Dream: a "snowmobile" and pet therapy

This dream starts next to a large, deep lake. It is twilight and the season is deep winter – the lake is frozen and all around us, the trees are shimmering.

There is a group of us, maybe 5 or 6 people, no-one that I recognise. We arrange ourselves in pairs onto snowmobile like things, except they are not quite snowmobiles. I don’t know enough about them to really know the difference, but I know it’s not quite right.

As we set out onto the lake we make barely any noise at all, gliding into the last of the light. I look behind me and see two parallel tracks, like skiing tracks. I realise that there is no steering device on the “snowmobile”, and but it seems to have a planned track, turning this way and that. We get to the other side of the large lake and with a small unceremonious clunk, enter the track at the mouth of the forest.

It is darker in the forest, the light rapidly fading. I see the trees blurring by but not much else. The “snowmobile” takes an increasingly complex imaginary track, until we get to a small crevice under a hill. It is so small that we would have gone straight past, but with an almost imperceptible sinking motion, the snow below us gives way and we dip close enough to get into the crevice.

The tunnel is totally dark, and it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. It is only then that I realise we have lost the other “snowmobilers”, and I wonder if we are lost. Even inside the tunnel, the “snowmobile” knows its way. Suddenly I see a shadow up ahead and my heart starts racing.

Is it a ghost? I ask my partner “snowmobiler”, who has been quiet up to this point.

Oh yes, there are many in this tunnel. She replies.

Feeling a little scared now, but committed to the sense of inevitability, I try to take in whatever little details I can make out in the darkness. Soon I start seeing skeletons, lots and lots of them, at first they seem realistic (like the anatomy ones) then they become increasingly comic until they are hardly anything more than a cartoon.

Is this an amusement park? I wonder.

Then the “snowmobile” suddenly stops and we get out in the darkness. The other girl silently leads me to a rock which she presses – a special hidden door opens and we go behind it into another tunnel which is lit. Further along, the corridor starts to twist and bend and I soon lose all sense of direction. We come to a collection of rooms which look identical from the outside – beige, laminated, no handle. From the dozens of rooms she confidently selects one, and pushes it open.

We step into an apartment, warm and cosy like someone’s home. As we walk throughout the apartment a large brown dog (maybe a groodle?) comes up to me and tries to get close. I start patting the dog and playing with it, and it seems to be quite happy.

Suddenly a lady appears in the room, though we haven’t heard any footsteps warning of her approach. She is friendly to the other girl who calls her “aunty”, and she smiles at me and then at the dog. She comes over and pats the dog as well, who is happy with the attention. Then she turns to me and says, did you know that dog therapy is a proven form of treatment for cancer?

Then my alarm goes off and I wake up.