“Let him sleep. For in dreams, we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let him swim in the deepest ocean or glide over the highest cloud.” Albus dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I don’t know about you, but I often wonder what my dog, Jess, is dreaming of when her legs start moving whilst she sleeps. whether she is chasing rabbits or running on the beach it is no doubt that she appears to be enjoying her own world, But sleep is not only a way for us to escape the stressors of day-to-day life, but sleep is also a hugely important part of homeostasis and can have a large impact on physical and behavioural health of an individual.
When considering a holistic approach to behaviour and training concerns, sleep is often under investigated. The hierarchy of dog’s needs (1) identify biological needs as the first level of behavioural well-being, with changes in the pattern and duration of sleep often reflecting a dog’s experience whilst awake including how comfortable that are in their own environment (2). Sleep will naturally vary between individuals, and is also impacted by age, health, lifestyle, and other external factors. The sleep cycle in most mammals, including dogs consists of slow wave sleep followed by rapid eye movement sleep and then wakefulness (3).
Unlike humans, dogs are polyphasic sleepers meaning that the sleep on and off during the day rather than one large period of sleep overnight. The amount of sleep dogs should get is a debated concept. With the most common suggested amount being between 12 and 14 hours. The average amount of sleep reported in the literature appears to be between 26-31% of the daytime (3,4,5,) and 60-70% of the night (3,5).
Although there is no conclusive amount of sleep suggested for dogs, one thing that is widely agreed across both the literature and professionals is that lack of sleep has a negative impact on welfare. Reported effects include worsening responses to negative stimuli, anxiety, aggression (6) reduced sensitivity to rewards (7) lower frustration tolerance ( and reduced ability to cope with stressful situations (9). This ultimately can be translated to difficulties in managing behaviour, worsening of behaviours of concerns and lack of progress with training and behaviour modification.
In shelters, the estimated amount of sleep for dogs is similar to that above during the night however, during the day the average is as low as 2.8%. it is therefore easy to see why encouraging sleep is massively important in the shelter environment.
One way to encourage sleep is to be meeting needs in other areas of the dog’s life for example, dogs who received higher levels of interactions from people and dogs and those who received more exercise slept more.
Other considerations can be made for the location of the dogs kennel, such as being on the end of a block so the dog only have one dog next to them. Offering choice of bedding so the dog can either curl up, lay flat and regulate temperature and offering the opportunity to hide away or gain height (covered crates with mdf support can be great for this)
Some dogs also benefit from social sleeping so we may consider shared housing options or time out of the kennel in offices, or even things like volunteer reading programs.
Ideally for dogs who are not sleeping well, we may consider removing them from the environment through the use of foster homes, even if long term foster is not an option research has shown that even over night stays can help to have a positive effect on stress levels when returning.
One thing that is clear from both the literature and real-world evidence that sleep is an extremely important part of a dog’s life and should be included in all holistic approaches to problem behaviours and welfare. Increasing sleep improves quality of life for both dogs and their owners and setting the dog up for success by providing appropriate sleeping environments can be the key to ensuring excellent quality and quantity of sleep.