Hi everyone, I had a pretty strange LD last night which I'm confused about.

First of all I'm going to post an excerpt from my dream journal so that I can set the scene:

'I was standing in what I thought was snow when I realised I was dreaming. The sky was a pale blue and whiteness stretched on for miles (a common theme in my lucid dreams, starting off in a natural landscape which seems to go on forever). Two wolves ran past me and disappeared into thin air. I looked around and realised that I was all alone. Since there was not much in my environment to manipulate, the first thing that came to my mind to do was to find my dream guide. I can't remember what exactly I called out but I think it may have been 'spirit guide' or 'dream guide'. I looked around again and this time there was a giant emu looking bird sitting a little distance away from me to my left. It had light tan coloured feathers which were interspersed with multiple colours. I kept on looking around but nothing else had changed. At this point I was starting to think maybe the bird was important here so I walked up to it (rather hesitantly) and asked it if it was my spirit guide to which it replied yes in a very strange voice. I'm pretty certain it was female. I gave it a once over, still pretty disbelieving. How could an emu be my spirit guide? I was expecting something more... human I guess. I think I may also have asked it if it was an emu, but I can't remember what it answered. Once it was confirmed that this was my spirit guide I didn't really know what to do as I was still skeptical about the whole thing. I realised now that I should probably have talked to it a bit more. After that I got on its back and asked it to take me to the next location of my dream which it did. It was then that it became clear that landscape wasn't actually snowy, but that we had been standing on clouds. The emu dove down through the clouds and flew me down back to earth (emus can't fly?). The emu disappeared somewhere mid-flight and I floated down to the ground on my own...' After this I entered the next part of my lucid dream.

Now, I don't really know much about spirit/dream guides so I probably should have done some prior research before I went out looking for it. So, first of all, in terms of dreaming and I guess life in general, what exactly is a spirit or dream guide? Are they the same thing? Also what is the connection between the dreamer and their dream/spirit guide?

Now coming to my dream, was this emu thing really my spirit/dream guide?! How can you tell if you've really met your spirit guide? Like I said, I should probably have asked it more questions in the dream but I was too disbelieving at the time to really take it seriously as my spirit guide. Also, if the emu was my spirit guide, do you think it would be offended at me due to my skeptical reaction to it?

I know my ramblings must sound really stupid, but I really am uneducated on the whole matter of spirit/dream guides. I want to take the spirit/dream guide thing seriously and would love to hear a lucid dreamers experiences and knowledge about the matter.

Hope you can help!