A new study from the University of Toronto suggests that allowing your dog to sleep next to you may help improve your sleep quality, as dogs are found to disrupt human sleep less than humans disrupt canine sleep. The findings, published in the journal PLOS One, emerged from a study conducted in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The research involved 25 human participants and 38 dogs, monitoring their nighttime activities over a four-week period using activity trackers similar to Fitbits. Humans wore monitors on their wrists, while dogs wore them on their collars. The study aimed to assess the interactions between human and dog sleep patterns as part of a broader analysis comparing domestic dogs with socialized wolves.
Anthropology researcher Lavania Nagendran highlighted that the trackers provided objective data on sleep duration and quality, while humans also reported their sleep experiences through surveys. Most dogs in the study slept either in their owners' beds or in the same room, although some were in separate spaces.
While half of the participants, particularly those with multiple dogs, reported interrupted sleep, the activity data did not indicate significant disruptions. In fact, it showed that sharing a bed with a dog did not affect the overall sleep quality or duration for either party. Nagendran noted that while subjective reports indicated disrupted sleep in some cases, this was not corroborated by the objective data collected.
The study also contradicted findings from a 2020 study, which claimed that dogs influenced human movement more than the reverse. In this latest study, activity data revealed that humans generally stirred first about 45% of the time, causing minor disturbances to their dogs, while dogs initiated movement only 18% of the time, impacting human sleep.
Researchers acknowledged limitations in the study, including a small sample size that skewed towards women and a lack of diverse dog breeds, as all participating dogs were healthy huskies or malamutes.