, very meditatively, she was very Zen, she was very grounded and centered and she just very simply walked up to him, licked him, whispered in his ear that it was okay to go, and walked him home. Oh, wow, wow. And she taught me one of the biggest lessons of my life that at the at the end of a journey of an animal, it is not about us.
It’s not about our fear, our sadness, our panic. It is entirely about them. And Buttercup showed such a beautiful example of that. She put herself aside. She was strong and reassuring and brave and loving for her son so that he could pass in the most beautiful way possible. Once he was laid to rest, she had all the feelings that you would imagine any mom would do while they’re grieving she screamed, she cried, she paced, she mourned, she did her process. And then what she did next, once she kind of got it out of her system over the next few months, is we brought in some orphaned calves that had lost their mothers and instead of being broken for the rest of her life, Buttercup adopted those orphans, her cave, them her milk and took the love she had inside of her for her son and paid it forward to those calves that needed her.
0:36:53 – Dr. Liz
Wow.
0:36:56 – Ellie Laks
And that was one of the greatest lessons of my life. When our loved ones pass away, we need to make it about them and focus on them. Then we get to grieve and then we get to take those gifts inside of ourselves and pay it forward to someone else that needs it. I mean, that’s what life is all about. That’s what we’re here for.
0:37:15 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, yeah. So to watch that process and in Buttercup, like really just highlighted it for you, like we’re animals, us, we’re mammals, so we have a similar process, even though we we have our intellect that gets in the way. Like we were saying before, our intellect often gets in the way yeah, but talk about dignity.
0:37:40 – Ellie Laks
I mean, she was, yes, she was the exemplification of dignity, her life wonderful, that is so sweet, thank you.
0:37:51 – Dr. Liz
So that’s in. That’s a story in the second book and you can find the book pretty much anywhere amazon or Barnes, noble, your website, I’m assuming all kinds of places.
0:38:03 – Ellie Laks
Both my books, my Gentle Barn and Cowhug Therapy can be found to read or listen to on Amazon, anywhere books are sold, and people can get a signed copy of either book at gentlebarnorg.
0:38:17 – Dr. Liz
Okay, wonderful, thank you. Tell people how they can find you, because I know well two things. One, they could donate to the Gentle Barn and support you that way or come visit. So I want you to talk about some ways to be involved that way, and also ways to be involved if they do want some animal communication sessions with you.
0:38:43 – Ellie Laks
Like I said, we have three locations from the Gentle Barn so people can go to gentlebarnorg. Find a Gentle Barn near you. Come and hug a cow, cuddle a turkey, meet these amazing animals Definitely. Please donate, because with more donations we get to say yes to hurting animals more often who have nowhere else to go. People can follow the Gentle Barn on all social media platforms, including YouTube. Just look for the Gentle Barn and people can find me and find out more about the energy healing I do and the animal communications I do at ellielakscom, e-l-l-i-e-l-a-k-scom.
0:39:25 – Dr. Liz
Wonderful, wonderful, and it will also be in the show notes and on the website, in case you’re more like visually oriented. It’ll always be there for you. So thank you so much again, ellie, for being here, and I hope, like with all my heart, all the best to all the animals that you’ve helped and will help in the future.
0:39:48 – Ellie Laks
Thank you so much and thank you for continuing doing your podcast. I’ve really enjoyed being here with you.
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