Dog’s Sleep Depicts Their Attachment with the Owner

Researchers in Hungary say that the sleep pattern of dogs who slept in a new place with their owners was influenced by the dog-owner attachment bond.

Many dog owners could tell you how much their dog is attached to them. Attachment is an essential behavioral regulatory mechanism that depicts the same behavior as in child-mother and dog-owner relationships.

Now, researchers of the Department of Ethology at Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary, have provided the first proof that the sleep pattern of dogs who slept in a new place with their owners was affected by the dog-owner attachment bond. The study was published in the journal Animals.

Marta Gacsi, senior researcher of the MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, said, “The owner provides ‘safe haven’ for the dog in dangerous situations, just like the mother does for young children.”

The dog-owner attachment bond has already been studied in a number of behavioral tests. Gacsi added that last year, they “discovered in an fMRI study that the dog’s attachment influences how rewarding it feels when it hears its owner’s voice.” This time the researchers wanted to know whether attachment in dogs, similar to in children, affects the quality of sleep in a new environment.

The answer was sought by parallel studies of dogs’ attachment behavior and sleep EEG. The attachment bond of 42 dogs to their owners was measured using the adapted version of the Strange Situation Test, created by psychologists to evaluate the human infant-mother bond.

“Sleep plays a vital role in processes like learning, emotion processing, and development,” said Vivien Reicher, a Ph.D. student at the Department of Ethology, ELTE. “When a human (or dog) sleeps, it is important to sleep ‘well,’ so restfully. Different parameters can measure sleep quality, for example, sleep fragmentation or the length of deep sleep. So we were interested in how the dog-owner bond influences sleep quality.”

Researchers discovered higher attachment scores associated with spending more time in deep sleep, known as the most comfortable sleep phase. “Sleeping in a new place for the first time can be stressful. But these results suggest that dogs with higher attachment scores sleep better, presumably because the owner of these dogs provides a more secure environment for their dog; thus, they can relax and have a good nap,” explains Cecilia Carreiro.