Do Dogs Dream? Here’s What Scientists Think…

by pawbuzz on in Dogs 33

Do dogs dream of electric frisbees? Do they chase squirrels through endless forests of sleep?

Do they dream at all?

“The answer is emphatically, yes,” says Janis Bradley, director of communications and publications at the National Canine Research Council.

If you've ever spent any time snuggled up against a sleeping dog, that answer may seem obvious. After all, a dog will twitch his legs like he's running or even issue a gentle bark into a pillow.


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In fact, the ability to dream appears to be shared by all animals, from dogs to cats to rats.

Bradley cites a 2001 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that examined sleep patterns in rats. The research suggests rats actually dream in much the same way humans do. Since that groundbreaking study, researchers have only seen more evidence that just about every sentient being dreams. So it must follow that dogs, who tend to sleep a lot, also tend to dream a lot.


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“What we know is that dogs have a sleep pattern that is very similar to humans,” says Jill Sackman, senior medical director at BluePearl Veterinary Partners. “Dogs have rapid eye movement (REM) sleep that may be accompanied by vocalizing, leg paddling and twitching.”


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While knowing that animals dream is one thing, trying to understand what they actually dream about is quite another.

Humans have a hard enough time remembering their dreams the next day. Asking a dog to tell us about his dreams is, understandably, even more challenging.


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“We know that most dreams are related to the activities that you have engaged in during the previous day,” Sackman explains. “We have evidence that dogs dream about doggie things.”

So yes, frisbees and forests and maybe even that annoying cat who's always taunting him from the neighbor's window. But, thankfully, just like humans, dogs don't fully act out their dreams — thanks to a part of the brainstem calls the pons. That structure essentially cuts off the power to the muscles, effectively paralyzing the body.

“We know that most dreams are related to the activities that you have engaged in during the previous day,” Sackman explains. “We have evidence that dogs dream about doggie things.”

So yes, frisbees and forests and maybe even that annoying cat who's always taunting him from the neighbor's window. But, thankfully, just like humans, dogs don't fully act out their dreams — thanks to a part of the brainstem calls the pons. That structure essentially cuts off the power to the muscles, effectively paralyzing the body.

But Sackman cites another experiment in which scientists blocked the pons in dreaming dogs. “They found that, lo and behold, dogs began to move about,” she says, “despite the fact that electrical recordings of their brains said that they were fast asleep.”


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“During the course of a dream episode dogs might begin to carry out actions that they were performing in their dreams,” she says. “A dreaming pointer searching for game and could go on point, a sleeping Labrador [could] chase a ball and a Doberman pincher [could] growl at a burglar.”

If dogs dream, then it must also stand to reason that they have nightmares, too. Which is why it's so important for them to wake up to a loving pat from their owner and maybe a few words like, “It's okay. It was just a bad dream.”



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33 thoughts on “Do Dogs Dream? Here’s What Scientists Think…”

  18. Merle Blair

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    I have known this from the first night my little girl came home with me and slept in my bed. I also knew she was dreaming or having nightmares and I would pet her to take her out of that time and place. After waking up I would hold her for a while and tell her everything is alright. Now she has good dreams of riding on the motorcycle with me because she doesn’t whimper or cry anymore.

  20. Barbara Herron

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    I try to gently and lovingly wake my chocolate lab from nightmares. Then I’ll pet and cuddle her a bit. And she does the same for me–when I have nightmares, I quite often wake to gentle dry timid licks to the bottom of my chin. After I wake up, she insists on cuddling next to me in bed for a while, then she gets down after a while and goes back to her own bed.

  26. Peter Tuffin

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    Most of my dreams have nothing whatsoever to do with my activities the previous day or week or anytime. I have read research about dreaming in animals is that their brains are working through patterns of hunting or running away from danger or whatever as a kind of practice run for life.

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