Spontaneous behavior

Question
my dog just had a few minutes of weird behavior. i was cooking, and all of a sudden, my dog started freaking out, the hair stood up on her back, barking, growling, not acting like herself at all. Shes never done that before, than she started making small tight circles around me, and than increased the radius but still making circles with her hair standing up, and barking and growling, but looking towards the cupboards. i looked in them and nothing was their. and when i opened them, she ran out of the kitchen, and didn't go past the counter again until i closed it. she eventually calmed down and laid down after 10 minutes of doing this. what could it be?

Answer
Dogs often respond to sounds that we cannot hear and some we can, like a smoke detector. Since you were cooking, could she have been anticipating the sound of the smoke detector about to go off? No offense to your cooking, but under the right circumstances, I could see a dog doing that. If I am cooking something in a frying pan, I can get a good bit of smoke coming off of it sometimes.

Now, that was the most logical response. But I have had similar questions to this, and being a spiritual person, I do believe that dogs can see/sense things that we cannot. I believe that our loved ones (and maybe some we didn't love quite so much) come back on occasion to check up on us, and I think that sometimes our dogs know that they are there and respond to them.

Notwithstanding whatever it was that set her off, it can make for a good story to tell friends and relatives. :)