Turns out you wake the dog, not the other way

Dog owners who blame their pets for a bad night's sleep may have it backwards, according to a study from the University of Toronto Mississauga published in PLOS ONE. Researchers fitted 25 people and their 38 dogs with sleep monitors and tracked who moved first during the night. In 61% of the pairs, the human and dog shifted together at some point. When someone broke the stillness, it was usually the person, in 45% of cases. The dogs stirred first only 18% of the time. Objective measures showed co-sleeping had no real effect on either party's rest, though people with more than one dog reported sleeping worse. The study was small, and the authors say larger work is needed. One finding stood out: dogs sleeping in the same room but not on the bed were more likely to wake their owners. The dogs on the bed, it turns out, were mostly just along for the ride.