Vesna McMaster - Do Dogs Dream in Black and White?

Twitching paws and muffled woofs: are they running through grey grass, or does their world explode in technicolour during the night? It might seem silly to think they could imagine wavelengths their eyes are not designed to sense, but I’m not designed to fly, yet manage well enough. The point of dreams isn’t realism. Perhaps estate agents suffer nightly torments of affordable social housing, or lawyers sweat at the terror of a populace suddenly keen on reading all the Ts and Cs. Could slumber bring sincerity to a politician’s sphere of understanding, even if they have never experienced it? Unlikely, but not proven impossible. Sisyphean discomfort of forever repeating an unpleasant activity are often reported – but why? For me it’s losing items and having to retrace my steps, getting hopelessly lost in the process. If I drastically decluttered and somehow fixed my utterly broken sense of direction, would this stop? Unlikely, but not proven impossible.

The other night I dreamed the dog had skidded on the floor and bumped into furniture, shaking it considerably. Racy stuff. It was enough to wake me up, and I was quite sure something had made the bed jolt. 1) Was it really the dog? No. 2) Had Other Half come back from night shift early and been clumsy? Apparently not. 3) Was it our resident ghost, getting jiggy? No sign of that. 4) Someone broken in? Damn quiet intruder if so. Conclusion must be: a hallucination. I’ve had sleep transition visual and aural hallucinations, I must be branching out into tactile and vestibular. I snuggle back down and return to whatever other mundanities my imagination affords me for the night. But the morning news gives me option 5): earthquake at 3 am. Proof that even the most unlikely scenario may, until proven wrong, be possible, and dogs may dream in technicolour.