Full Breakdown
Dogs Are Less Likely to Disrupt Their Owners’ Sleep, Study Finds
By Drooid · · How we work
Study Overview
Researchers at the University of Toronto monitored the nighttime activity of 25 adult volunteers and their 38 dogs over a four-week period during the COVID-19 pandemic in southern Ontario. Participants wore wrist-mounted activity trackers while the dogs wore collar-mounted devices. The data were analyzed for objective sleep measures such as duration and quality, and participants also completed self-report surveys on perceived sleep.
Key Findings
- Bed sharing does not alter sleep metrics. Tracker data showed no significant difference in either sleep duration or sleep quality when dogs slept in the same bed, the same room, or a separate room.
- Human movement precedes dog movement. Humans initiated nocturnal movement first about 45 % of the time, disturbing dogs, whereas dogs moved first only about 18 % of the time.
- Perceived sleep varies with dog count. Participants who owned multiple dogs reported poorer subjective sleep and higher insomnia severity, though the objective data did not reflect a corresponding decline.
- Activity synchrony. Owners and dogs often became active around the same moments, suggesting a bidirectional influence on nighttime activity.
Official Statements & Responses
The research team highlighted the study’s limitations, including a modest sample size, a predominance of female participants, and the exclusive inclusion of healthy huskies and malamutes, calling for broader future research across breeds and age groups.
Verbatim Quotes
- “When we looked at the subjective, or people's perceived, sleep, we saw that there were people who reported poor sleep if they had multiple dogs,” — Lavania Nagendran, study author
Implications
The findings challenge the common belief that dogs routinely disturb owners’ sleep and suggest that perceived sleep quality may be influenced more by owners’ own nighttime activity than by canine movement. While the results are limited to a specific breed cohort, they provide a data-driven basis for pet owners to reconsider sleeping arrangements without fearing significant sleep loss. Further studies with larger, more diverse samples are needed to confirm whether these patterns hold across different dog breeds and household compositions.