Animals will follow their human companions to the grave and perhaps even beyond. There is another kind of following called psi-trailing, and from the cases that have been thoroughly researched, there can be absolutely no doubt that this phenomenon exists. One of the most celebrated cases was Lassie, a mongrel dog who was left behind at a small farm in Kentucky when his owners moved out west to California. The dog left the people who had adopted him, and months later, he located his family in Pacoima, California. A cat named Clementine did a no less incredible 1,500-mile journey from Dunkirk, New York, to Denver, Colorado, to find her owners. Another cat named Tom holds the distance record of 2,500 miles or more, traveling from the home place in St. Petersburg, Florida, to San Gabriel, California, to find his owners in their new home.
Several years ago, when a psychiatrist friend of mine was a teenager, he was given a dog by neighbors who moved from Brooklyn to live in Queens, New York. Alan had the dog only a couple of days when it ran off. The owners called a few days later saying that they had found their dog walking up and down their new street in Queens and were so amazed, since the dog had never been there before, that they felt they had to keep him after all.
A similar case of psi-trailing was reported on national news in the spring of 1983. A little mongrel dog, left with neighbors in Colorado, made an incredible journey over the Rockies in the dead of winter and found its owners at their new home in California, where the dog had never been.
A young cow called Blackie was recently sold, along with her calf, at an auction in England (Agscene, February 1984). The two animals went off to separate farms. That night Blackie escaped and was found the next morning suckling her calf on the farm where her calf had been taken. Her owner was traced via the auction tag that was still on her back. Out of compassion and amazement, her owner allowed her to stay with her calf. The farms were seven miles apart, and Blackie had never been there before. The bellowing of a calf could surely not travel that distance, nor its scent, unless cows have remarkable senses. Whether Blackie was psychic or telepathic, or had supersensory abilities, is an open question; but no less remarkable is the strength of her maternal instinct and desire to be with her calf.
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One of the best publicized cases of ESP in a dog occurred during World War I. An English dog named Prince somehow crossed the English Channel and roamed France until he found his beloved master in the battlefront trenches.
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The late Dr. J. B. Rhine from Duke University investigated a number of alleged cases of psychic abilities in pets. The following cases leave no doubt that animals certainly do possess such abilities. One of the most amazing cases of psi-trailing involved a female dog who was adopted by a family at their summer vacation home. By the end of the summer she had presented them with a litter of pups. They were unable to take the dog and litter back to their New York City apartment, so they found a good home for them near their summer home. About a month later the dog turned up at their apartment in the city, an incredible feat since the dog had never been there before. It was some thirty miles from the vacation cottage. The dog was carrying one of her pups. She deposited it at the feet of her amazed owners and then asked to go out. Several days later she returned with another pup and was off again until she eventually had brought her entire family to the apartment. Naturally the people decided to keep her. This story is hard to accept but is one that Dr. Rhine thoroughly investigated and authenticated.
Another of his cases involved a little terrier named Penny. One and a half years after the death of her mother, a daughter in the family came home to make a visit to the graveyard to pay her respects at her mother's grave. She took Penny with her--the dog had never been there before. While the daughter was freshening up some flowers at the cemetery before going to her mother's grave, Penny got out of the car. To the woman's surprise, when she went to her mother's grave, there was the dog lying on it, whining pathetically. No other family member had been there for months, so it is unlikely that there would have been any familiar scents for the dog to detect.
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For nearly thirty hours in the spring of 1983, villagers on the island of Minorca searched for a lost three-year-old child, to no avail, Mayor Jose` Tadeo, leader of the search party, returned to his home two miles away, and his two-year-old Irish Setter greeted him but kept whining and scratching at the door to be let out. The man complied and the dog got him to follow right to the area where people had been searching for the boy. The dog found the semiconscious boy in a small crevice concealed by undergrowth. How could the dog have known, since it had been at home, two miles away, all day?
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The most thoroughly researched and publicized case of homing in a pet was of a Collie named Bobbie. He was lost in Indiana, and his owners had to return to their home in Silverton, Oregon, without him. Somehow he was able to find his way to his owners' new home, some three thousand miles away, in midwinter. This dog's feat was sufficiently well publicized such that people who had given him food and shelter on his long journey home made themselves known. This way, the route taken by the dog was approximately reconstructed.