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Working dogs take a day to adjust to Daylight Savings Time, but pets are more flexible

Working dogs take a day to adjust to the change in routine caused by Daylight Savings Time, whereas pet dogs and their owners seem to be unaffected, according to a study in PLOS One by Lavania Nagendran, Ming Fei Li and colleagues at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Daylight Savings Time (DST) is used by many countries to maintain the alignment between daylight hours and human activity patterns, by setting clocks forward one hour in the spring and back one hour in the autumn. Previous research has shown that DST can disrupt human sleep and behavior, but its impact on the domestic animals we live and work with had not been studied.

To investigate how DST impacts domestic dogs (Canis familiaris), researchers used motion-sensitive watches to monitor the activity patterns of 25 working sled dogs, 29 pet dogs, and their human caregivers living in Canada, during the weeks surrounding the autumn DST time shift.

For sled dogs, DST represented a change to their strict daily routine. Prior to the time shift, sled dog handlers arrived at the reserve at sunrise, but after DST came into effect, sunrise was an hour before their arrival. As a result of this mismatch, after the DST time shift, sled dogs were less active in the hour after sunrise than they were before the shift. However, they didn't immediately adjust to the change in their routine. On the day that DST came into effect, sled dogs were more active than usual in the hour prior to their handler's arrival.

In contrast, pet dogs and their owners showed no change in their morning activity patterns on the Sunday that DST came into effect. After DST, even though pet owners woke up earlier on weekdays, their pet dogs did not change their morning behavior. However, age had a significant influence on the dogs' response to DST, and older pet dogs were less active on the first morning after the time shift.

The study is the first to investigate the impact of Daylight Savings Time on domestic dogs' activity. Changes to human schedules can have a ripple effect throughout the daily lives of dogs, which may affect their well-being. The findings highlight the importance of flexibility and gradual changes to help dogs adjust to modifications to their daily routine, the authors say.

The authors add, "Our study comparing companion and sled dogs finds that flexible routines can help dogs better adjust to abrupt schedule changes like Daylight Saving Time."