Dreaming About Your Pet After They Die

What research tells us, why the dreams feel so real, and why waking up can hurt.

They were just lying there.

That is how some people describe it. Not a reunion. Not a message. Just your dog on the end of the bed, or your cat in the patch of sun on the hallway floor, doing what they always did, as if they had never been anywhere. In the dream it is completely ordinary. You might stroke them. You might not even think to. And then you wake, and for a second or two the ordinariness carries over, and then it doesn’t.

If you have had a dream like this since your pet died, you are in the majority. If you haven’t, and you are starting to wonder why, there is a likely answer further down.

How common it is

For a long time nobody studied this. Grief researchers overlooked dreams, and dream researchers overlooked grief, so the people who had these dreams were left to wonder whether they were normal.

Joshua Black, a Canadian researcher who has spent more than a decade on what he calls grief dreams, has done most of the work since. In one of his studies, 162 people whose dog or cat had died in the previous six months were asked whether they had dreamed of them. Roughly three in four had. In a separate published analysis by Black and his colleagues, six in ten bereaved pet owners reported dreaming of their pet in the previous month.

So this is not a rare thing that happens to a few people with a particular kind of bond. It is what most people’s sleep does with a loss.

What the dreams tend to be like

The same research describes the dreams themselves, and the description will be familiar.

Your pet usually looks well. Black’s summary is that the deceased tend to appear healthy or happy and to act in comforting ways. The dreams are predominantly positive, and people very rarely report only distressing ones. In his description of the pet dreams specifically, the owner and the animal are usually doing something together, or simply resting together.

This matters because of what it says about the dream’s source. Your pet’s last weeks or months may have been hard, and if you were there for the end, that is the most recent picture you have of them. The dream usually does not use it. It goes back further, to the years that were ordinary, and brings you the version of them you lived with. Whatever else the dreams are, they are not your mind punishing you.

Why waking up can hurt

The research is mostly about the dream. The part people talk about least is the moment after.

For a few seconds the dream and the morning overlap, and your pet is still somewhere in the house. Then the day arranges itself and they are not. Some people describe lying very still with their eyes shut, trying to get back in. Some describe reaching across the bed. It is a small loss inside the larger one, and it can happen weeks or years after the death.

If this is what the dreams do to you, you are not getting them wrong. The sharpness of the morning is the measure of how real the night was. And in the research, most people still describe the dreams as a comfort overall, even the ones that end like that. It is possible for something to be worth it and to hurt. Most of grief is.

When the mornings are difficult

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What they are for

Nobody has settled this, and I would be wary of anyone who says they have.

One way of thinking about it comes from grief research on continuing bonds: the idea, now widely accepted, that the relationship does not end when the life does, it changes form. On this view, dreams are one of the places the bond carries on, and researchers who review this field tend to describe them that way. Black’s own findings are more careful. He describes several different kinds of dream of the deceased, and says not all of them are the bond continuing. Some seem to be the mind doing at night what it cannot manage in the day. His later work also found that people who dream of their pet are more likely to sense them while awake too, a weight on the bed, a sound in the kitchen, which suggests the two belong to the same part of grief.

Then there is what people themselves say. When a researcher at the University of Maryland asked her followers whether they had ever seen, heard or received a sign from a dog they had lost, 544 people answered, and dreams of the dog were among the most common things they described. Of those who said what the experience meant to them, three in four called it a comfort. The researcher noted that psychology has often treated experiences like these as a sign of something wrong, while the people having them mostly found them reassuring. That is a study of how people interpret what happened to them, not evidence of visits. It is still worth knowing.

Whether you take the dream as your mind, or as them, is yours to decide. The research cannot tell you, and the research does not need to. What it can tell you is that the dreams are common, mostly kind, and more often a help than a harm.

If you have never dreamed of them

This is the part a lot of people are quietly waiting for.

When Black looked at who has these dreams and who doesn’t, the factor most strongly linked to it was how often the person remembers their dreams in general. People who rarely remember any dream rarely remember this one either. How intensely someone was grieving, and how open they were to unusual experiences, also played a part, but dream recall came first.

This is a pattern across many people. It cannot say why you in particular have not had one, and I am not going to pretend it can. What it does say is that the people who never seem to dream of the deceased are, more often than not, the people who rarely remember any dream. If that is you, it is possible the dream came and went like the others. If you usually remember your dreams, the research cannot tell us why you haven’t remembered one about your pet.

If you want to tip the odds, the plainest thing is to keep something by the bed and write down whatever is there when you wake, even a fragment, even nothing. Recall tends to improve when you pay attention to it. But I would not turn this into a project. Chasing a dream of them is a hard way to spend the night, and the dreams seem to come when they come.

A few things that may help

Only if they feel right.

Say the dream out loud to someone who knew your pet. Dreams fade fast and telling them fixes them. Black’s hope for his research is that people start asking the bereaved about their dreams, because almost nobody does.

If you wake from one, give yourself the few minutes before you get up. There is no rule that says the morning has to start the moment your eyes open.

If a dream was a bad one, and a small number are, it is not a verdict on anything. Bad dreams in grief often replay the end. They are the mind going over the part it has not finished with. In the research, people who have them almost always have the good kind as well.

And if you have not had one, let the waiting go. They were in your life for years, awake. That is where most of the remembering happens.

Questions people ask

Is it normal to dream about my dog or cat after they die?

Yes. In one study of people whose dog or cat had died during the previous six months, roughly three in four reported dreaming of their pet, and most described the dreams as positive.

What does it mean when you dream about your pet who died?

Nobody has established a single meaning. The dreams usually show the pet well and close, and many researchers see them as one of the ways the bond with a pet continues after death. Some people experience them as visits. The research describes the dreams; it does not settle what they are.

Why have I never dreamed about my pet since they died?

The factor most strongly linked to dreaming about someone who has died is how often you remember your dreams at all. If you rarely remember any dream, it is possible you have had one and not kept it.

One last thing

Whatever they were doing in the dream, it was probably nothing much. Lying there. Checking you were still there. That was most of your life together, and it is the part that comes back.

The Healing Letter

A short email each week for the first weeks and months after losing a pet. Each letter explores one thing grief does and what might help with it. Free, and you can stop at any time.

Sources and further reading

Black, J., Belicki, K., & Emberley-Ralph, J. (2019). Who dreams of the deceased? The roles of dream recall, grief intensity, attachment, and openness to experience. Dreaming, 29(1), 57-78.

Black, J., Belicki, K., & Ralph, J. (2025). The bereavement experience: Dreams and waking experiences of the deceased. Dreaming, 35(2), 184-189.

Golbeck, J. (2024). “I saw her with my heart”: Supernatural experiences and continuing bonds after the death of a dog. Anthrozoös.

Mamat, Z., Owaisi, R. B., Alrai, S., Goktepe, A. K., White, J., Bayley, P. J., & Elzamzamy, K. (2026). Dreams of the deceased: A scoping and mixed-methods systematic review. Sleep Medicine, 140, 108787.

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.