The post Do Dogs Dream? What I Imagine Penny Dreams About by Savanna Stanfield appeared first on Dogster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren’t considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Dogster.com.
Hi, Iām Savanna!Ā Read my introductionĀ to learn more about me and my spunky Chihuahua mix, Penny.
The first time I saw Penny kicking her feet and making bark-like sounds in her sleep, I thought something was really wrong with her. After all, she is my first real experience with owning a dog. As you can imagine, I was a little concerned about this behavior. But she seemed otherwise fine, and after the wiggling and the noises stopped, she went right back into seemingly deep sleep.
I thought to myself, āMaybe sheās just dreaming. Wait, do dogs dream?ā So after I took to Google, I learned that this seems to be a common question among dog owners and many dog owners have seen and heard their dogs do the same thing in their sleep.
As it turns out, dogs do dream, but itās pretty much up to speculation what they dream about. Even though weāll likely never know what dogs dream about, itās still fun to imagine the possibilities. Hereās what I think Penny dreams about.
Her Kitty Friends
Penny and her āfriend kitty,ā Thunder
This is what I think Penny dreams about most often. We have three cats that we either adopted or took in from friends and family. We had all of three of them before we got Penny, but luckily, she gets along with them pretty well. Thereās one cat named Thunder that she particularly loves that we call her āfriend kitty,ā and he loves her back. The other two cats are mere acquaintances with Penny and donāt put up with her shenanigans as much as āfriend kittyā does. One cat sheās pretty indifferent to, unless heās getting pets from us and she isnāt.
Then thereās the last cat that Penny loves to occasionally chase around playfully. She never catches her of course. But this cat merely tolerates Penny and is constantly giving her the āGo to heckā stare. I like to think that when Penny is rapidly kicking her feet in her sleep, that sheās dreaming about chasing this kitty around the house, and maybe actually catching her in her alternate reality. Interestingly, this type of movement in her sleep usually happens on nights that sheās chased the kitty around during the day, so who knows? This one may actually check out.
Dream Visitors or āIntrudersā
Small dogs are notoriously ābarky,ā and my little Pekachoo Penny is no exception. Sometimes she ābarksā in her sleep, a kind of muffled closed-mouth barking. Iām sure youāve heard your dog do the same. But Penny tends to bark at the weirdest things when sheās awake during the day, so thereās honestly no telling what sheās barking at in her sleep.
Of course, she barks to alert us when she hears a car door close or when she hears someone outside. But otherwise, she doesnāt bark at squirrels and birds and things of that sort. Instead, she barks at things like my garden gnome (this one is understandable, he does look like a small person) and the large flower pot that got moved somewhere else in the yard, so it is now surely an āintruder.ā
For all I know, she dreams about that flower pot growing legs and attacking her entire family, and she has to bark at it to save the day. But I think itās more likely that she has visitors in her dream, such as a family member coming over, and sheās barking to let us know theyāre here.
Penny drifting off to sleep
Dogs Dream About Lived Experiences
Although our dogs will never be able to tell us exactly what goes on in their dreams, scientists think that dogs do dream about lived experiences. What two dogs dream about may be totally different in actual context, but center around the same experience of chasing something or playing, for example.
I wish Penny could tell me what sheās dreaming about. But I hope that if I can give her positive real-life experiences, then hopefully, her dreams will be happy dreams, full of things she loves doing.
The post Do Dogs Dream? What I Imagine Penny Dreams About by Savanna Stanfield appeared first on Dogster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren’t considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Dogster.com.
