Dream - My dead grandfather helps me look for the dogs

I had a dream, probably around the middle or end of March, 2005, in which my father's father, my grandfather, appeared.

I'm not sure what the first part of the dream was about, but eventually I became concerned about securing the screen door in the living room. In the dream, the door was on the wrong side of the room, but it seemed normal then. The screen door in the dream was ragged, and did not fit right. It was collapsible, like an accordion, and I was trying to pull it out enough to latch, but it didn't want to stay in place.

After a while I noticed that the hinges on the main door weren't attached to the wall, and I was trying to fix that. But then it changed so that the main door was actually off and was sitting against the wall on the other side of the room (the same wall the doorway was in).

I said, "That's why it's been so cold all winter." Then I moved the door back to the doorway and was trying to secure it, but the door changed from wood to some type of rubbery plastic. The plastic was formed to resemble extremely worn boards set horizontally with a couple of vertical crosspieces facing outside. It was all one piece and colored blue and white. It had big gaps around the worn "boards" and I was having trouble getting this door to reach the latch, too.

Somewhere in there, the dogs got outside into the front yard. We were worried about them getting lost. I went out to try and find them. We had two little dogs (like in real life) and two other, newer, little-but-somewhat-bigger dogs (unlike in real life). For some reason the newer dogs were considered less important, and I was more concerned with getting the original dogs back first.

Out in the front yard, there were a lot of bushes forming a hedge against the house, and other tall bushes forming rows of hedges across the yard (unlike in real life). I think there may have also been a very large cylindrical metal tank sitting on its side (like my grandmother on my mother's side used to have on her farm).

All this created almost a maze effect, making it difficult to search.

I did find one of the original dogs fairly quickly, though. It was near the house. It was laying on its side on the ground, looking at what I took to be a fox, which was laying on the ground almost touching the dog. They almost formed a circle, and they had their heads raised and their mouths open. The dog had its tongue hanging out, I'm not sure about the fox, and they were both looking at each other with peaceful expressions on their faces.

I was worried about the fox. I didn't know if it would try to bite me or maybe bite the dog, too. I saw a scrap of brown cardboard on the ground and picked it up. I used it to try and encourage the fox to leave. I nudged its shoulder a few times with the cardboard, but my hand kept bothering me. I looked at the cardboard and did a double and then triple take. I realized that it was not cardboard, but was some small animal, curled in a ball around my hand. It's claws were very long and looked like long straight gray nails, cut off straight across on the end, and they were dug into my hand. It had very expressive eyes, with dark fur around them. The dark fur was pointed up in the middle now, giving it a worried look.

I think I tried some to shake it off, but it didn't want to leave. I tried to nudge the fox with it several times, hoping that the fox would want to eat it, but the fox paid it no attention. The little animal now had the black fur around its eyes pointed downward in the middle, giving it a mad look.

I gave up on distracting the fox with it, and somehow managed to get it off my hand. The dog, in the meanwhile, had gone away somewhere.

I continued looking through the maze of the yard. I saw many strange creatures, some of which looked something like one of the "less important" dogs, but not exactly like it. Many of the creatures were quite large, and didn't quite look like dogs at all. Some of them looked almost like mountain lions, but not quite like those, either.

I had reached the sidewalk, now, and looked around and across the street, where a lot of cars were parked. All I saw were some more dogs that didn't match and various strange creatures moving about. They seemed to be aware of me, many of them looked at me, but they seemed also to be slightly wary of me.

I walked around to the side yard, which was much bigger then in real life. There was a slight dip in the ground, which was apparently to aid in runoff when it rained. I came to a tall chain link fence which, in the dream, went from my house to the house next door. There were a few strange creatures about, but not too many, and they were fairly small.

There was something in front of me and slightly to one side, that I took to be a small white dog. I wasn't paying too much attention to it, I was more looking off into the distance. I turned to it then, and gave a double and then triple take. The air almost seemed to boil. When I was finally able to focus on it, I saw that it wasn't really a dog. The front of it looked like a dog, almost puppy-like, with long floppy ears and a tongue hanging out. It had no back legs or hips, though. Its body just narrowed to a point. It lay there, propped up on its front legs, looking peaceful.

I thought, "THAT again. Things are really going to get strange now!"

I reached down and ruffled the short, white fur on its shoulder, and patted it.

I became aware, then, of someone standing nearby.

He was short, and older, and dressed in dark pants and a white shirt. He may also have had a coat, but I don't remember. He was also a little overweight.

I had trouble focusing on him. The air seemed to swim, and I was only able to get good looks at little bits of him at a time. He looked very much like my grandfather on my father's side, though, who had died over twenty years ago.

I asked him who he was, and he said, "Don't you know me?"

I thought about it, and finally acknowledged that I did.

He asked me if there was anything he could help me with. I thought again before answering. Was he really who he seemed to be? Would there be a "price" for the helping? I wondered these things, but did not actually speak. I decided that I had to go with appearances. I was afraid of hurting his feelings if I actually questioned him any more.

I told him that he could help me look for the dogs. He happily agreed, and we set off looking for them.

As we walked off, he said that he was here to be with my father when he (my father) went to a meeting next week (next week as measured from the time of the dream).

I was immediately suspicious of this, and wondered if something was going to happen to my father. I asked him a couple of times, in different ways, if something was going to happen to him. His first answer, while in the negative, was also somewhat ambiguous. When I asked him the last time, more explicitly, he finally turned to me and said, "Not as far as I know."

As we walked down the street, I looked closely at his face, trying to focus on it. My grandfather had a glass eye, and I wanted to see if he looked like one of his eyes was gone. I guess I believed that he might not currently be using a glass eye. After awhile, looking at his face in profile as he walked, I determined that his eyelids on that side of his face didn't have an eye in them, only darkness.

We came to a cross street and turned down it. We met a woman walking her small dog on a leash, and stopped and talked with her awhile. All the other animals seemed to be gone, now.

I looked across the road at a house. Some of its windows faced me, and one was very wide, and looked like a dark mirror. It appeared to also be bulging slightly.

I walked over and peered into it, trying to see my grandfather's reflection. I saw the shadowy form of my own reflection, and aways off I saw the shadowy form of the woman's reflection, but I was having trouble seeing my grandfather's. I was peering and moving my head around, but I still couldn't find anything I could identify as his reflection.

He walked up, then, and stood nearby, watching me. I kept trying, and finally saw it. His reflection was pale and washed out, and drastically stretched from side-to-side, but at least it was there.

We decided to go, then, and look in a nearby car dealership for the dogs. I believe it was because of something the woman said.

We got to the car dealership and started walking among the stalls where they worked on cars. I saw lots of strange animals, mostly large, that wandered and hid among the cars.

Finally, someone asked if they could help us (I had been wondering when someone was going to question why we were there). One of us, probably my grandfather, told him of our mission, and the person told the other mechanics about it. They tried to be helpful, and more strange animals showed up, including some that came over low walls. We also saw a dog that looked something like, but not quite like, one of the "less important" dogs.

We eventually came to, or were directed to, a pit where a mechanic worked on the underside of cars. More strange animals existed in the pit, and it had something like water in it, with strange animals coming to the surface and going back under again.

We never found the dogs, though.