About Pawwtalks
I never set out to become an animal communicator.
I was once terrified of dogs. I'm Suhani — this is my story, in my own words.
I was once terrified of dogs. I'm Suhani — this is my story, in my own words.
After I turned sixteen, I went through one of the darkest periods of my life. I was depressed, and I didn't really know what I was looking for or what was going to make life feel meaningful again.
Then, when I turned seventeen, I came across a YouTube video of Tucker Budzyn, a Golden Retriever. I remember watching him and realising something that sounds so simple now, but completely changed the way I saw animals then: dogs love you. They can love you so completely and unconditionally. They don't care what you look like, what you've accomplished, whether you've had a good day or a terrible one. They just love you. Tucker was the first dog who made me really understand that.
It feels incredibly emotional to write this now because Tucker recently passed away. I never knew him personally, but his existence changed the direction of my life in a way I could never have imagined. I will always be grateful to him for the role he unknowingly played in mine.
At the time, my younger brother was eight, and the two of us used to imagine that we had a puppy at home. We'd take our imaginary puppy for walks and imagine what it would be like to have a dog of our own. After Tucker, we started looking outside our house. I grew up in India, where street dogs are everywhere, so I started with puppies — and the funny thing is, I was terrified of them. I was scared to even touch a puppy. A friend of mine slowly helped me learn how to pet dogs, and little by little, something that had once frightened me became something I couldn't imagine my life without.
I started noticing the dogs who needed help. The sick ones. The injured ones. The abandoned ones. And eventually, the ones who were literally dying on the streets. I had never seen someone die in my life, so I genuinely couldn't understand it — how a dog could be lying there suffering and everyone could just walk past. I was very young, and it felt impossible that an animal could be suffering so much and nobody would come.
So I started picking them up. I'd hide injured dogs in my house and somehow get them treated. I'd find fosters, arrange medical care, figure out what they needed and go looking for the next dog who needed help. There were days when I'd wake up and go feed around a hundred dogs. There were times when I was treating ten dogs at once, in a city where sometimes there wasn't even a vet available.
My dogs became one of the reasons I stayed alive. There were moments when I genuinely wanted to die — but then I'd remember I had to feed those dogs tomorrow. So I had to be there. I had to live until tomorrow.
Looking back, I give a huge part of the credit for my life to my dogs. They gave me purpose when I couldn't find it anywhere else. And the more time I spent with animals, the more profoundly I realised I could connect with them. Until I met Kishmish.
I found Kishmish when she was around twenty days old, living in a park near my home. Whenever I was sad, I'd go and sit with her — sometimes for the entire day. There was something about her I can't properly explain. I just felt connected to her.
Then Kishmish and her brother, Nepali, contracted canine distemper. I brought both of them home and cared for them for more than twenty days. They were incredibly sick. I kept trying to keep them warm, kept trying to save them. I spent everything I had, did everything I could, and barely slept for twenty days. I genuinely believed that if I just kept fighting for them, somehow they would survive.
But one morning, I woke up and found Nepali dead. And Kishmish was still there, suffering. The next day, I had this overwhelming feeling that Kishmish didn't want to live without her brother. She was in so much pain that the doctor suggested euthanasia. I rushed home from the vet because I needed to say goodbye to her first. I picked her up. I told her that I loved her, that I couldn't bear to see her suffer anymore. And almost immediately after I picked her up, she passed away in my arms.
I was a wreck. I decided I was done — done rescuing, done loving animals. I had finally allowed myself to love an animal that deeply, and then I had lost her.
About fifteen days after Kishmish died, someone near my home called about a tiny puppy who'd apparently been alone for several days. I knew a ten-day-old puppy left alone for three days couldn't survive, so I went to get her. She wasn't ten days old — she was around twenty-five — and she was the cutest little thing I'd ever seen. That was Twinkle.
She was supposed to be a foster. I never let her go. I couldn't. And surprisingly, my parents fell in love with her too, so Twinkle stayed. For me, she wasn't just another puppy — after I eventually learned animal communication and began speaking with both Kishmish and Twinkle, I came to believe that Kishmish had reincarnated and returned to my life as Twinkle. Not to replace her. But to continue something that had been left unfinished.
And then, when Twinkle was around six or seven months old, she changed my life all over again.
Twinkle and I were having some behavioural difficulties, so I contacted an animal communicator. I was completely new to the concept. But during that session, Twinkle told me something I never expected: she wanted me to become an animal communicator. She believed I would be really good at it.
I'd never planned this. I'd never even seen someone doing animal communication as a full-time career. But something about what she said stayed with me. So I learned. I started practising. For the first few years I never thought of it as my career — I simply loved doing it, and whatever money I made went back into my rescues.
But the more animals I spoke to, the more I understood why it mattered. They have feelings. Preferences. Memories. Fears. Relationships. Opinions. And yet they can't simply sit down and tell us, "This is what I'm feeling." Not because they don't have anything to say — but because they don't speak our language. That became the heart of my work.
Pets are our family. And family deserves a voice.
Even after all of this, I didn't immediately decide to become a full-time animal communicator. The work could be overwhelming. My parents wanted me to get a conventional job. There were many times I thought I should stop and get a "real" job instead. Sometimes I was overwhelmed, sometimes I needed money, sometimes I simply thought, I don't want to do this anymore. So I'd decide to leave.
And then, almost every time, something would happen. I'd suddenly receive four new sessions. I'd meet an incredible family. I'd speak to an animal who would tell me something that stayed with me. I was so confused about what I was supposed to do with my life that I once even had a tarot reading — and somehow, every path kept bringing me back to the same place.
Eventually I stopped trying to leave. I realised I wasn't repeatedly finding my way back to this work. This work was repeatedly finding its way back to me.
Today, I've had the privilege of communicating with animals in more than 1,000 sessions across 8+ countries. But I don't think of that as a number. Every animal is an individual. Every family has a different story. And every conversation reminds me why I started.
My work isn't about looking at an animal and trying to "fix" them. It's about understanding them — giving them a space where they can express what they feel, what they experience, what they want their humans to know, and how they see the world around them. My ethics are incredibly important to me. My love for animals is the foundation of everything I do.
Before Pawwtalks, there was rescue. Before rescue, there was a terrified seventeen-year-old girl who didn't even know how to touch a dog. And before that, there was an imaginary puppy that my eight-year-old brother and I used to take on walks. Somehow, that imaginary puppy became hundreds of real dogs. Those dogs became my family. My family became my reason to keep going. Twinkle asked me to become an animal communicator. I listened. And now, I get to spend my life listening to them.
My rescue work continues today through Pawwlovers — the dogs still in my care, the ones I'm still feeding, treating and finding homes for. If you'd like to support that work, the easiest way is simply to follow along.
"I never planned this career. I discovered it as a calling. And that calling came from the animals who taught me how to love, how to grieve, how to keep going — and finally, how to listen."
— Suhani