Let sleeping dogs lie.......

.....a comment on one of Eric's posts reminded me that when I was small my mother related an old wives' tale. Supposedly if you would go up to a sleeping dog when you could see it dreaming, by the whimpering and jerking of legs, and touch it without wakeing it up, you would dream what the dog had dreamed that night.

She told us of how, when she was a small girl she had opportunity to touch a sleeping dog not too long after the annual hog killing and butchering.
Supposedly that night she dreamed of pulling hog guts thru a cattle wire fence with her teeth. Whee!, wouldn't that make you wake up in a cold sweat?

At that time (I was probably 9 or 10 yrs of age) I had a dog named frisky, part collie and part mutt. I loved that dog. She went everywhere I went. I can remember falling asleep in the hay shed with her cuddled up beside me. An inseperable companion except when I was in the house. Mom and Dad had very strict rules about dogs in the house.

One sunny day, late in the summer, I spied Frisky asleep in the grass on the circle in front of the dairy barn, as I left the barn heading to the house to have supper.

Somehow I got the bright idea that it would be great fun to sneak up on Frisky and suprise her and wake her up by shouting and leaping upon her, to which I anticipated a friendly game of chase to ensue.

I know.........
...A little unaware of the ways of the world, and sleeping dogs......., suddenly awakened.

As I shouted and leapt upon her.....

..........she, startled out of a nice sound sleep, and probably dreaming of protecting the farmstead, rolled on her back and struck out with both back feet, raking them from my nipples to my jeans, snarling and growling like she was attacking a bear.

Let me assure you. Most of the time it is best to let sleeping dogs lie. Or wind up like me bleeding profusely and carrying the scars for many years.