Monday night I heard Martin coughbark a few times from the bedroom chair where he was sleeping.
The cough-bark is something he has done since he was a puppy.
If there is something he thinks I should check on but that isn’t worth a full-fledged bark, he gives what sounds very much like a soft cough. A good diaphragm squeeze and an “oof,” usually just once.
It’s his version of “Hey, I don’t know if you can hear that, but I’m letting you know in case you’re interested.”
It’s the sort of thing he does when he hears coyotes far in the distance, or if an owl hoots close to the house.
Back when I kept chickens and turkeys, he would “oof” if something was near their pens. Such was the case one night when he coughbarked and I shined the flashlight outside and spotlighted a possum running along the fence to the chicken pen.
This is in contrast to his full-throated bark when an unauthorized dog walks down the road outside.
He did the cough-bark five or six times in the chair, which led me to think he was having a dream that involved him needing to alert me about something.
When he woke up, I asked him what it was, but he didn’t answer. Probably couldn’t remember the dream.
So, I wondered: There seems to be agreement that dogs can dream, but can they distinguish between a dream and reality the way humans do?
I’m doubtful they can, even a dog as smart as Martin’s friend, Monroe, who has figured out how to open the French doors in the bedroom. From the inside.
So, if Martin was dreaming about, say, a possum trying to get the chickens and then remembers the dream when he wakes up, does that have the same effect on him as something that had actually happened?
Given that dogs always seem to see their humans in the best possible light, I’m sure the version of me in his dream went outside, fought off the possum and then gave Martin a reward of all the Milk Bones he could eat.
Monroe, on the other hand, was dumped in a neighborhood in South Rock Creek before she came to live with us.
She also flinches when you reach to pet her on the head, so I suspect she used to be cuffed on the ears as punishment.
I would hate for her to dream about either of those things and think I had somehow dumped her for a few hours or had bopped her on the head.