help with filters - cannot see cookies when viewing the page in the dispatcher

situation:

1. When viewing the page in author/publisher (view-as published), the browser cookies are available in my filter
2. When viewing the page via the dispatcher, the browser cookies are NOT available in my filter.
3. filter class is located in com.myhost.core.filters.myfilters
4. I've added logging in my class so I know if the cookie is getting read or not. It's definitely not getting read when I view the page via the dispatcher.

questions:

1. Perhaps there's an Apache config I need to set before this can happen? If yes, which one?
2. Perhaps this is not possible?

Thanks