This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 11:22 am and is filed under Tip of the month. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
While exercise and other activities are extremely important for your dog’s physical and mental health, it is also vital that your dog has enough time to rest and to sleep. A survey conducted by Martina Scholz and published in “Stress in Dogs” (Martina Scholz and Clarissa von Reinhardt, Dogwise publishing, 2007), revealed that dogs that rest for less than 17 hours a day experience significantly higher stress levels than dogs that are able to rest for up to 20 hours a day. This may sound like a lot of sleeping, but I am sure that most of us have observed how our dogs do tend to just lie around for most of the day when nothing exciting is going on.
Here are some tips on how to ensure that your dog is getting enough rest:
1. Ensure that your dog has a quiet, cool area with a comfy bed where he can retreat to in order to relax.
2. Instruct all people in the house (especially children) to let sleeping dogs lie!
3. Try to schedule activities so that your dog has time to rest after physical or mental exertion (after walks, training sessions, play session or any other outings.)
4. If necessary close doors and curtains to muffle outside noises which might keep your dog on “alert”. This is particularly important for guardian type dogs who jump to attention at the slightest noise from outside.
5. Don’t allow one dog to constantly harass another one in an attempt to play. If the playful dog is not getting the message that the other dog has had enough, separate them for a while.
Be aware that puppies can become over-stimulated by lots of activity and may get to a point where they are incapable of winding down on their own. At this point the puppy should be quietly lured to a safe confinement area where he is given a hoof or piece of rawhide to chew, but has nothing else he can engage with (no furniture to jump on or chew and no other people or animals to play with). Most pups will bark, bounce and cry for a few seconds, but they will usually flop down, start chewing their rawhide treat and be asleep in a matter of minutes!
Even dogs that enjoy playing together all day long need to rest and sleep!