Being Pulled Through Fear
By a dead dog
I have been a dog widower for over eight years now. Hardly a day has gone by during those eight years when I did not think of her. And she shows up in my dreams all the time.
I have written a lot about my beloved wolf-dog but allow me to offer a very brief recap: She was a hybrid; part gray wolf and part Siberian Husky. We were married for sixteen and a half years, during which time we never spent so much as one day apart from each other. We went everywhere together. She came to work with me, she took me for daily walks, and when I had to drive somewhere she was sitting right there in the passenger seat next to me. The day she kicked the bucket was the saddest day of my life.
When I go to Dreamland at night she invariably shows up. We are partners after all. She does not show up in my dreams every night but I am guessing a little more than half the time.
Well, she showed up in a strange dream I had this morning which I am fortunate enough to remember.
She was wearing her shoulder harness and I was holding the leash that was attached to the harness. I should point out that this type of harness was the only method of leashing her that she would allow. The Siberian Husky part of her came with thousands of years of DNA memory of pulling sleds through the snow. All I had to do was put that harness on her and she was ready to pull a sled. I always thought that if my car died on some lonely country road I could just hook the car up to her and she could pull it (with me inside) back home. Seriously, she was that strong!
I used to keep the harness on a hook on the back of the front door of our home. When she decided it was time to take me for a walk/workout she would sit by the door and look up at the harness then at me then back at the harness. She did not even have to say anything.
She kept me fit for sixteen and a half years. Of course, it was not always a workout. We often went for leisurely walks — depending on her mood.
In the dream, however, it was most definitely not a leisurely walk that we were going on. She was pulling me, dragging me, full-force through rising floodwaters! The town we were in — which I could not identify — was being inundated by rising floodwater. The water was about twelve to eighteen inches deep and rapidly rising. And she was pulling me through this water.
There are countless dream interpretation books out there that might say that water represents consciousness or the sub-conscious of the dreamer or whatever. I never read any of those books. They are too basic and generic. I prefer to interpret dreams myself and I think any interpretation must take into account the personal experiences of the dreamer.
And the personal experiences of the animals in the dream!
You see, my beloved wolf-dog was almost completely devoid of any fear. She once tried to play with a full-grown elephant. She was once attacked by three huge dogs — all of them bigger than her — and within sixty seconds those dogs were running away from her as fast as they could. She was more fearless than any other creature or human I have ever encountered.
But there was one thing that she was deathly afraid of… and that was water!
I thought that being partly an arctic dog her aversion to water stemmed from DNA memory from ancient times of being in the arctic where going in water could mean freezing to death in a matter of minutes. But when I took her down to the river where people took their dogs to let them go swimming I saw other arctic dog breeds in the river enjoying the water.
But she vehemently refused to get in the water. When we went for walks around the lake she would ever so gingerly step up to the edge of the water and lean in to take a drink but she was very careful not to get her front paws wet. If we were back home in the back yard and I turned on the garden hose she would quickly run back inside. Giving her a bath was literally impossible.
So maybe the rising floodwater was somehow symbolic of my wolf-doggie’s fear. Maybe the water represented fear because that is what it represented to her!
So in the dream she kept pulling me through the floodwater, which TO HER represented fear. But she obviously had overcome her own fear in order to pull me through the water. We finally came to some higher ground and she pulled me up out of the water onto the higher ground. Was she trying to pull me out of my fears?
She then led me down a short path which led to the front door of a building. She sat and looked up at the doorknob then at me then back at the doorknob. So I opened the door and we went inside.
At this juncture I should point out that my wolf-doggie was sopping wet and my legs were sopping wet to above my knees. As soon as we went through the doorway into the building both of us immediately became totally dry! Isn’t that incredible how that worked?
As I dropped the leash (and it vanished into thin air) I looked around inside the building. I realized that we were inside a bookstore!
This juncture may need some explaining as well. You see, I once owned and ran a bookstore for nine years. Every minute I was in that bookstore my wolf-dog soul-mate was right there with me (either sleeping or helping customers). She was not just a soul-mate but she was also the best employee I ever had. (She was heartbroken when I closed the store.)
That is when I noticed a kitty cat sitting on a windowsill licking her paws. It was not any old cat, though. It was the cat that I lived with for nineteen years. (The cat and the wolf-dog were the best of friends. They were like siblings without any rivalry. They played together, ate together and slept together.)
I walked over to my beloved kitty kitty and she stopped licking her paws. She looked up at me and said, “So what took you so long?”
Don’t you just love it when animals talk in dreams?
So there I was in a bookstore feeling so happy to be with my two dead animal soul-mates. I was overcome with joy. I felt so warm and comfortable — and dry.
I wonder what my animal soul-mates were trying to tell me.
Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. Writings by White Feather
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