When we were young, living in the first home we bought, a simple semi-detached one-story house located in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and well before the birth of any of our children, my husband brought a boxer puppy into our home. We raised him as well as two young people who had never before had the responsibility, pleasure and irritation of teaching a young animal to be domesticated could manage.

He wasn't the brightest of creatures, but we enjoyed his company. That was well over 50 years ago. We would look on with amusement when, while sleeping, he would turn halfway over on his back, raise his legs and begin pumping them. Or he would twitch and bark half-heartedly, on occasion making other gestures and sounds, so we knew that yes, dogs, like human beings dream, or have nightmares disturbing the peace of their sleep.

It would be many decades on before we'd have another animal in our household, long after our children left to embark on independent lives of their own with their own responsibilities, pleasures and irritations. Only one of our children invests part of her life in surrounding herself with companion animals.

As for us, we've two very small dogs; a female miniature poodle-pomeranian mix, and a toy male, apricot poodle. He is now twelve years of age, while she is halfway to 19. He never has dreams, or if he has them, we've never been made aware of them. She, on the other hand, from the time she was a puppy, would often have her sleep marred by some kind of mental disturbance that would cause her to yip in anguish. We would often reach over to her to comfort her, and the sound would stop.

Last night the sounds she made were of a different quality, sharper, more punctuated and emphatic and the time intervals between quite precise. I rose from my sleep and went along to where she was laying, on the loveseat which serves as her bed, and stroked her until she groggily awoke, stopped yelping, then settled back to sleep.

Earlier in the evening, before we'd gone to bed and she was put up on her sleeping platform (we now carry her upstairs and into her bed; it's been several months since she has wanted to mount the stairs on her own; although she has plenty of energy, she is losing confidence, it would appear), she'd begun her usual ritual of digging up the little blankets we place on the loveseat for her comfort, and as she now sometimes does, forgot the space limitations, ending up falling on the well-carpeted floor.