Dreaming about
pets

For most people a pet is family, and losing one can hurt as much as losing a person, even if nobody gives you time off for it. Dreaming about pets is usually about that bond, care and attachment and the responsibility of keeping something alive. And dreaming about a dead pet is one of the most common ways grief shows up at night, which is why it's what most people search for.

What happened in the dream decides the reading. A dead pet running toward you healthy and happy is a very different dream from one that's sick again, lost, or behind a door you can't open. Your life matters too, because a pet dream a week after the vet and one five years later come from different places.

What dreaming about pets means

A pet is the one relationship in most homes that's entirely about care, feeding, walking, worrying and being loved back without conditions. Pet dreams tend to draw on one of those.

The bond itself

If your pet is alive and well, a pleasant dream about it is often just affection, the same way you might dream of a friend you love. Pets also show up when you need comfort, since for many people a dog or a cat is where they go after a hard day.

Something you're responsible for

Pets depend on you completely. In a dream they can stand for anything that does, a child, a project, a relationship or your own health. A pet dream that feels anxious is often about whether you're keeping up with what relies on you.

Dreaming about a dead pet

Dreams of a pet that has died are common in the weeks and months after a loss, and they follow grief closely. Early on, they often replay the end, the illness, the vet's room, the decision you had to make, and they can leave you raw. Later they tend to change, with the pet appearing well, playing or simply nearby. Many people notice that shift and take it as a sign they're healing. If guilt keeps coming back in these dreams, about whether you did enough or chose the right time, it may help to talk about it with someone who also loved the animal.

Dreaming about a dead pet being alive

This is the version many people find most moving. When more than a thousand Canadian students were asked about typical dreams, 54% remembered one where a dead person was alive again.^[1] Pets weren't on that list, but the dream works the same way: your mind brings back what it misses, often with a sense in the dream that something is odd, that the animal shouldn't be there. People search for its spiritual meaning, and whether you see it as a visit or as memory is up to your own beliefs. What both readings share is that the bond is still there.

Dreaming about your pet dying

Dreaming that a pet who is alive has died can be frightening, but it isn't a warning. It often comes when your pet is getting old or has been ill, and the dream is rehearsing a loss you know is coming one day. It can also be about change of another kind, a move or a breakup, where a part of daily life you love is about to end. Give the animal an extra walk and let the dream go.

Dreaming about forgetting to feed your pet

You suddenly remember the hamster you haven't fed in weeks, or find a cat you'd forgotten you had. It's a classic stress dream, and it's rarely about the pet. It tends to come when you're juggling too much and worried that something important is slipping through the cracks. If your real pet is fine and fed, look at what else in your life is waiting for your attention.

Dreaming about pets according to Jung and Freud

Both men left ideas about what an animal in a dream can carry, and a pet is the one animal you know by name.

Jung: the animal that helps

Jung's list of mother symbols, in his essay on that archetype, runs from the church, the earth and the sea to a well and a garden, and it takes in animals that help as a group, with the cow and the hare named among them.^[3] A pet is the helpful animal that lives in your house, so applying his list, a dream of one can carry a sense of being looked after, and losing one can touch older feelings than the animal's size would suggest. Your own memories of the animal come before any list.

Freud: the small thing that depends on you

Freud wrote that small animals in dreams can stand for small children.^[4] That fits the stress dream above, where the hamster you forgot to feed may be any small, dependent thing you're afraid of neglecting, a child, a project, your own health. For a pet that has died, his idea of a dream as a wish suggests the plainest reading, the wish to see it again, met with so little disguise that the dream can feel like a gift.

Questions to ask about your pet dream

Your own feeling on waking is the best guide here, whether that's comfort, sadness or guilt. A few questions can help you understand it.

• Which pet was it, and is it alive or gone?
• How did it look, and how did it behave toward you?
• What did you feel when you saw it?
• What has been on your mind about it, or about something else you care for?

Your day can also bring a pet into your dreams, a photo, a smell, or seeing a dog like yours in the park.^[2] Oniri asks you about the animal and what it meant to you before reading your dream, and for a pet that's where the meaning is. And if you've wondered whether your pet dreams too, the answer is probably yes.