A Kindred Spirit

One life-altering experience taught Asia Voight to believe in herself and the unique gift she discovered as a child—an ability to communicate with animals. Now that she believes in her calling, the question is: Do you?

By Kim Dearth
Photographed by David Watkins

The animal lover in me wanted to believe. The journalist in me had a hard time with the concept. I was on my way to meet Asia Voight, the renowned Madison-based animal communicator. Yes, this woman claims she can talk to animals. Her Web site even offers an impressive array of passionate endorsers ranging from your everyday pet guardians (the word “owners” seems crass for this topic) to famed animal behaviorist and Wisconsin Public Radio fixture Dr. Patricia McConnell. But could I fully embrace this idea? Could I believe?

After listening to Voight tell her story, we ventured to the stables that her horses call home. As I waited outside the arena on a frigid February afternoon for Voight to ready her horse, Magic, for an exhibition of their communication, a woman began walking across the parking lot leading a stunning chestnut mare. Suddenly the horse stopped and wouldn’t budge. It didn’t seem distressed and it didn’t turn back to the stables—it just wouldn’t move. I watched as the woman tried several times to coax the horse toward a second building across the lot, even resorting to a carrot bribe, all to no avail. This horse was not going any farther.

I headed inside to watch Asia and her horse. It was complete symmetry between woman and animal as Magic walked by Voight’s side without a rope between them, being guided only by Voight’s occasional soft-spoken words and—it would appear—her thoughts. They walked around the arena, forward, backward, even onto a small wooden platform. Impressive, but was I really witnessing animal communication or just an incredibly well-trained horse?

Then, the woman I had encountered in the parking lot approached Voight and explained that her horse would not cross the lot. Voight excused herself and followed the woman out. I hurried to the window and watched as the woman once more attempted to walk her horse across the parking lot, this time with Voight by their side. Like before, the horse took several steps, then balked. Voight seemed to be in intimate conversation with the animal when suddenly, it took a step forward. Then, without any hesitation, the horse proceeded confidently across the lot and into the arena with its owner.

Voight returned and I asked, incredulously, what had happened.

Laughing, she replied, “Oh, she was just a little nervous about the ice on the ground. I assured her that although it looked a little scary, there was perfect traction. She said thank you and went on her way.”

In that moment, I believed.For as long as Asia Voight can remember, she has been able to communicate with animals.

“I felt like I lived in a wonderland of joy and connection,” Voight remembers. “I felt a part of the world, not separated as I believe many people feel.”

As a child, Voight assumed everyone experienced the same joy, peace and oneness with the world. That is, until one day when she was about 5. Voight was playing with a young girl who lived across the street from her Neenah, Wis., home when a dog approached.

“The dog came over and said, ‘My family is so loud, I needed to get away,’” Voight recalls. She repeated these words to her playmate, who demanded to know how Voight could know that, since she had never met the dog’s family. When Voight relayed that the dog had told her, the girl was visibly shocked.

“She told me that I was weird and that no one can talk to animals. She also warned that I better keep it to myself,” says Voight. “I was a very sensitive child—I felt the world around me dim. I felt a sense of sadness. Suddenly I felt the discord other people experienced in relation to the world.”

Voight continued communicating with animals and nature, but, heeding the girl’s warning, she kept it to herself. Then, when she was 14, she was listening to a conversation between her aunt and uncle when suddenly, in addition to hearing what her uncle was saying, Voight began to hear what he was thinking.

“His thoughts were completely different than his words. He was being deceitful, lying. I was devastated—the animals I heard were always truthful,” she says.

“I interrupted and asked my uncle why he was saying these things when they weren’t the truth,” Voight continues. “My uncle was very angry and right then I prayed to God to turn it off, to let me be normal. The voices stopped.”

Many lonely years followed. “Without my connection, I felt imprisoned without a clear sense of direction,” Voight says. To fill the void, she threw herself into school activities, joining dance and cheerleading, making the honor roll and becoming class president. Yet something was always missing.

Then, in 1987 at age 22, she was driving to Florida when her van was hit by a semi-trailer. Two of Voight’s dogs were killed, and Voight herself was pulled from the burning wreckage and landed in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital for three months. She endured 11 surgeries and was given a three percent chance to live. If she did survive, doctors said she would be 98 percent disabled.

“I knew I was close to dying every day,” says Voight. “I focused intently on every breath.” Then, one day, her breath stopped. “I heard the machinery alarm going off and eight or 10 staff members ran in. I know they were trying to help, but I felt like they were making it worse. I was trying to push them away when I suddenly saw a door to the right of my bed that I hadn’t noticed before. I knew I had to get through that door. I felt my spiritual body leave my physical body. I crawled across the floor and as I crossed the sash of the doorframe, I stood up. I could breath again; my skin wasn’t burned. Everything felt so natural, not like the struggle I had been enduring.”

Voight remembers finding herself on a black, shimmery surface, like a layer of water. As she started walking, the ceiling above opened up to reveal a starlit universe.

“I felt completely peaceful, content. I didn’t hurt anymore.”

Suddenly, she felt a presence. “Three people approached who felt like teachers,” Voight says. “Though I’d never met them, they knew me. I’d turned off my telepathic ability years before, but now I heard them say, ‘Greetings…welcome,’ although they didn’t talk. And I was able to telepathically communicate back.

“I had been raised to believe that God is very judging, but these people—who I knew were sent from God—supported and guided me. They told me the most important question to ask of myself, and anyone else, was how had I given back to the world. I felt I was a giving person, but then they sent me the sensation of pure giving and it was overpowering—I realized I had only been giving a tiny fraction of what I was capable of. They urged me to come back and communicate with animals, then share their thoughts and feelings with the world. They also said they would help me heal. I went back into my body and once again felt the pain, the heaviness. I spent the next six years healing my mind, body and spirit.

Six months after her near-death experience and the loss of her two dogs, Voight was ready to welcome a new canine into her life and adopted Makeba, an Australian Shepherd-Lab cross.

“She was a young wild thing,” Voight recalls, laughing. “She’d drag me everywhere. She’d growl and snap. I took her to obedience school and we were almost kicked out.”

Meanwhile, Voight had decided she was ready to talk to animals again. “I opened my heart and mind up and sent out the message: ‘I will hear you.’”

Weeks later, Voight suddenly heard a voice inside her head. “It sounded completely different than my internal voice, the voice we all hear as we process thoughts or read a book. The voice distinctly said, ‘Water.’” Voight walked to the other side of the house where she found her dog looking at her intently as it stood over its empty water bowl. “We were both ecstatic! Our whole relationship changed. Now, I could tell her and show her in my mind how important her behavior was to me. Within weeks, we went from almost being kicked out of dog school to coming in first place at our end-of-class competition.”

Choosing to embrace her unique gift, Voight began training with the nationally known Penelope Smith, the “mother of animal communication.” There, Voight learned how to better control her ability, and how to turn the voices on and off. “I never talk to someone’s animal unless I’m asked to,” she emphasizes.

Just how does one actually talk to an animal? “Animals communicate through pictures, feelings, sensations or individual words,” Voight explains. “Any message has to go through three translations: First, the animal has to get the message together, then look at me and phrase the message in a way it thinks I’ll understand, and then I have to translate. Sometimes my mind has no reference point for what the animal is trying to communicate, so I have to solve the message, almost like a riddle.”

Voight says she not only talks to animals face to face, but she also communicates with animals in other cities or even countries. “Telepathy doesn’t rely on seeing,” she explains. “It relies on feeling. Time and distance don’t matter. It’s not really that hard to believe when you consider we have cell phones and satellite that let us communicate over great distances.”

Voight often starts with an animal’s description and name, likening this to using the call numbers of a radio station to dial in. “The station always exists—you just have to find it,” she says.

Since time is not an issue, Voight says she can even speak with animals that have passed. “I was giving a talk once when a woman asked me if I could speak with her dog that had been dead for 36 years. I put out there that I wanted to reach Jack, a Golden Retriever, and that his mom was with me. A dog came forward in my mind, but I told the woman this dog was very red, and looked more like an Irish Setter. The woman burst into tears and told me, ‘That’s what everyone always said about Jack.’”

The dog proceeded to send mental images to Voight of the house they had lived in, including the furniture and carpeting, and of a boy, which the woman confirmed was her son.

“Suddenly, I felt the dog’s relief,” says Voight. “It wanted the woman to know that it knew she felt guilty for putting it down years ago. A look of peace came across her face, and she and the image of the dog in my mind began to glow. She finally was free of the guilt that had plagued her for years.”

Moments like these express Voight’s true mission. “I help people have the best understanding and love that they are capable of with their animals,” she stresses.

Mary Lelle, a transformational energy and intuitive healer and Voight’s associate for the past four years, is a witness to the effect Voight has on both people and pets.

“From solving animals’ behavioral issues, to helping a person find closure by having a conversation with an animal companion who passed years ago, I continue to be amazed on a daily basis by Asia’s wonderful gifts and talents,” she says.

While Voight gets great satisfaction from helping pets and their people communicate on a personal level, her conversations with creatures of the sea have yielded the most universal messages.

“Penelope Smith has done trips to swim with wild dolphins every June for 10 years. I wanted to do the same,” she recalls.

To date, Voight has taken four trips, with her second being her most memorable. “We were surrounded by dolphins, but they only swam with us for about two minutes before they started swimming away,” she says. “I asked where they were going and they said they wanted to know where the fun humans were! I asked what they meant and they said, the humans who dive. We started frantically diving under the water and they came back to swim with us.”

One dolphin began swimming in the same arc as Voight, then came within inches of her. She could sense the animal using its sonar, then it asked, “Why such a sad heart?” It showed Voight a 3-D picture of her heart with a large ragged scab on it, then asked, “May I heal you?” When Voight responded, yes, she felt the scab ripped free.

“I started sobbing,” she recalls. “The dolphin told me that I would be sad for a while, that I had a lot of old pain, but if I let it out I would heal. He was right.”

And what is the universal message these dolphins shared? “They feel we as people suffer so much, we’re so separated from our souls,” Voight says. “They constantly play, love, rejoice, sing, dance—absolutely enjoy life. For many people, these things are at the bottom of our lists. Dolphins are very much about community, while we as a species are so disconnected.”

Whether interpreting the messages of dolphins or dogs, cats or horses, Voight has the same goal. “My intention is to be a healing translator, conduit and mediator between animals and humans so they might know the oneness and connection that I’ve always felt. A lot of my clients feel disconnected. I really feel animal communication is healing these people, and healing the world.”

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Hair and makeup by Andrea Kindig of William Jon Salon & Spa, Madison; (608) 257-0604. Jewelry provided by Katy’s American Indian Arts, Madison; (608) 251-5451, and Botanical Indulgence, Neenah; (920) 725-1380.