Does your dog get enough sleep?

One of the very first subjects I discuss in my initial consultations with my clients is their dog’s sleep. How much sleep are they getting in total within 24 hours? Are they napping during the day in addition to getting sleep at night?

Now how much sleep a dog needs depends on their age. The averages they should be getting are 14-17 hours for an adult dog and 18-22 hours for a puppy. You read that right! Puppies can require 22 hours of sleep. But if we compare them to babies, this should come as no surprise. As they get older their need for sleep does go down, but I find these numbers are still higher than the average client of mine thought they were.

Let’s say you normally get 8 hours of sleep every night and have found that you function the best with that amount of sleep. So if that is your need, your baseline, what do you think would happen to you if you were only getting 4 hours of sleep every night? Well we have learned, and it is pretty common knowledge, that humans do not do well with a lack of sleep, especially chronic sleep deprivation. We also know that sleep deprivation can cause all sorts of problems cognitively and can certainly affect mood–irritability being a very common symptom. Well, spoiler alert, this goes for animals as well.

One of the most common complaints I hear from owners with younger dogs is that they are dealing with increased nipping and jumping. I tend to picture a toddler having a meltdown and when explaining this to clients I often need to remind them that dogs, much like children, do not KNOW that they need a certain amount of sleep. Mostly they are either at 100% or crashing as a coping mechanism. But if we, as knowledgeable humans, understand that they are sleep deprived (often by over 8 hours in my experience) and they are having problems, then a simple solution could be giving them the opportunity to sleep more often. 

If you have an adult dog that seems chronically stressed and will overreact at the drop of a hat, and/or their list of triggers or stressors are continually rising, they may be sleep deprived. This is not to say that it is necessarily the ONLY thing going on, or that helping them to receive the right amount of sleep will fix EVERYTHING…but it definitely will not hurt.

How much sleep is your dog getting? Tracking this for a few days will help you get a baseline and determine if your dog is needing more sleep than they are getting, and this very well may help with behavior issues they may be having.

In a future post we will discuss how to help your puppy, adolescent, or adult dog get more reliable sleep.