So, the question remains. Does time change really matter to a canine? Do they need to accommodate their bodies to it the same way us humans do?
For many of us, this one hour time change takes weeks to adjust to. We’re hungry when we shouldn’t be, we can’t seem to wake up in the mornings, too wired to sleep at night… This got us wondering – Does daylight savings time affect our dogs?
In fact, it does! Dogs have circadian rhythms (our body’s biological system of timekeeping, so to speak), just like humans, that regulate sleep, hunger, and activity levels throughout each 24-hour period. In nature, these rhythms are triggered by natural sunlight. But, in our artificial environments, where morning starts with the blaring of an alarm clock and the flip of a light-switch, our circadian rhythms (and our dogs’) are largely self-driven.
A comical thing happened after we turned our clocks ahead one hour: Our pooch woke up the same time we did. As we stretched and yawned, getting the kinks out of our bodies, so did the dog!
It was only an hour, but it certainly did seem to make all the difference in the world to us – and Max!
Want to read more? Check out The Dogington Post.
