I afraid of Dreams

*Oops, I just realized I never posted this. Here it is a few weeks late*
I try to get Madilyn to take a nap nearly every day, and almost always I am unsuccessful. I usually make her stay in her bed for about an hour, but she probably averages only 2 naps a week. I think she just can't stand to lay still long enough to fall asleep, even when she's quite tired.
Two days ago, after yet another unsuccessful attempt, when I went to get her she'd been crying for about 20 minutes (it's not unusual for her to cry, that's her favorite way to protest). She calmed down when I came in and started telling me about a dog in her room. She talks pretty clearly most of the time, but she was rambling a lot and didn't make much sense. She said she was scared of the dog, but then said it was a nice dog, then told me that the dog said "bow wow, not woof woof." I asked if the dog was just a shadow on the wall, and she said yes, but then she said the dog was outside, so I thought she must have heard a dog barking outside and that got her imagination going that the dog was in her room.
She seemed very convinced that there was a dog in her room and it was kind of creeping me out that I couldn't figure out quite what she was saying. I kept asking her questions as my theory of the dog kept changing, then she said a bunch of stuff that I only understood about half of and ended with, "then I woke up."
I started to think that she must have fallen asleep for a little bit when I first laid her down and had a dream about a dog. That's why she was so convinced that the dog was real and why she was talking about it so animatedly. I asked if she saw the dog while she was asleep, and she said yes, so I explained that she had a dream. I told her that when she sees things when she's sleeping it's called having a dream, so the dog was just a dream. She seemed satisfied with that and we went downstairs. A few minutes later she looked at me and said, "Grandma's dog is Pepper, dog in my room is Dream."
Oops, I guess we weren't on the same page after all. Rather than helping her to understand that there isn't really a dog in her room, I named it Dream. She didn't seem worried about the dog anymore so I decided not to pursue the subject further.
For the next 3 days every time I got her up in the morning or from a nap she told me, "I afraid of Dreams."