Do Dogs Dream of Sights Unseen?
Have you ever wondered what your dog dreams about when sleeping? You may have seen them twitching or even barking in their sleep, legs paddling and tails thumping the ground beneath them. Are they reliving the day’s adventure in the park, or running from something only they can see?
My two girls, Frankie and Islay, are both vocal dreamers, yelping and twitching as they sleep. The real Wolsey was like this too, although when he woke, he would often pause and inspect his surroundings, as if checking that whatever had unsettled him remained firmly in the dream world.
One evening, after a particularly intense episode in front of the fire, Wolsey suddenly leapt up and ran to the corner of the living room, barking at what appeared to be nothing at all. He followed it across the room, his focus unwavering, as though tracking something moving just beyond my perception. He continued into the kitchen, finally stopping at the back door, barking as if urging whatever he had chased to leave.
At the time, I thought little of it. It was amusing, if slightly odd, but nothing more.
A few weeks later, as spring settled in, I began painting the outside of the house. While preparing the walls, I noticed that the brickwork in one corner differed slightly from the rest. Stepping back across the road, I could clearly make out the outline of a former doorway, long since bricked up when the main entrance had been moved.
It was on the other side of that old doorway that Wolsey had barked so intently.
It made me wonder. Had something, at least in Wolsey’s mind, entered through a door that no longer existed and passed through the house? Or had he simply been stirred by something small and ordinary – a mouse or a spider perhaps, slipping unnoticed from one room to another?
There is, of course, a perfectly rational explanation. But I’ve always preferred the alternative: that Wolsey had a rare instinct for things we cannot see, and the courage to chase them out.
That quiet sense of something more, something unseen beyond the ordinary, stayed with me. It helped shape the idea of Wolsey as a dog whose world is richer, stranger, and far more adventurous than our own.
