Here's a good story for everyone. My little Pomeranian has a serious "little dog" syndrome. His bark is louder then his bite. But years ago we moved into this old house that was said to have spirits. Not necessarily haunted, but apparitions were seen and felt in there in the past.
I remember I use to be in the shower and I would feel a draft of cold air blow past through the bathroom. I looked outside and the door was wide open. So someone from inside the bathroom had unlocked it and left the door wide open. Other times the front and back doors would be wide open after we had left the building and locked the door behind us. Things of that nature happened frequently.
Almost nightly we would be in the TV room and the dog would jump off the couch and chase something down the hall way and growling the whole time. We all knew what it was. I thought it was cool that the dog sensed them and chased them around the house. They weren't malicious or anything. They just was there trying to relive their former lives.
One of my house mates were hypersensitive to the spirits and said they were orbs of light passing through the hallways. We weren't scared or anything. It was just interesting to see the dog act the way it did. Protecting us from everything that we normally couldn't see.
Have any of you experienced this with your dog?
I can't particularly remember a specific time it would happen, but I definitely have been around when a dog begins to bark at nothingness. Or sometimes it seems to be interacting with someone or something when no one is even around. That stuff can get to be pretty creepy. I've always wondered if animals really are more sensitive to the paranormal and whether or not they can actually see spirits. Definitely seems like it from my own experiences.
I completely believe that animals are more attuned to the spiritual world. They do not know how to be skeptical like us humans are. I have noticed a couple of times that my dog would just stare into the hallway for a few minutes. He would not bark or anything but just stay still and stare like he could see something and was not sure about it. Then eventually, he would stop and just go about his business or go back to sleep. It makes sense to me because when my children were little they both told me about a boy/man that was in the hallway. Before I had children or dogs, I had cats and the one would do the same thing and stare down the hallway like there was something they could see but not me. I am not afraid because I believe it is my mother and father who are watching over us, so it is kind of comforting to know they are still with us.
I moved homes several times in the past 10 years and I've taking my dog with me to sniff out things I can't see. I gives me a piece of mind that there isn't anything there that can make things uncomfortable.
My dog communed with my father's spirit after his passing. He would show up in the trailer we were staying in at the time and sit in a chair at the end of the hall. My lab had grieved his death terribly. She moaned and lay lower than usual, like she wanted to sink under the floor. When Dad first showed up in the hallway, my dog's spirits perked right up, evidenced by her tail wagging and her head position. She couldn't get to that chair fast enough. On approach and arrival to the chair, she looked up at where his head would have been had he been in the physical. Then she sat and behaved as she did when he used to scratch her back. So yes, I have no doubts dogs see the departed and enjoy interacting with the friendly ones, especially those they had strong relationships with.
I also lived in an old house many years ago, with my dog and cat. And both animals would literally jump around whenever there was a presence felt. Just, as you described, there would be little cool "winds" wafting down the hallway, sometimes knocking doors open or closing them. The house had some beautiful old chandeliers that often started swinging around by themselves. Things disappeared and re-appeared in strange places. And a lot of other rather unusual things occurred in that place.
My dog would bark, waggle his tail and get all excited, while my cat would jump up on the wall (always the same spot), trying to catch whatever she saw. But interestingly enough, I always felt safe and very much at home at that house. And I believe that my animals did, too.