From a few weeks I use budgie with dock mode instead of Plank. I see that dock mode is sometimes not as reliable as plank. For example really sometimes doesn't react when I try to show dock or it's showing itself in parts (the only applet I use on it is Icon Task List - it's showing squares with app icons one by one).
What happens to me all the time. I use Plata Dark/Lumine Compact. In this theme dock has rounded corners which are rounded only till reboot - corners become squared. Then I need to disable dock mode & set it again.
Dock mode ON
After reboot/shutdown & bootup
BTW to Budgie Devs - Do you plan to add some blur for transparent objects? Personally I would love to see this kind of thing, but I don't know if it fits to your concept of Budgie DE 😁