09/12/2024
Sleep 💤💤💤
How are you after two or three nights of broken sleep?
Do you think emotionally you will be happy?
Do you think you can make clear decisions easily and will be able to deal with problems that arise?
Or perhaps you are like me and you find that you become more frustrated easily. You lack tolerance and may be grumpy and quick to snap?
When asking a dog to do something or you are training with your dog, how can they be expected to think clearly, to comprehend the task and to deliver what is being asked of them if they are not getting enough sleep?
Not only is a lack of sleep going to have an effect on a dog’s health, but it will also affect their emotional state and behaviour too.
Dog trainers & behaviourists will often see cases where a dog is so busy that they cannot relax or switch off.
With some dogs, when they do fall asleep, they awake easily upon minute movements from their owner or sounds that may be heard. We see dogs that watch everything and anything that passes by the window setting them off into a frenzy.
All of this causes the dog to be hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant which naturally causes and increases anxiety and stress.
Nearly all behavioural cases can see some improvement in their behaviour when we increase the dogs sleep. This is common practice for dog trainers and behaviourists to increase sleep and sleep quality in a dogs training plan.
Sleep or a lack of sleep affects so many aspects. We know as a rule that sleep deprivation can be detrimental to our own health. When we are looking at our health, we know that there are serious medical issues that are associated with chronic lack of sleep, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure and stroke just to name a few.
Did you know that puppies need on average 18-20 hours of sleep a day and adult dogs need on average 12 to 14 hours of sleep!!!
Join our Reactive Dog Seminar to see how you can help your dog with sleep.
