another japanese tale: a dog saves a samurai's family

. . .We read that "a good dog has communication with the gods and changes into a dragon."  A white dog was found outside a certain house, bringing forth young. The inmates of the house, near which the animal was lying, took it inside and treated it with care.
One night a man in a white garment appeared in a dream to the mistress of the house and said: “Within a few days there will be a landslip, and this neighbourhood will certainly become a muddy pool. You must flee away quickly; I tell you this because you have treated me so well.” The next morning at daybreak the woman's husband, a samurai, came hastily home from the yashiki (estate - Curator) of his Lord, where he had been on service, and sought the dog. When his wife asked him the reason why he did so, he answered: “Although this dog never came to the yashiki before, last night he came and barked continually. When I went outside he pulled me by the skirt of my clothes as if he would say: ‘Go out of the house.’ Therefore was I in such a hurry."
Then the woman told him her dream, and they went away together. This happened on the 22nd of the 12th month of 1699, and on the next day the mountain tumbled down into the Asano river, crushing 85 houses and killing more than thirty persons.
The place actually became a muddy pool, as the dog had foretold.

-- From The dog and the cat in Japanese superstition, Marinus Willem de Visser (Yokohama, Japan: Fukuin Printing Co Ltd., 1909) pps. 33-34