I was on a woodland walk with an American arms inspector and a little Iraqi girl whose hand had been blown off during the invasion of Iraq. The arms inspector had met her in a hospital after the attack and had ensured that she got proper medical care, physiotherapy and so on. Since then, he had dropped in on her every time he was in her area, which was once or twice a year.
I ran ahead in order to take a picture of the pair of them walking along, but my dog ran with me and wouldn't get out of the way of the shot. Eventually, I gave up and started walking again.
Some way behind us, a dog barked. "What was that?" said my dog, rather nervously.
"It's just a dog," I said. "Don't worry about it."
"That's alright, then," said my dog. "I thought it was something much worse."
Notes for Freudian Analysis
I occasionally dream about that dog, which is the one that my family had when I was a kid. It died when I was about 20, I think. It couldn't speak.
Dreams about dead pets are quite common, if the ramblings of people who publish their dreams on the internet are anything to go by, but Freud doesn't appear to have dealt with any. He greatly approved of dogs, however, and let his chow, Jofi, sit in on psychoanalytic sessions. Apparently, the dog once jumped onto a patient who was reliving some awful repressed memory. Freud said, "You see! Jofi is so excited that you have been able to discover the source of your anxiety!" Sounds very much like a made-up story.
The American is probably inspired by Scott Ritter, who's the ex-UN arms inspector who reported that Iraq's WMD capability had been eliminated by 1998. He's been in the news a bit recently, saying that Bush and Blair are war criminals who are guilty of the same crimes that got the Nazis hanged at Nuremberg. He's my favourite Republican ex-marine.
Is there some sort of dream pun at work relating to the fact that the little girl lost a hand and the man inspects arms? Freud was very keen on such things, but they always seem to be the parts of his analyses that are the most dubious.