Dog Time
Your dog’s internal clock and why it matters
Ever wondered how your dog always seems to know it’s dinner time or walkies before you do? What can we learn from this to help them along?
We all know it, “The Look”. Your dog’s eyes somehow become larger and puppy-like, the eye contact is razor-sharp, and she is trying to tell you something. You haven’t noticed the time, but your dog of course doesn’t know what absolute time is and what it means. All she knows is that her internal clock is telling her that dinner is over-due. It’s not just a metabolism thing either. Dogs love routines and structure. Their day is parcelled up into the rhythm of doing and not doing: walkies, sleeping, going outside, changing the room. To some extent we also have an internal clock. But perhaps our natural reliance on this has subsided with having other gadgets help us.
The Circadian Clock
All living things are guided by the natural rhythm of the seasons. When the days are longer and lighter, we tend to wake up earlier and sleep less and be more active. A generalisation of course, but it more or less holds true. Jet lag for example is when our circadian rhythm is out of sync. Things like our metabolism have adjusted to eating mostly at the same times, and however care-free some of us think our lives are, our days are still quite structured. Dogs in the wild will have behaved differently as the day is solely structured around finding food. With domestication the food is largely provided for them. So, whilst eating is still the most important event of the day, it becomes combined into the rhythm of other activities that make up the day. So
time itself becomes access to one resource of many: food, you, bed.
In winter days dinner time may still be, say, 5pm even though it is dark outside, and the afternoon walk a distant memory. In the bright afternoon sun at 5pm on a summer’s day, maybe with a walk still on the horizon, it’s feeding time regardless. Therefore, we know a dog isn’t taking its cues only from its natural environment. It’s because their own clock is telling them that’s the way it is.
It’s Dog Time
So, my own dog has a biscuit at 7pm, a good two hours after his dinner, partly to break up the evening for him to have something extra to look forward to. And partly a relic of intentionally never completely phasing out the late dinner when he was a puppy. I know it’s 7pm because my phone tells me it is. Or if I don’t notice, my dog will sure enough come to my side and look up at me at 18.59. I always thought he knows it’s 7 o’clock because it somehow feels like it to him. The fact that he is bang on though, every day, without exception, I find extraordinary.
Dog Time is relative
So, when we all lost an hour recently with BST and the clocks going forward, it only took him a day to adjust. One day. He was a bit bemused and bleary-eyed when he went out in the morning at what felt like an hour early, but he soon adjusted. The next day at 7pm, (which should have still felt like 6pm), there he was again at 18.59: “OK I’m ready for my biscuit now”. So, from this unscientific test, we can deduce the dog clock works in relative not absolute ways. Sounds like Stephen Hawking!
For him, the day starts with the walk, and from that, everything is subconsciously but very accurately measured. So, he had his dinner at 5pm, and he knows exactly what two hours later feels like to him. Dinner at 5pm (which should have felt like 4pm) made perfect sense. Because it came correctly after the afternoon walk. Which in turn was exactly 3 hours after I normally have my lunch, and so on. But the point is these intervals are relative, but at the same time very real. How he knows this, I have no idea!
But here’s the rub. On a day that is not a routine one, this should all go out the window, right? If the weather is terrible and the day’s walks are all at different times, for example. Or when I am travelling with the dog and feeding as well as walking times could be completely different from normal. He won’t know when it’s 7pm biscuit time, surely. There has been nothing that day to measure relatively against. But at 18.59, there he is. “Ready when you are, bro.” It’s one of nature’s mysteries.
Clockwork Training?
And what are the implications for training? When we start training our dog, they start to learn not just the thing being trained, but also its context. By this we mean literally the physical location and the time. It’s called contextual learning. And that’s fine at the beginning because we all have to start somewhere. If you are training your dog to walk nicely on the lead, this will often be along the same section of pavement. Or always in the garden, and usually at the same time of day. In time you will find your dog naturally starts to walk better in this particular location. Not so well at other times or in other places.
This is why it’s important to break things up – trying the exercises in different locations, adding distractions, and so on. But what is often missed is we should try to also do this at different times, to mimic real life. Every time we do a real-life (i.e. not training) Recall for example, there is usually one small but very real element of surprise to your dog – she was not expecting it. So before she starts to learn 3 o’clock is always training time (and by implication other times it’s okay to pull on the lead), remember we need to keep surprising our dog when training.
It’s difficult for us because our own lives can be busy enough. But wherever possible, it will help you to set aside your 5 minutes a day at different times, even if you can only occasionally manage it, because
we want our dogs to learn something, not the context when they are supposed to do something.
We’re working against Nature in a small way, up against the dog’s powerful internal clock. But that’s okay – a lot of training is un-natural in this way: not pulling on a lead is the best example. It’s not remotely “natural” for a dog to do this. But it’s possible of course to teach them that it can feel natural. So if you can, mix it up, surprise your dog, and break out the training treats when they are least expecting it!
A Dog Day
For everything else, we are coming back to the R word: routine! If your dog doesn’t have to worry about when the next meal or walk might be, you will be helping to nourish a calmer environment. And keeping them regular will keep you happier!
