I’m usually a good sleeper and so is my dog, Lyra–a (very cute) 1 year old Bernese Mountain Dog–but sometimes our sleep schedules don’t align (which causes problems). Thankfully, I have learned some strategies to minimize the difference between our sleep needs.
Lyra at the beach
How Dogs Sleep
- Dogs sleep more than humans — up to 14 hours per day! No one really knows why, but one theory is that the need for more sleep could be related to an animal’s diet.
- Dogs sleep in short cycles. A typical human has 4-5, 90 minute sleep cycles. A few brief awakenings are normal, especially after a 90 minute sleep cycle ends. Over an 8 hour human night dogs will have 20+ sleep cycles; each cycle is comprised of 15 minutes of sleep followed by 5 minutes of wake.
My Sleep and Dog Challenges
During her first few weeks, I kept her in my room to help her adjust to her new environment–and I haven’t been able to break the habit. She also needed to be brought outside a few times a night for house-training. I had hoped this would only last a few weeks; unfortunately I’m occasionally up at 7 (my normal wake up time is around 8:30), taking Lyra for a walk. The sleep graph below is one such instance of this:
Unintended Wakeup at 7
How you can have your dog–and good sleep, too.
All that said, It’s possible for both you and your dog to get the sleep that you need to feel refreshed the next day–but it can take some work on your part. Here are some tips that I’ve found useful:
- If you can manage it, have your dog sleep outside of your bedroom. If this isn’t possible, at least keep them off the bed unless you want to experience their sleep cycles.
- A solid amount of exercise during the day leads to exhaustion and a solid night of sleep (ditto for humans!). If Lyra’s too tired to wake up, chances are I’ll get to sleep with fewer interruptions!
- To avoid an early morning bathroom walk, the best solution I’ve found is to remove access to food and water at 9pm and to take her for a walk as late as possible before bed.
In the future I am hoping to do an experiment to see if Lyra is disrupting my sleep more that I realize. I plan to put an accelerometer on her collar to track her movement during the night so I can compare to my sleep cycle; look for a future blog post on the topic. As always, I would love to hear about some of your sleep and pet challenges–and solution–in the forum. Click on the link below to share and we will try to help you out with some suggestions!
Ben (ZQ: 75) is one of the co-founders of Zeo and company CTO. He’s passionate about keeping Zeo at the forefront of wireless technology, and about giving users control over their data. He also loves his dog.
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