A small Canadian study found that human and dog nighttime movement often rose and fell together, but people were more likely to move first when a timed association appeared. For the PLOS One study, researchers tracked 25 adults and 38 huskies and malamutes in southern Ontario for about four weeks using wrist and collar accelerometers.
Thirty-six human-dog pairs had usable time-series data. Twenty-two pairs, or 61%, showed a positive association in activity within a five-minute window. Among those 22, human movement came first in 10 pairs, dog movement came first in four, and movement was synchronized within the same one-minute interval in eight. The researchers found only a small overall association, and movement coming first does not prove that one sleeper woke the other.
Bed-sharing did not alter objective human sleep
Whether a dog slept on the bed was not associated with participants’ objectively measured sleep duration or efficiency. The researchers likewise found no significant effect of sleeping location, other dogs or other humans on dog nighttime activity.
The result is narrow. The sample included 21 women and four men, all the dogs were huskies or malamutes, and data collection happened during COVID-19 lockdowns. The collar sensors recorded dog movement rather than validated physiological sleep states, while the study included no video or noise monitoring. The authors therefore described the larger question of who disrupts whom as inconclusive.
