Really creative writing

This part of the series which continues from Real-time story development part 2 investigates whether writers can use dogs in a sinister and menacing sense rather than in a cute sense in their stories.
For example, in my story `The Call’ the American Pastor dreams that he and his wife are besieged in the British church where he preaches by an anti-Christian mob which includes a pack of howling vengeful dogs (see footnote.)
In episode 2 of The Call, a Britisher that lives near the church discovers that his two Mastiff dogs are missing and may have been missing all night. The proposed storyline is that these were the dogs which the Pastor heard in his dream - that this part of the dream was in fact real.
How does any of this help you? Well, it might give you the idea of using a pack of vengeful dogs (or maybe just one) in your story. But before you go ahead with the idea, take a look at the  problems below. These are the problems that I am facing with the idea and they are also the problems that you might face.
A major problem is that we are trying to attribute a  human emotion - vengefulness, to an animal, a dog. Of course, dogs do have some of the emotions that humans have, but is vengefulness one of these emotions - can dogs be vengeful?
We could try to find this out. There might be true stories where dogs have been vengeful, or appeared to be. If so, it might give the idea some credibility. We could also try to find out whether other writers have used vengeful dogs in their stories. Again, if so this might give the idea some credibility.
If all this fails, we might have to suggest that in certain circumstances they can be vengeful, we might have to ask the reader to believe that this is a possibility. As far as I can see, the only way of doing this is to suggest that the dogs in our story have been possessed by some kind of supernatural spirit.
Alternatively we can skip the research and just go ahead with the supernatural approach. I’m currently  trying to decide whether to do the research or skip it and go ahead with the supernatural approach anyway. You will probably have to decide about this too.
In Real-time story development part 4 I’ll take another more detailed look at the problems that we’ll face if we choose the supernatural approach.
Footnote:`The Call’ is entirely a work of fiction and is not intended to represent the views of American clergymen in Britain towards the British or the views of the British towards American clergymen in Britain.