The Dog Blog: 3 Ways to Help You and Your New Puppy Sleep

3 Ways to Help You and Your New Puppy Sleep

Guest post by Krista Harper

Puppies are essentially human babies with the ability to get into more stuff and run circles around you. Also, like babies, these little bundles of energy need a lot of teaching, praise and love.

When it comes to sleep, your puppy will likely sleep a lot, but in short cycles throughout the day. This is common, but for your well-being it can really do a trick on your ability to sleep through the night, often resulting in sleep deprivation.

But it doesn’t need to be this way. Puppies grow quickly, and so while your baby will take months before they can sleep through the night, your puppy may only take weeks.

Here are four ways to help your puppy (and you) sleep through the night:

Exercise throughout the day

The old adage says, “A tired dog is a good dog.” Few statements can be truer.

A puppy’s energy level is high, but they exhaust quickly, so several 20- to 30-minute bouts of exercise throughout the day and ending an hour before bedtime will likely be plenty to ensure a good night’s sleep.

Additionally, exercise is a great way to keep your puppy healthy by strengthening muscles, joints, bones and heart health, which helps to improve overall function such as mental health which decreases anxiety, a common problem with dogs.

Go potty before bed

The good thing is that if you follow step one before bed, that can also help your puppy relieve itself while playing. When your puppy needs to go to the bathroom nothing is going to stop it. That means if your puppy is trained to go potty outside, she is going to wake you up to do so. If your puppy is not yet trained, she will still wake up and find a spot to go. While it’s not fun to step in a wet puddle in the morning, it’s equally not fun to deal with a puppy that got up to go to the bathroom and found that they are wide awake.

Cuddle up

Researchers have begun to discover that sleeping with your pet provides significant mental health improvements to benefit both humans and their pets. Cuddling with your pet will help your puppy find warmth and security along with the inherent need for social touch which will help it sleep well through the night.

The qualities of comfort and security play a critical role in reducing your puppy’s anxiety and subsequent sleep deprivation. Incidentally, sleeping with your pet is also one remedy doctors recommend if you suffer from insomnia.

Puppies have a lot of energy and sleep cycles that won’t always align with your own. But, through exercise, going to the bathroom before bed, and a wind-down/cuddle routine you are sure to help create a sleep-inducing environment for your pup.

Krista Harper, a freelance writer and animal enthusiast, can be reached at kristaharper63@gmail.com.