I had a grotesque, disturbing dream the other night.

And I can't get it out of my head. It freaks me out every time I think of it.

In the dream, I was reliving a party I had been to recently. There was a large, black, friendly dog at the party in real life, and I imagined seeing the dog again in the dream.

Only for some reason, this time the dog was becoming increasingly upset. It started growling and snarling at nothing, and a certain point, it stood stock still with a frustrated, angry expression on its face.

Words cannot describe my horror at what happened next.

The dog's eyes suddenly turned from a natural brown to an opaque alien green; the pupils completely disappeared. At the same time, the dog's white teeth suddenly became black, large and crooked, protruding from the corners of its snout like a crocodile. But the dog--the same size, but now practically a monster--just stood there, panting quietly and growling quietly, leering at nothing. No one dared to touch it.

Frightened, I asked the owner what had happened to it. "Oh," she said casually, "it's gotten a bit confused; all the blood has flowed out of its brain. He'll go back to normal in a few seconds." And sure enough, as I watched, the eyes darkened and the pupils returned; the teeth returned to their original size and color and reverted back into the dog's mouth. Suddenly, he looked like a normal, friendly dog.

I turned back to the owner. She smiled at me with the smile that pet owners reserve for those who don't have animals.

"You see", she said, "this happens to all dogs from time to time. There's nothing anyone can do about it..."

And then I awoke, tossing and turning. It's been two days now, but I can't remove that dog from my consciousness.

:scared: That sounded just like something he would write up. I'd be a bit off after a dream like that too.

....the last time I saw or imagined an image that awful, I had the first panic attack of my life a few hours later.

I wonder if it means anything. Oddly enough, I'm employed and making money for the first time in months, and for the most part I've been in a great mood lately. In real life, I throughly enjoyed the party, and thought nothing of the dog (who was your typical friendly, pettable black lab) until I had this dream.

Is it possible that your dream reliving a real party you enjoyed, including a nice, typical dog you liked, is letting you know that even though you're employed and making money now, and you've been in a great mood lately, you have underlying anxieties still?....that the "party" might end and the friendly dog might turn on you? Ie, that your employment might go away somehow. It's in your followup post. I've been told that the first reactions and comments people have about a dream are often a key to what the dream means.
It's not all that tough to read, sometimes.

....maybe I just dismissed it because it was the most obvious interpretation. Is my psyche really THAT transparent?

...nor do I play him on TV....
But I've been told (again) by those who DO know these things, that our dreams are sometimes our way of talking things over with ourselves. If you take the trouble to describe a dream to a friend (or to yourself, if nobody's around) and then ask yourself "what did that mean?" you will often find that the key is right there in your initial reactions and the very first things you say about the dream..
It is a good thing, I think, if your psyche is transparent....to YOU, at least!

No matter how much we think we have the ability to intellectually deflect and subdue our own anger and other strong emotions , we are still not far removed from animals.

Repressing strong emotions usually has the effect of allowing them to simmer and grow below the surface in the unconscious mind.

These feelings can seem to take on a life of their own in our dreams and often appear as a threatening animal.

person...