NORWAY – Erica Jed admits she’s a bit embarrassed to be telling the story – it sounds so incredulous – but she says a local woman who can communicate with animals cured Jed’s puppy of a house-training problem.

“She went home and had some communication with Zoey in another plane,” Jed said. After that – the same day, in fact – Zoey began going to the door asking to be let outside. “There was a definite change,” Jed said.

Nancy Hohmann said she spoke to Zoey about a month ago and explained the concept of house training to her. “She didn’t know what it was,” Hohmann said. “I asked her, and she said, “What’s that?” She didn’t understand she was supposed to go outside.”

Animal communication is practiced by empaths – especially sensitive people – who say they can communicate with animals, telepathically, divining the animal’s thoughts and feelings, even at great distances.

Hohmann, of Norway, said she has communicated with more than 75 animals since she began practicing several years ago.

“I don’t sit down with the animal and literally have a conversation. It’s thoughts, and sometimes I get images, feelings, or pain. And I don’t have to be with the animal, it can be in another state,” Hohmann explained. “I center myself and I have my own very private ritual and I call the animal… Sometimes I see the animal, sometimes feel, and I always introduce myself and ask if I can talk.”

And it’s not just cats, dogs and horses that Hohmann has reached, but groundhogs, chickens, muskrats, even millipedes. She charges $50 to heal animals of any malady or behavioral change, and is sometimes given the emotional task of querying old or ill pets on whether they are ready to die. She then e-mails a transcript to the owner.

Her own son worried at one point about her sanity, until she helped him with a millipede infestation in his North Carolina home, Hohmann said. She recalled listening to what the insects needed to survive, and then convinced the many-limbed creatures to travel away and find another home by suggesting it might be safer for them outside.

Seth Chadbourne, Hohmann’s son, said all he would say on the matter was that when he returned home from a two-week vacation a couple of summers ago, the millipedes, which had been living in his house for several months, had vanished.

“When I got back from vacation, they were gone. Who knows what the reason for it was,” he said.

Although he allowed that his mother’s work was one possible explanation, he insisted, “I consider myself a rationalist.”

Hohmann said, “Over and over again, you have to believe what you’re hearing. Your first impulse is people will put you in the nut house.” She laughed.

Slightly built, with light hair and eyes, Hohmann gives the impression of being unusually sensitive, but not easily ruffled, and has a quiet, patient presence. She also works as a therapeutic horseback riding instructor.

Last June, Hohmann retired from a career as a teacher for gifted and talented students in the SAD 17 system. She also taught Spanish and French, and continues to give language lessons to younger children. After growing up in New Jersey, she attended Bates College, graduating in 1968, and then earned a graduate degree in education from Harvard University in 1970. She has three grown children, one of whom is studying to be a vet.

She became interested in animal communication about five years ago after her daughter hired an animal empath to help her own horse that was regularly tipping over his feed bucket. The communicator spoke with him, learning that he wanted the apples and carrots on top of his mash, not below. Hohmann changed her habit, and the horse stopped spurning his meals.

Scientists say animal communicators – like the famous dog whisperer on the National Geographic channel – are simply interpreting basic animal emotions and then veiling it in mysticism.

Teresa Dzieweczynski, a professor at the University of New England who teaches a course in animal cognition, said, “As a scientist and researcher, I have a little problem with the way that it is done. I do believe it is easy to determine how an animal is behaving and take it to that next level, and say this is this animal’s emotion and this is what it feels. That is where it becomes complicated, and becomes anthropomorphized,” she said.

And animal communication is becoming more common. “I blame shows like Discovery Channel and Animal Planet,” Dzieweczynski said. “I teach a class in animal cognition here and many of my students think, ‘This is how I am going to be communicating with animals.’ I tell them they are not going to be determining whether their animal is sad. We have to take it back a level. We need to test these things.”

Hohmann is used to defending herself. “I say to them, if they ask me, ‘It sounds crazy doesn’t it?’ I don’t have any rational explanation for it. I just can say to you I truly believe it happens and there is only good that comes of it,” she said. “It is just so that people will get along better with the animal in their lives. Animals have so much to teach us about getting along and supporting each other.”

Recently she helped a golden retriever who was dying of a rare form of bone cancer. Hohmann said she started speaking with the dog, Daisy, who was filled with philosophical musings.

“She talked about friendship, motherhood, education, getting along with each other, gardening, universe, truth, anything you can think of, she had an opinion,” Hohmann said.

Daisy’s owner, Marsha Wood, a 4th-grade teacher at Rowe Elementary School in Norway, said Hohmann and Daisy developed a close bond. “For Daisy, she found her voice through Nancy, and we’re convinced that that voice allowed her to live,” Wood said. Although the retriever was given only a few months to live after being diagnosed, she survived two more years.

When Hohmann gave a talk about animal communication at a Fryeburg veterinary clinic last summer, she asked Daisy for advice about what to say.

And here’s what Daisy offered, according to Hohmann.

“Animals change when humans listen and acknowledge them. People change when they are listened to and given voice. So it is with all beings. Anyone open to this will hear us. The tough part is in the believing. So have patience and be brave when doing this. The animals need this, but the humans need it more,” and Hohmann wrote it down.

Daisy died in September.