Sleeping Dogs Lie 2006

In college, 18-year-old Amy impulsively engaged in a sexual act with her dog Rufus. Eight years later, she leads a life that seems ordinary on the surface: she works as a schoolteacher and is engaged to a decent man named John. When John pushes for complete honesty, Amy decides to keep a part of her past private, telling him that she had a lesbian experience with her best friend Melinda Page Hamilton. On a visit to her parents’ home, Amy finally gives in to John’s persistent questions and confesses. The confession blossoms into a family moment that unsettles everyone: the next morning, her drug-addicted brother Dougie, Bryce Johnson in tow, repeats the story at the breakfast table, and her parents discover that Amy’s memory may be more complicated than they had believed. Her father refuses to speak, and her mother expresses deep-seated shame as the truth lands in the room.

Back at home, the couple’s bond strains under the weight of the revelation. Despite their efforts to repair the damage, a single night of heavy drinking leads John to lash out, calling Amy a cruel insult: a “dog-blowing cunt.” The blow drives her to leave, and she finds temporary shelter with Linda and her boyfriend Carl, though their noisy lovemaking forces her to move on again. With the help of a coworker Brian Posehn known simply as Ed, Amy finds a new apartment and begins a relationship with him after he learns that his own wife has been unfaithful.

Tragedy returns when Amy’s mother dies of an aneurysm. This loss forces Amy to confront unfinished business with her father, and a fragile reconciliation unfolds when he hands her a letter her mother had written before she died. The siblings’ tension lingers as Amy and Ed visit Dougie in prison to share the news of their mother’s death. Dougie’s reaction is to blame Amy, and she leaves the room quickly, trying to protect Ed from reading too much into his words. In the aftermath, Ed and his wife attempt to repair their own marriage, which paves the way for a deeper connection between Amy and Ed. She realizes her feelings for him as they navigate what is real and what remains hidden, but the history of the past continues to complicate their present.

As the story progresses, Ed learns more about the layers of Amy’s past: she was pregnant and engaged to John, but chose to have an abortion, a decision that deeply upsets her parents. Rather than reopen these painful memories, Amy decides to keep the lie, choosing to let “sleeping dogs lie.”

sleeping dogs lie