Dreaming about Dogs: An Online Survey

Abstract

Dogs have been close human companions for millennia and one would expect—according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming—that dogs are also quite common in dreams. Previous studies showed that the percentages of dreams that include dogs range from about 1.5% to 5%, but studies relating waking-life experiences with dogs with dreams about dogs have not been carried out. In total, 1695 persons (960 women, 735 men) completed an online survey that included questions about dreams and waking-life experiences that included dogs. The findings indicate that dogs show up, on average, in about 5% of remembered dreams, but this percentage is much higher in the dreams of dog owners and persons with close contacts with dogs. Moreover, the active time spent with a dog and the proximity during sleep is also related to a higher percentage of dreams that include dogs. Although dreams including dogs are on average more positively toned than dreams in general, about 11% of the dog dreams included threatening dogs. Persons who had negative experiences with dogs in their waking lives reported more threatening dog dreams. The results support the continuity hypothesis and it would be very interesting to conduct content analytic studies with dream samples obtained from dog owners to learn more about the variety of interactions between dreamers and dogs.

Dreaming about cats: An online survey.

“…This might reflect the fact that the human-dog relationship might be more intimate than the human-cat relationship. Closeness-cat sleeping in the bed with the cat owner and the cat stays only in the house-was related to the cat dream percent in the present study, similar to the findings regarding the closeness between dog and dog owner and its relationship to the dog dream percent (Schredl et al, 2020). These findings clearly support the continuity hypothesis of dreaming (Schredl, 2003), as spending time with the pet and the closeness of the relationship with the pet increases the probability of dreaming about the pet.…”

“…Similar to dreams of dog owners (Schredl et al, 2020), cat owners' estimated cat dream percentage was much higher compared to individuals who had not had cats or never lived with cats. Interestingly, the cat dream percentage was lower compared to dog dream percentage for the total sample-even though more cats live in Germany compared to dogs (Schreiber, 2019).…”

Dreaming About One’s Own Children: An Online Survey

“…Overall, the emotional tone of dreams with the dreamer’s own children was more positive when compared to the overall general tone of dreams. This shift towards positive dream emotions was also found, for example, for music dreams (König et al., 2018; König & Schredl, 2021) and dog dreams (Schredl et al., 2020). These findings are in line with the specified version of the continuity hypothesis (Schredl, 2003) as in this study most parents rated their overall emotional valence of the relationship to their children as very positive.…”

“…According to the Social Simulation Theory, strengthening of social bonds to close persons seems to be especially important (Tuominen et al., 2019); thus the findings that dreams including at least one core family member are frequent, about 10% to 30% of dreams (Domhoff, 2003; Hall, 1951; Schredl, 2013; Vandewiele, 1981), are supporting the Social Simulation Theory. However, much of the research has focused on the partner of the dreamer (Schredl et al., 2020; Schredl & Reinhard, 2012; Selterman et al., 2012; 2014) or parents (Hall & Van de Castle, 1966; Schredl, 2013) and not on dreaming about one’s own children. This is due to the fact that most dream content analytic studies were carried out in samples of very young adults, that is, students (Hall & Van de Castle, 1966; Schredl, 2001).…”

Clocks in Dreams: Analysis of a Long Dream Series

“…Even in the area of mobile phones, many individuals use clocks, e.g., in the sample ( N = 3084) of Montag et al [ 3 ], 45% of the participants regularly wore a wristwatch and 67% had an alarm clock for waking up in the morning. According to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming [ 4 , 5 ], we dream about topics that are important to us, e.g., family members [ 6 ], spouses [ 7 ], sexuality [ 8 ], our own children [ 9 ], pets [ 10 ] and work [ 11 ]. Given that punctuality and timekeeping is important (see above), the question arises as to how often clocks for measuring time occur in dreams.…”