If you have never kept a dog in your home before, you may be surprised and even intimidated by the unusual behavior of a sleeping dog. She can twitch her limbs in her sleep and even try to bark. Why does this happen and is it not dangerous?
If a puppy appears in your house, then you still have many interesting and unexpected discoveries ahead of you. There are certain patterns in the behavior of dogs that are inherent in all, without exception, representatives of this species. For example, every dog owner, regardless of its breed, can confidently state that his pet is sleeping very restlessly. Why is this happening?
How does the dog behave during sleep?
Like humans, dogs have different sleep phases. If in the light phase she wakes up from the slightest sound or movement, then with the onset of a deep, or rapid phase of sleep, the animal will no longer be so easy to wake up. An attentive dog owner can determine the onset of a deep sleep phase by a number of signs. These include intense movements of the eyeballs under closed eyelids, twitching of the lips and whiskers of the animal, gradually turning into a kind of swallowing movements with the help of the jaws and tongue.
In a dog with an excitable nervous system, movements during sleep extend not only to the muscles of the muzzle. In the phase of deep sleep, she begins to quickly touch her paws as if she was running somewhere; it looks very funny and resembles the way dogs run in old cartoons. Sometimes the dog can even howl or bark dully without waking up.
Why does a dog twitch and whine in a dream?
Scientists who have studied the structure and function of the brain of dogs, determined that these pets have much more vivid and dynamic dreams than humans. In certain parts of the animal's brain, an intense electrical voltage arises. Its changes explain why the dog is dreaming, causing it to behave restlessly without waking up.
A dog's sleep differs from a human one not only in brightness, but also in duration. People most often have long dreams, similar to full-length films. What a dog dreams of is most often several pictures replacing each other. So she saw a rabbit, rushed after him and grabbed him with her teeth; this is again followed by a phase of light sleep, which, in turn, will again be replaced by deep sleep. During the night, the animal changes several of these cycles.
It is during the deep sleep phase that your pet's nervous system recovers and rests. A dog awakened at this moment looks completely disoriented and confused, it can even growl at its owner without recognizing him right away. Try not to wake her up unnecessarily, as getting enough sleep is very important for your animal's health.
