Dog Days (nights actually) of Dreaming

There is a dog in my dreams these days. There are other changes too. My dreams are now full of sounds and dialogue. They are very chattery. I asked Laura about this. She says that it's normal to have lots of dialogue and sound in dreams. It doesn't feel normal, but I guess if it's normal then that's good.

The dog turned up in the first dream I had where there was sound. I was in my bed, and the dog was under the bed growling. I was scared at first, but then it whimpered a little and I realized it was just scared and trying to protect me. It was such a realistic dream that I started wondering how a dog got into my house and what it was scared of. Then I started getting scared because maybe someone else was in my house. I wondered if a door was open somewhere and that was how the dog got in my house. I tried to get up to check the doors and I couldn't move and that was when I realized I was dreaming. I made myself wake up to get out of that dream but I didn't really wake up because I heard the dog growling and whimpering again and I tried to move again, but still couldn't. I really woke up that time and checked under my bed to make sure that a dog wasn't there. I checked the doors and they were all closed and locked and so I went back to sleep.

This is a picture of my teddy bear. I have had it since I was two. I took it to graduate school with me and it would hang out on the radiator or in a chair in my little studio apartment. One time my dad was on a business trip to Binghamton that lasted two weeks and he drove up and spent the weekend with me in Rochester. He reached my apartment before I did and when I got home, he had done the dishes, ordered pizza, and made my bed. He had put the bear on my pillow and so that's where I have kept it ever since.

When Laura and I left Rochester, I shipped the bear to my parents along with my clothes and other light weight items, dropped off whatever else I could fit in my car in Aunt Pat's basement in Mississippi, picked up 5 year old Dru who had not seen me since he was a baby, and then the three of us drove 30 hours straight to Arizona. We stopped there because it was so hot I was not scared of Dru getting out and running off. We stayed in Marie's double wide trailer for a couple of days and then we drove the rest of the way to Utah.

When we got there, I couldn't find some of the things I had shipped, including the bear. I didn't know what happened to it and I was scared it had found its way to Goodwill. This last Christmas, it was in the toy box at my parent's house. I am not sure if its appearance was correlated with my parents cleaning the garage, but there it was. I kept it out of the clutches of sticky children through the holidays (there were better toys anyway) and brought it home.

It made an appearance in my dreams recently too. It went like this: I walked into my bedroom and there was my bear on the floor. It's head, left arm and bib had been severed from the rest of the torso and the stuffing hanging out was covered in drool. I took a breath and thought "It's only a teddy bear, it's okay." And then I realized that the dog had gotten to it and had mangled it. However, I was not angry with the dog, just sad.

I have yet to see the dog that is in my dreams. I have only heard it and seen the results of its actions. After many years of growing up with dogs, I don't really want one, but it seems that I have one anyway even if it is just in my dreams.