Last night we had a behavior that we had never seen that was somewhat disturbing and we are curious as to what it might mean.
For the last year or so Ella sleeps under the covers in our bed. She is a good sleeper who is tolerant of our moving around in bed and who rarely leaves the bed herself. Last night a couple of hours after we went to sleep she started screaming and pawing to get out from under the covers. After a few seconds we were both awake and uncovered her. She leaped out of bed and ran into the next room, all the while letting out a curdling scream and whimpers. This lasted about a minute. She seemed upset and scared but did not show any signs of being hurt. I don't think we rolled onto her or anything like that. For the next hour or so she seemed upset and went back-and-forth between our bed and the living room. Eventually, she settled back into bed, but not under the covers. She seems fine this morning.
Our best guess is that she had a bad dream. Is that possible?
It was upsetting for all of us and we hope it does not happen again.
My 2 will cry or howl in their sleep, but I have not seen this type of running when awake behavior. Maybe someone else can help you.
Dogs can get muscle spasms, maybe she moved wrong. I have had sleep-howlers, and bumping Eddie in the night can make him cry out if his bad shoulder is bothering him. But I have not seen such extreme behavior as you describe. Hopefully it was a one-time event!
The only time our B has done something like that it was due to a cat outside.
Wouldn't think this would bring on the "curdling scream" but ours will whimper till she is allowed outside.
I would also wonder if she got bit by something? I've never had anything like that happen either, but it could be she did have a night terror.
We made it through last night with usual peace and quiet. Ella seems fine. I might have exaggerated on the "curdling scream" since she is normally so quiet any sound from her seems like a lot. But she was loud. The fact that nobody so far on the Forum has ever seem this behavior only deepens the mystery.
As we say around here, Basenjis–a riddle, wrapped in red and white fur, inside an curly-tailed enigma.
No, no experience - mine do have dreams and occasionally Gbala wakes up howling but not walking about. She stops when I rouse her to full wakefulness.
I only have to deal with snoring…. :rolleyes:
Blaze has done this a few times. Once, when we lived with my parents in the old house, he jumped off the couch and ran straight into the wall. He made no sound until he fell down and woke up. It was terrifying.
Usually his terrors consist of moving legs and heart wrenching whimpers and whines, but he can howl and scream. We wake him up with petting and cuddles.
He gets over it pretty quick, and never seems to have issues falling asleep afterwards.
He also snores…
My wife & myself were woken up by what sounded like a man screaming like he was getting stabbed to death- it was really load. I went down stairs scared to death, and our dog was just sitting there in his crate looking at us like saying "What?"
Most scary thing I have heard.
My little basenji boy, his mom is full bred basenji but his father is a border collie/lab mix. Anyways he has really bad nightmares. I have heard the blood boiling screams and the crying at night. We use to pet him to put him back into a good sleep but that doesn't work anymore so we have to shake him awake. Night terrors happen and the doggy can't move just like humans. Im a vet assistant so she probably just had a really bad nightmare. If it was a night terror it would happen all the time and she wouldn't have jumped out of bed.
