A Funny Thing Happened

**Seabatt** · 03-16-2018 09:34 AM

Okay, so had I just bought two leashes for my puppies. Pretty good right? Nope, cause nobody wants to help me take them both outside. Apparently we can take care of my sister's ginormous (And destructive) German Shorthair but not two miniature Schnauzer mix pups? Anyway... They ended up tripping over their own leashes, tried running over to the other yard to piss some other dogs off, and the boy (Nemo) ended up running away so I had to get him. Poor thing almost choked himself when he got his leash stuck into a very thorny bush. Guess who had to get in there? Exactly.

But that isn't even the weirdest part.

After going to bed, I began to have a string of nightmares/anxiety dreams one after another. Those things happen when I'm stressed out, I know that, but these dreams leaned more on the WTF scale than purely terrifying. In one dream, I was putting the two puppies back in their cage. I turned away to get their toy from inside the cage, so I could beckon them inside. When I turn back, I see that they both turned into these ginormous yellow bugs with black markings on them. They looked more like oversized moths than anything.

This wasn't the only time something like this happened.

A few weeks ago (Or a couple days ago, I'm not sure), I was also stressed over the pups. That night, I dreamt that they both turned into these weird llama-dog fusions that spat (And shat) everywhere in my front yard. In my head I was like "Yup. These are what they're gonna grow up into." I know I'm supposed to love them and all that, but those kids keep driving me insane...

Nothing more to it besides that. I just wanted to share my hopefully entertaining story with y'all. Have any of you had stress dreams like this? Where someone or something you knew turned into a gross looking mutant?

**Darkmatters** · 03-16-2018 02:53 PM

I don't get why you need somebody to help walk them? Or how one got away while it was on a leash? There are people on my street who literally walk 4 or 5 dogs at a time, each on its own leash. Maybe they're just overexcited and need a little time to get used to it. Maybe you could attach the ends of the leashes together, so as long as you're hanging onto one the other one can't get away from you.

It does make sense why you would have an anxiety dream about it after losing control like that.

**Seabatt** · 03-16-2018 03:17 PM

May not sound like it, but those two just love tangling up in each other's leashes. That or I'm terrible at walking dogs, I'm open to that.

As for the pup getting away, that was on me. My other dog got her leash stuck in the thorny bush I was talking about, and I had to use both my hands to get it out. In a "genius" move, I attached his leash to a little tree in the backyard, only for him to get out of it when I wasn't looking.

I do find it pretty funny how my mind just associates them with annoying animals (I.E. bugs and llamas for some reason) when I'm sleeping.

**Seabatt** · 03-16-2018 03:18 PM

Looking back on it, maybe I should've moved this to The Lounge or R&RC&C instead of this forum.

**Darkmatters** · 03-16-2018 03:24 PM

Ok, that makes sense. And yeah, having dogs can be really annoying - the need to walk them every day and they can be really demanding. It's sort of like having kids that can never grow up enough to take care of themselves. If you're lucky they'll be low maintenance like my last one was. And they'll probably get more used to walking together after a while. Might need to get some training for them to help with that.

**LeaningKarst** · 03-17-2018 03:06 AM

Hm, I’ve never had an experience quite like that – but it does remind me of some of the dreams I had after getting my bouzouki (a stringed instrument, for those who aren’t familiar with them.) No sooner did I own it than I started having dreams where horrible things happened to it— which was odd because I had been recording my dreams for a decade by then and knew both that anxiety dreams were common and that I rarely had them.

But I got to thinking and realized that I had never really had a focal point for anxiety before. Just having the thing had introduced a kind of stress into my life that was new to me. Up until then, the only things I had owned that were both personally valuable and irreplaceable could be backed up on flash drives. There were family pets—and I have had dreams of having to go after them when they were in danger now and then— but the ultimate responsibility wasn’t with me in those cases, and that does seem to be important.

The dreams stopped after couple weeks or so—presumably because adapting to having it wasn’t unduly difficult. But I think this is a very common dynamic to show up in dreams, especially for people with animals or small children. That said, your puppy dreams really do seem to express more stress at keeping them under control - and they certainly sound like a handful.