Hi everyone! I remember reading that at 8 weeks, puppies sleep 16-20 hours a day. How much sleep should my pup be getting now that she is almost 6 months old? It seems like our schedule is that she may be up for 2 hours at a time, and then might take a nap for about 1.5 hrs. Does this sound right? We are very active when she is up... we're either taking short walks or training, and then some free playtime. She will play with her toys with us or on her own... then when she gets bored, mischief sets in and the inappropriate chewing starts. I call it her "grand finale" hee hee. Then I crate her and before I know it, she's asleep. Today, we had a vet appointment and she was tremendously overexcited when we got home. She loves my friend, who went with me to the appointment, but by the time we got home, she was jumping up and nipping at my friend's clothing. (so embarrassing!).. I took her out to eliminate, fed her and put her in her crate. She slept for nearly 3 hours!!! Yikes! After she woke up, we took 2 short training walks (she was full of energy), we played, clicker trained.. she got nippy again. The sun is really strong here in the late afternoon, so I try not to do too much outside, but today, she needed to "work". The indoor training was not enough, because she started looking for bad things to chew. I took her out to eliminate, fed her, and then crated her because she'd been up for almost 2 hours. She protested, then fell asleep. So I guess I was wondering, in this case, if I crated her too soon? I guess not, if she fell asleep.. she's actually snoring. But still was wondering if this schedule sounded about right to you guys? She is sleeping through the night, and actually is amusing herself in her crate if she wakes before we do. Thanks a million, Leela's Mom
My pup doesn't sleep like that. He sleeps trough the night -8:30pm -6am so that is already 10 hours. Than 2 and a half hours from 11. And another 1,5-2 from 3pm. So that makes 13-14 hours.
Unless she is being frequently prevented from sleeping, by six months old you probably don't need to worry too much about whether your dog is getting enough sleep. Most dogs will sleep for long periods when they are bored or inactive, yet cope perfectly well when, for example, they need to be awake all day. Dogs seem to be able to cope better than people with irregular or interrupted sleep. There is some more information in this article with links to some studies on sleep in dogs - there are not many at the moment unfortunately.
