This weekend, millions of people will lose an extra hour of sleep, courtesy of the switch to daylight saving time from standard time. Not everyone will change their clocks, though. While most of the country observes this semi-annual clock-changing ritual, in Arizona, only people who live on the Navajo Nation change their clocks, and those in Hawaii and Puerto Rico get to keep their sleep.
Even if you are in that majority, things are different if you are a pet parent. Daylight saving time is an outdated and unhealthy human construct, and many animals are having no part of it. Dogs and cats follow their circadian rhythms. These internal clocks override our ridged time schedules, so many dogs (and many more cats) will probably get up at the crack of dawn, as usual, ready to start the day.
When we fall back, pets are not generally happy about waiting an extra hour — morning or evening — to be fed just because of some time-changing policy that we have no way to communicate to them. Here are a couple of ways you can help your dog or cat adapt to the time shift:
Keep a Routine
It’s typical for pets to need a couple of days to adjust after the time change, but some take longer than others. Pets with a strong internal clock are heavily influenced by sunrise, sunset, and predictable feelings of hunger. As those cues still happen, pets who respond to them tend to struggle with the new schedule. Some dogs are also highly schedule oriented, but they respond to human cues — the alarm clock, people getting out of bed, the sound of food being put in the bowl — and they are often able to adapt more quickly to the craziness of humans messing around with clocks.
Take it Slow
It can be helpful to pets to meet them in the middle as they adjust to the time change. It may be easier if you can break up the hour difference and only adjust their schedule — walks, feeding time, bedtime and waking up — by 15-30 minutes each day. If your schedule does not allow that kind of flexibility or you find that your dog gets in line with the new daily rhythm within a few days anyway, it may not be worth the extra effort. But, for the rare dog who struggles for a long time with the time change, breaking up the hour into smaller pieces for a more gradual adjustment can be a great kindness.
It can be tough for some pets (and let’s be real, for some people too) to adapt, so build in room for an adjustment period. Giving them a few extra minutes to take care of business might be all it takes to get them acclimated to the abrupt change in schedule.
