The time on the clock is given a shake throughout the year – moving our clocks forward one hour in the spiring for Daylight Saving Time (DST), and then back one hour in the fall, when DST ends – is a common cause of sleepiness for humans. But what about our pets?
More specifically, do dogs feel the same way about DST?
While this question might seem like the epitome of 21st century/first-world problems, it must be remembered that our pooches, like us, have internal clocks that naturally get shifted around when we flip the script on their routines.
Our dogs seem to know when it’s meal time, when the time comes to go for a walk or if a family member is about to get home from work. If you have a dog, you probably know this. If you don’t have a dog, I’m not sure why you’ve got this far. Anyway, this internal timekeeping is put slightly out of kilter when the hour moves one way or the other, and can in fact lead to doggy anxiety.
Dogs can sense, via light, concentration of smells, and human factors, when the time comes to do certain things that are part of their daily routine.
But that doesn’t mean they all get tetchy with one hour taken off/added onto their day. A recent study which was published in January this year in the open-access journal PLOS One, showed how sled dogs may take a day to adjust to their new routine when we push forward an hour in spring.
More ‘regular’ pet dogs, however, barely flinched. Save for a few older dogs, who reportedly felt a little more groggy when they woke up earlier (I can relate), there wasn’t really a significant effect noted on the good boys and girls. However, any change to a routine must be taken into account for our canine friends, as noted by the authors: “The findings highlight the importance of flexibility and gradual changes to help dogs adjust to modifications to their daily routine,” they say.
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