When you get a new puppy the first thing you want to do is play, cuddle and enjoy every waking second you have together. So it may come as a shock to most new dog owners when their new furry friends do nothing but sleep all day. Beagles are notorious sleepers. If given the opportunity, they would spend all day nestled in a warm spot of the house curled up in a ball. So much sleep may seem a little extreme to us humans, but it is perfectly natural for a beagle. In fact, it is beneficial.
Do Beagles Sleep A Lot? A Beagle gets 10-12 hours of sleep a day. They sleep every 4 to 5 hours for a short period between bursts of activity. Due to its highly energetic behavior and active lifestyle, beagles require lots of rest to maintain muscle mass and support growth in younger beagles.
To ensure your beagle stays fit and healthy and to maximize the amount of bonding time you have with your new furry friend the right amount of sleep is essential. This short article will discuss why do beagles sleep a lot, how many hours of sleep a beagle needs, the amount of sleep a beagle gets at night, and why beagle puppies need so much sleep.
Do Beagles Sleep A Lot?
So do beagles sleep a lot? In short, the answer is yes. When compared to other breeds of dogs, the beagle ranks amongst the highest for its sleep requirements. Known for their energetic personalities, beagles are very active and bred for hunting. It is in their nature for them to want to run around burrow and sniff.
Doing all of these activities takes a tremendous amount of energy. Therefore, beagles need plenty of sleep. This respite allows their muscles to repair, to grow and gives them the energy they need.
A beagle spends 50% of its time asleep, 30% resting, and 20% being active. Its time asleep is spread throughout the day, with beagles taking naps every four or five hours.
While these short bursts of sleep are partly because of ancestral behavior, they also have to do with your beagle’s sleep cycle. Throughout the whole time a beagle spends asleep, it spends 10% of that time in REM sleep. REM or rapid eye movement sleep is the deepest form of sleep. It is essential for cognitive performance, aiding with learning and memory. REM also allows for the brain and body to recuperate fully from the day’s activities.
Compared to humans, who spend 25% of their sleep in REM, the time a beagle spends in REM is relatively short, at around 10%. To make up for this, a beagle sleeps more during the day to ensure that it gets the right amount of REM and feels fully rested.
How Many Hours a Day Should My Beagle Sleep?
So you have learned why beagles sleep a lot. But how much sleep does a beagle need? As mentioned previously, beagles can get anywhere between 10 to 12 hours of sleep a day. However, puppies require even more sleep. A beagle puppy needs between 18 to 20 hours of sleep a day.
By human standards, 20 hours may seem excessive, but it is perfectly normal. As an animal still in the early stages of development, the extra sleep provides your furry friend with more time for its body to grow and repair itself. Think of your puppy like a baby. It needs as much sleep as possible.
Outside of being a puppy, many other factors can affect the amount of time a beagle spends asleep. Here is a list of factors that can affect how many hours of sleep your beagle gets:
- Age: Puppies need much sleep. But so do older beagles. Older dogs get tired more easily and need more time to recover.
- Activity levels: If it has been an exceptionally long day of running, walking and plenty of playtime, your beagle will need more sleep to recuperate.
- Weight: An overweight dog tires easier. Thus they sleep more.
How Long Do Beagles Sleep a Night?
Beagles do sleep a lot, but it is not all during the night. As polyphasic sleepers dogs get their sleep throughout the day.
While beagles get most of their sleep during the night, they do not get a completely uninterrupted eight hours like us. On average, beagles get between 4 – 6 hours of sleep a night. This is because dogs have a much shorter sleep cycle, averaging 45 minutes of sleep at a time.
One of the key reasons why beagles sleep so little during the night is their animal instincts. As natural hunters, it is a beagle’s instinct to be active during the night. As descendants of wolves, it is a beagle’s nature to hunt during the night. This makes Beagles light sleepers and easily awoken by sounds during the night.
If left untrained, or without a healthy sleeping schedule your beagle will begin to rely on its animal instincts and stay awake during the night.
Why Does My Beagle Puppy Sleep So Much?
Hearing that a puppy needs as much as 20 hours of sleep a day can seem a little shocking. When you think of puppies, you think of little fluffy balls of energy, running about and causing chaos, which they do. But there is another side to puppies, one that revolves around a need for sleep.
Like any newborn, puppies need their beauty sleep. These are growing boys and girls, after all. At a pivotal developmental stage in their life, puppies need to get some extra shut-eye in order to grow.
Sleep allows time for the body to repair itself and for muscles to recover from all the day’s activity. Most importantly, sleep facilitates growth. It allows for the development of your puppy’s nervous system, brain, immune system, and the development of bones, and muscles. These chemical reactions occur at a drastic rate in the early stages of life, much faster and frequently than in fully grown dogs. They also take a lot of energy. Couple that with the energetic behavior of a beagle puppy, and it is no wonder that beagles spend most of their time snoozing.
How Do I Get My Beagle Puppy to Sleep Through the Night?
Getting a newborn puppy to sleep through the night is one of the most demanding challenges a pet owner faces. Like human babies, puppies tend to wake up, cry, and, in some instances, can be destructive. If your beagle is having restless nights, you can do several things so you and your puppy get a good night’s rest.
- Find the right place for their bed: Ideally, your pet’s bed should be in an area that is quiet and away from any natural light sources. If that’s not possible, buy blackout curtains or blankets to place over your dog’s crate to minimize the amount of natural light that can get in. Make sure that anything you place around your pups crate won’t restrict his breathing though. Keep at least one full side completely open to air.
- Make their bed as comfortable as possible: Make their crate a welcoming place where they would actually want to sleep. Layer the bottom of their crate with soft, warm blankets. Avoid anything stringy material or anything that can rip into long strands. Puppies tend to be destructive when nervous. Such materials are a potential choking hazard.
- Exercise: A well-exercised dog is a tired dog. Make sure your dog gets one hour of activity during the day. The right amount of exercise will tire your puppy out and make them more likely to sleep through the night.
- Follow a schedule: Establish a bedtime routine. Instilling this from an early age means that your beagle will begin to associate nighttime with bedtime. Restrict food and water intake a few hours before sleep to prevent any nighttime disturbances.
- Have patience: Training your dog to sleep through the night is not an overnight process. There will inevitably come times when your pup wakes in the middle of the night. Do not get frustrated. Stick to the plan, and everything will work out in the end.
There you have it. All you need to know about your beagle and why it sleeps so much. Follow everything that has been outlined in this article and you can guarantee your brand new pup will have the best life possible.