Lately, I’ve noticed the girls have been rambunctious while they’re sleeping. I often find myself switching rooms on a phone call, because they are grunting and barking. I can tell that they’re not awake, so it’s made me think – do dogs dream?
I think we’ve all seen it – the foot twitches while they’re napping…sometimes you can even hear a little “woof!”. We wanted to dive deeper to understand if dogs dream, and if they do…do we know what they could possibly be dreaming about?
Let’s start with how dreams work, in general.
There are 4 stages of sleep. Stages 1 to 3 are non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. In these stages, your brain slows down, you become less aware of your surroundings and your muscles begin to relax. You have to progress through these stages (though not in a perfect sequence) in order to get to the fourth stage – the rapid eye movement phase or REM sleep.
During REM, brain activity begins and you are able to dream. It’s thought that it takes about 90 minutes after falling asleep to reach this stage.
If you want to read more about the human sleep cycles, this article has tons of information.
So now we know how sleep works with humans, but how does it work in animals?
A study was conducted on rats to try and determine if animals dream. They trained the rats on a track where a food reward was given at the completion. This was a similar experiment to the one that we mentioned in our post “How Time Ticks“.
The brain activity of the rats was monitored during this exercise and then monitored during their sleep. As the rats entered the REM phase, they had similar brain activity as they did when they were on the track. So similar, that the scientists could prove whether they were running or walking, and exactly what part of the track they were on in their dream.
Pretty fascinating.
The patterns in their sleep led to the conclusion that the rats were likely reliving their waking activities during their REM sleep.
This finding in the rats is a good indication that dreaming is common across mammals.
We [humans] tend to dream about things that we’re interested in. Whether that’s winning the lottery or being on a beach vacation, we generally see familiar things in our dreams.
A rat will dream about the mazes and cheese rewards they’ve earned and it suggests dogs can do the same with their dreams.
When we see Fido moving in his dream, is he really running and playing? Yes, he probably is.
Generally, when dogs paws are moving or they’re twitching in their dreams, it’s believed that they are actually dreaming of running.
Dogs have similar REM cycles as people do, but have differentiating lengths of REM cycles within different size dogs.
Smaller dogs will dream more, but for shorter spans of time while larger dogs have longer dreams and a longer amount of time between each.
This is why we often see puppies twitching while they’re sleeping, and see it a lot less when they’re bigger. They dream fast and often.
Dogs sleep on average for about 14 hours a day, and are able to enter REM sleep in about 20 minutes. Once in REM, they can stay in that stage for about 2-3 minutes.
Similarly to humans, dogs dream about their interests, and its been thought that they often dream about us, their family. (I know, you love them even more now!)
They’re also thought to relive their daytime experiences.
Another similarity to humans, is that dogs can have good and bad dreams. Generally, if you see the twitching paws you can assume it’s a playful dream. In the cases where your dog is whining or growling aggressively, its likely to be a nightmare. It is suggested to be cautious if you plan to try and wake your dogs during these so you don’t get bit accidentally.
My girls are on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to dreaming.
Maybe it’s the mother in her, but Miss Addie makes more noise in her sleep (volume on for this one).
Ivy on the other hand has much quieter dreams. I often hear what sounds like suckling (like when she was a puppy) and she tends to wag her tail. I believe her dreams are more about her family than playing outside.
Dreaming in general is a really interesting concept that people are always trying to understand. Everyone’s dreams are unique and can be interpreted in different ways.
For dogs, it seems more simple and whether they are awake or sleeping, they’re always thinking of you. Their loyalty doesn’t stop when they take a nap.
Thank you to the following for sharing this information with us:
- https://www.livescience.com/53743-dog-dreams.html
- https://www.southernliving.com/culture/pets/do-dogs-dream
- https://www.verywellhealth.com/the-four-stages-of-sleep-2795920
- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c3EXLoydo5Q
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