Do dogs dream?

[only_me]

do they?

only asking as pup is fast asleep in my arm (typing one handed! ) and occassionally her muscles twitch and paws move as if she is running/digging!
very funny, but can they dream?

 

[Kellys Heroes]

I would definitely say yes!
The amount of times I see our two twitching, 'running' and whimpering - obviously chasing nice big juicy rabbits without being called back to us
K x

 

[Pix]

I'd be very surprised if they didn't to be honest. I'm feeling far to lazy to go trawling for any empirical evidence for or against though There is a short article on Psychology Today on the subject here. I've only quickly glanced at it and there are no references at the end for me to follow up (and as I said, I'm feeling laaazy! ) but I'm sure it will provide some reference within the text to the answers which you seek

TBH I've never thought much about it Dogs are able to cogitate and posses memory in it's variety of forms. Their brain structure isn't wildly different from our own, and we share a lot of the same genetic code (hardly surprising, we share a lot of the same genetic code with bananas ). Movement relies on electrical impulses from the brain, and whilst I could accept a dog may twitch without anything else 'going on up there', the prolonged twitches/running paws/growling seems to suggest more than the pure involuntary action that you would see in say, a recently deceased corpse. IMO anyways

 

[CorvusCorax]

I assume they do, all ours have 'run' and barked/growled/yipped in their sleep.

 

[TarrSteps]

I think the general theory is that since they experience REM sleep as we do, they most likely experience dreams. What form they take and whether or not they remember them, who is to say. . .

It's not even universally acknowledged that people dream for any "reason" - the theory that we dream to process what we take in while we're awake - but that's it's just a random firing and collection of processed experiences that we make sense of after the fact, when we're conscious.