The other evening we went out after Snowie had had his dinner. He'd also had a tiring day, both physically and mentally cos we'd been to a place we've not been to in years and he was super excited to sniff every inch of the trail and raced into the river at every opportunity. We left him lying on his bed looking very sleepy indeed. We got home at around 9.30pm and he took a while to wake up and greet us, he was very groggy. Does anyone else's dog take a while to wake up like this? It's not the first time he's been in such a deep sleep that he doesn't even hear the house alarm go off (not the proper alarm, but the one that tells you that you've opened the door and you have a few seconds to disarm the alarm). And he made no attempt to even get up, just lay there wagging his tail. He's on Potassium Bromide for epilepsy and I vaguely remembering the vet saying it would cause very deep sleep. He's not always like this: sometimes when we come home after being out at night, as soon as he hears us coming home he comes racing to greet us at the front door. I suppose it's my expectation that dogs are always on the alert and can leap out of sleep and into action. Sometimes Snowie can, and sometimes it's as if he'd prefer to hit the snooze button one more time. I'm curious to know what other Labs are like?
Dexter can be in the deepest slumber but the slightest noise or movement and he's awake and observant ....he'd never sleep through the house alarm. But once he's investigated or told us about it,he goes right back to sleep.He will be tired and sleep more if we've had visitors round and a late night .....in fact he will put himself to bed when it goes not so far past his bedtime ,even if our friends have got their dogs with them ! The meds sounds like they do have an effect on Snowie...I don't know enough about it but dogs definately have sleep cycles so maybe it depends on what point in a sleep,cycle He wakes up ? X
Yes, I was wondering that -- about the sleep cycle. The other evening we came home earlier than we usually do so I thought perhaps we'd caught him in the deepest part of his sleep cycle. He also has his bedtime and has taken himself off to bed, same as Dexter, even when there were other dogs around. Snowie has never reacted to our house alarm. I suppose he has no clue as to what it means. Thankfully it has only ever gone off due to an alarm fault or if we forgot to disarm it before opening a door. The times it has gone off in the middle of the night (due to a fault), he has remained curled up on his bed and paid no attention to our leaping out of bed! Except when the armed response rang our doorbell at 4am to check on us -- then he raced downstairs, so excited that we had visitors!!
