Growling in his sleep

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planete

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Probably a daft question. Our very quiet dog neutral greyhound growls a lot in his sleep, not occasionally but every day and night, more or less every time he is in a deep sleep. He is not a barker and he only growled at us ( can I trim your nails?) when apprehensive. This did not last long and never happens nowadays. Our previous dogs, a mixture of rescues and pups raised by us growled in their sleep from time to time but this is new to me.

It has got me wondering whether this could be linked to his previous life experiences? Opinions, thoughts, experiences with your dogs welcome. Thank you in advance to anybody willing to satisfy my curiosity!
 
My Whippet growls in his sleep.

He has not known a day without love, had a lovely breeder and is a mild mannered little chap.

In contrast, my Lurcher who is an absolute witch, growls all day long at anything she finds mildly inconvenient, never ever growls in her sleep.
 
Ivy does sometimes. Most of her dreaming seems to be running based but occasionally she does a big old growl!

She's not really one for growling. We've been on a bit of a journey with her learning that yes, she can get on the new big sofa but no, she can't then get cross about sharing it given there is plenty of space. So my best guess is that she's dreaming about one of us taking up too much space on 'her' sofa!
 
My GSD often barked in her sleep. Obvious REM state of limbs twitching, and a belly high pitched bark would escape occasionally. She’d often run after deer and bark like that so we assumed she was dreaming of such fun too!
The other male dog we had was growly at times, when play fighting with the others, but he slept very peacefully always.

My latest feral cat snores very loud like a drunk, and dreams often. Some cats Whicker when dreaming but he doesn’t, just big honking snoring 🤣
 
My dog occasionally lets off a big deep bark in his sleep, it really makes you jump. Because he's deaf, he never barks when awake, he just huffs hysterically when other dogs would bark.
 
Jenko109 said:
My Whippet growls in his sleep.

He has not known a day without love, had a lovely breeder and is a mild mannered little chap.
Click to expand...
Same with D, lovely breeder then straight to us at 10 weeks.
Has never growled except on very rare occasions when flat out asleep, we do grin as she also sleep squeaks and yips in excitement, her snoring is monstrous! 🤣
 
My terrier howls in his sleep occasionally too! And I agree, very unnerving, especially waking up to it in the dead of night!

My lurcher growls in her sleep sometimes. No idea what about, possibly dreaming of the terrier after a toy or bone? That’s the only time she lets out à very soft growl when awake.

Both of them yip and “run”, I assume chasing rabbits in their dreams.
 
Thanks all. It sounds as if it bears no relation to real lfe experiences then. When we got him he was very fearful of being handled roughly and I did wonder whether he was relieving stressful episodes in his previous life.
 
All of mine have barked and growled in their sleep, nobody ever did anything bad to them, it's just their language/how the communicate. I used to love listening to my old dog huffing away, I imagine he was chasing baddies in his dreams.
 
My little dogs legs all get going and he starts whimpering and yapping! I think in his dreams he has free range to chase what ever wildlife he likes without being shouted back.
 
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