This happened about one hundred years ago, as my mother has told me:
Where my grandfather John Watterson was reared, just over near Kerroo Kiel (Narrow Quarter), all the family were sometimes sitting in the house of a cold winter night, and my great grandmother and her daughters at their wheels spinning, when a little white dog would suddenly appear in the room. Then every one there would have to drop their work and prepare for ‘the company‘ to come in. They would put down a fire and leave fresh water for ‘them‘, and hurry off upstairs to bed.
They could hear them come, but could never see them, only the dog. The dog was a fairy dog, and a sure sign of their coming.
(‘the company’ being the Mooinjer Veggey (Little People/Fairies))
(source: W.Y Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries; artwork by Whyn Lewis, title unknown)