Any dog training plans for the new year? Or have you thought of changing to homemade dog food? Taking up agility? Volunteering at a local shelter? Doing art that features dogs? Maybe you have some wild ideas relating to dogs: the one or ones you have now, dogs you would like to have…

Now, in the early days of the year with the long cold nights, it’s a great time for dreaming. Not just the dreams we have at night, but those that come in the waking hours: dreams of doing something new, achieving something that has been beyond our reach, creating something that only takes shape as we begin to work on it.

I think of some lines from an old Broadway show, South Pacific:

You got to have a dream.
If you don’t have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

Every year now begins as one of uncertainty if you consider our world. Dream about dogs when you’re stressed by the news, your finances, or whatever else is on your plate? Well, why not? It seems to me that often it’s when I’ve been unsettled that more creativity has erupted, its molten lava finding a way through the everyday shell of personality and routine.

So let’s dream big doggy dreams this year. Let’s play with our dogs more. Let’s try something new. Let’s make this a better world for dogs, whether for our own dogs or beyond them. Let’s spend some time visioning and writing down our visions someplace. Let’s even shift from right to left brain and put times in our planners that we will train our dogs. And let’s just sit on the floor with them and commune. What thoughts might come to you as you gaze into a dear furry face?