Just like humans, there are interesting facts that surround canine sleep habits. It is important to understand your dog's sleep habits and how they influence his behaviour around people in your home.
Dogs sleep an average of 12 to 13 hours of the day and although this can vary among breeds, they spend half of their life in a sleep state! The natural canine instinct is to create a bed in the wild, which most of them do by trampling on vegetation. That explains why they circle a certain area before they lie down to sleep. So don't flip your head over your domesticated pet trampling on a garden patch - it doesn't mean he's misbehaving. It's just his natural instinct leading him to get ready for bedtime.
If your surroundings are on the colder end, give your dog his own blanket or mattress to lie on. Dogs do not like to sleep on cold floors and will have a tendency to seek out a much warmer area like the couch, an area rug, or oven your bed. They also curl up in a ball in an attempt to conserve much of their body heat and stretch out in their sleep when the weather is warmer. Just like us humans.
At most times, dogs tend to sleep very lightly. They instinctively awake when there is an increase of activity around them. But dogs can also get into a deep sleep stage like we do. Evidences of this are involuntary twitches of their eyelids and whiskers, which shows that they are on the dream stage of deep sleep. It is important not to startle a sleeping dog since their instincts will dictate them to defend their territory. This puts much truth to the saying "let sleeping dogs lie".
Most dogs that get a regular exercise routine can sleep through the night without disturbing you, unless you have raised a watchdog you'd want to be awake throughout the night. Instinctively, if you have a number of dogs in your house, they will sleep close to each other, in no particular order. There is no visible hierarchy in the dog world although an alpha dog usually sleeps separately from the rest.
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