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I don’t know for how many people I speak for when I say that we’ve all accidentally fallen asleep in a place we should not have fallen asleep. Maybe it was at an inappropriate time, maybe it was an inappropriate location, all I know is that my teacher probably did not appreciate my sleep drool all over the classroom desks when I accidentally knocked out in the middle of the lecture. And it certainly was not appreciated by me when I accidentally fell asleep at 4pm and woke up at 11pm.
I feel like dogs are in a similar situation when it comes to sleep, seeing as they’re animals who don’t really follow the same kind of schedule that we do. All they need to do is be awake when it’s time for their walk, and have something to entertain themselves until they pass out from exhaustion when their humans are too busy to pay them any heed. Because of this, they often end up in the most ridiculous of positions taking the most ridiculous of naps, and as your luck would have it, they frequent the r/Aww subreddit almost everyday!
Source: Reddit
Times did something interesting about sleeping with your puppy!
For most Americans, dogs are no longer relegated to the doghouse. According to the American Pet Products Association, an industry trade group, almost 60 percent of dog owners say they regard their pet as a child or member of the family. And many let their dogs snuggle up to sleep right in their human owners’ beds, often alongside their owners. But is sleeping in the same bed with your dog a good idea? Wouldn’t they be disruptive to our sleep?
Over seven days of testing, the researchers found that with a dog in the bedroom, both the humans and the dogs slept reasonably well. Humans had a mean sleep efficiency, or the percentage of time spent asleep while in bed, of 81 percent, while dogs had a sleep efficiency of 85 percent. Levels over 80 percent are generally considered satisfactory. People slept slightly better when the dog was off the bed; dogs slept the same whether they were on the bed or in another location in the bedroom. “This goes against the lore that you should have the dog sleep elsewhere,” and not in the bedroom, said Dr. Lois E. Krahn, the study’s senior author and a psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist at the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Her 6-year-old golden retriever, Phoebe, routinely sleeps on the floor in the bedroom — and in the colder months joins her and her husband on their bed. Both the dog and the people, she said, sleep fine.
In an earlier study from 2015, Dr. Krahn and her colleagues asked patients who had visited the Mayo Clinic’s sleep clinic whether they owned dogs, cats or other pets. About half did, with many owning more than one. Forty-one percent said they perceived their pet as unobtrusive or beneficial to their sleep, compared to 20 percent who said their pet was disruptive. That study was self-reported, and “we can’t quite trust people to have an accurate report or even be able to accurately observe their feelings for their pets,” Dr. Krahn said. “It’s sort of like a parent’s feelings for their child. I wanted to have objective data.” Hence the recent follow-up report that used activity monitors to get objective data.
Some dogs may not belong in the bedroom, such as very young or old pets who may not sleep through the night, a sick pet or a reactive pet who might become aggressive when startled or woken up suddenly. Also, if a new baby is entering the family and will sleep in the same bedroom as the parents, Dr. Siracusa said, that might no longer be a good place for the pet to sleep – not because of concerns of a pet smothering a baby, he said, but because space may be an issue with that many human and furry bodies in one room. If a pet is already sleeping in your bed or in the bedroom and interfering with your sleep, you can take steps to transition a pet out of the bedroom. Dr. Siracusa said it is best to make the transition a gradual one rather than abruptly kicking the pet out of the bed or bedroom. That may mean first moving a dog from the human bed to a comfortable spot elsewhere in the bedroom, and then moving the pet just outside the door.
Figuring out where a new dog should sleep can take some time. When Natalie Hastings and her husband adopted Mikey, a 70-pound boxer bulldog mix, they tried letting him sleep in the bed at first, but he shifted around so much they moved him onto a couch. But as Mikey became more settled in their home and he slept more soundly through the night, that changed. He started sleeping in the bed with Mrs. Hastings when her husband traveled for work. Now he’s there all the time and, Mrs. Hastings says, helps her fall asleep faster. “I have trouble settling down, and he’s got very rhythmic breathing,” she said of Mikey. “It’s almost like white noise. And he’s really warm.”
What about you? What did you think? Tell us down in the comments!
