Ian Wallace Interpretation:
Dream: In this dream you are befriending a wild animal or trying to capture and tame it. The animal often seems to have the ability to talk and may have other apparently magical powers. You are very keen to get closer to the animal by stroking it and speaking to it. Even though the animal seems quite wild, you aren’t scared or trying to run away from it. The animal may seem shy or uncooperative at first but as you gain its trust, you find that it really begins to communicate with you, often offering valuable advice and insight.
Meaning: When you dream about making friends with a wild animal, you are becoming more aware and appreciative of your instinctive nature in waking life. Animals usually symbolize your unconscious needs and your natural impulses, which you may often try to tame and keep under control because you are concerned that they will break free and cause havoc. The animal’s ability to talk reflects that you are starting to be able to give voice to your true nature and want to get closer to this aspect of yourself because it seems very appealing to you. Although it may take a while to gain the animal’s trust, this reflects the fact that it can often take time for you to trust your instincts. The nature of the animal you are befriending will indicate what part of your unconscious nature you are starting to accept more. Horses represent the personal urges and passions that you are trying to harness and put to work for you. Elephants show how you are becoming more familiar with your personal strengths and the power of your life experiences. Camels suggest that you are able to persevere and endure adversity in order to reach where you really need to get to in your life. Bears emphasize your independence and loyalty to others. Becoming more friendly with a marine animal, such as a dolphin or a whale, reflects that you are becoming much more in touch with your emotions.
Action: This dream is helping you to connect more deeply with your creative instincts and impulses. It can be easy to be afraid of your natural or instinctive behaviour because you are anxious that it might carry you away and cause you some harm. Your instincts, however, can be enormously powerful at helping you in situations where rational analysis just doesn’t make any sense of what is really going on. The more that you can pay attention to your instinctive awareness, the more likely you are to sense all the subtle possibilities that are happening around you.
Background: We tend not to appear in our dreams until about the age of three to four. Instead our dreams are filled with animals as we explore our instinctive and impulsive natures. Most of our initial learning of words and speech comes from animal identification and the sounds they make. As we develop into adults, we usually suppress much of our instinctive and impulsive natures but they are seen most clearly in what we create. Creativity and creature come from the same Latin word creare, meaning ‘to make and produce’, and what we create usually reveals our unique natures.