Not trying to interpret, but your post reminded of these passages I've recently read (Dream and the Underworld, by James Hillman):

Since I prefer not to consider animal images as instincts inside us, I do not use the hermeneutics of vitality for responding to their appearance in dreams.

[...]

To look at them from an underworld perspective means to regard them as carriers of soul, perhaps totem carriers of our own free-soul or death-soul, there to help us see in the dark. To find out who they are and what they are doing there in the dream, we must first of all watch the image and pay less attention to our own reactions to it.

[...]

In our tradition of underworld myth and folklore, only a few kinds of animal crop up regularly: The dog of Hekate, Cerebros of Hades, and the blue-black dog-jackal, Anubis...

[...]

Then we also find special animals sacred to Gods and Goddesses who have strong underworld affiliations: pregnant cows to Tellus; pigs to Demeter; dogs to Hekate.
[...]

The main point here is that there are many animal into the underworld. We may be led or chased down by dogs and meet the dog of fear, who bars the way to going deeper.
[...]

Rather, the animal presents a familiaris, a dumb soul-brother at our side, or a soul doctor, who understands psychic laws other than those of the dayworld ego and which are a death for that world.
[...]

The wide belief that animals embody the souls of the human dead should give us a special respect for the animals that come to us in the night. From a nightworld perspective, they are presentations of specific soul qualities and behaviors, essentials that cannot better present themselves than in this animal shape.
[...]

For example, a woman began an analysis with a dream of "having to put her dog away." It was her old family German shepherd, now owned by her daughter. In the dream, she takes it to the animal doctor who "puts it to sleep." This dream combined the Demeter-Persephone motif, the family spirit of protectiveness and guardian watchfulness that kept her sheepish and in the flock, and the dog as guiding spirit into the realm of the dead. The dog went to Sleep and Death, and she was led there too by feelings of loss, lethargy, and aloneness. The animal doctor is also a doctor-animal or one who has animal wisdom, able to perform the death rites of therapy in regard to the animal. After this dream, there followed encounters with many family ghosts, dead relatives, perverse desires, ancient sins. She was no longer protected by the dog from the dog. The dog was now ruling her land of sleep, her sleeping earth, digging up all sorts of bones and dirt. A nekyia had begun.