Nearly half of American adults share a bed with a dog. Plenty of them will tell you the dog is the reason they woke up at 4 a.m.
A new study from anthropologists at the University of Toronto points the finger in both directions. The team strapped motion trackers to 25 people in Canada and their 38 dogs, then compared who moved when.
Human and dog movement stayed linked even when the dog was nowhere near the mattress. When one stirred, the other usually stirred within a few minutes. In the 22 pairs whose nightly patterns matched, the person moved first 45 percent of the time. The dog moved first in 18 percent.
Bed sharing did not predict shorter or lighter sleep. About 72 percent of owners said they felt safer with a dog in bed, and most said barking (88 percent) or the sound of a dog shifting around (84 percent) never woke them.
The sample is small and specific: huskies and malamutes only, 25 people, and the data came from the COVID lockdown years when everyone’s sleep was strange. Owners with more than one dog did report worse sleep quality, though the researchers call that finding weak.
What this means for your dog
If you wake at 3 a.m. and your dog is pacing ten minutes later, your own restlessness may be the trigger. Dogs track our routines closely, including the ones we keep after dark, and they read us far more often than we read them.
Before you banish anyone to the hallway, try a week of steady bedtimes and see whether you both settle. If you have two dogs, watch how one shift sets off a small canine traffic jam. The mattress turns out to be a shared habitat, and nobody in it sleeps alone.