Sleeping problems can have various reasons. Accordingly, the path to superb sleep varies a lot depending on your personal situation right now.

As my biggest goal is to bring you back to fast track you back to superb sleep I love to pick up aspects that sometimes my look unconventional. So today we are going to have a look at how dogs can help you to sleep better. Dog therapy or better said therapy dogs have become an important helper for many therapy forms bringing good results in various therapy areas.

But let’s start off by getting things a bit clearer.

So, what is dog therapy?

Actually there is no such thing as dog therapy. Besides that fact, there is something called a therapy dog. These are special dogs that run through training to help humans in e.g. psychotherapies or special situations. Following you see a couple of aspects and environments where therapy dogs are proven to bring improving results:

• letting people feeling loved
• lowering anxiety and depression levels
• increasing social skills
• reducing stress levels
• gaining self-esteem
• working in hospitals, schools and more…

So we get an idea of what therapy dogs get used for in several environments.

But, what can a dog do for my sleep?

First off, we do not need a therapy dog for our purpose. Next, a dog can not specifically help us to fall asleep faster. For the most part, we can’t even do that on our own as this is a completely unconscious process.

Looking at the list of benefits above we can easily find a couple of sleep-related things that a dog can be very helpful for. Things like stress and anxiety are major issues when it comes to sleep.

Thus having a dog improving those aspects in our life will also automatically improve the situation when it comes to our sleep. Furthermore, you have a trustworthy companion on your side that will love you unconditionally.

So, how will this help me?

Especially when you are living on your own a dog will let you feel loved and needed from the first moment you open your eyes until you finally close them at the end of a hard working day to fall asleep.

Your day will start with love and connection and will continue with body movement as you will have to have a walk with the dog. Hence you have a great start into the day. Just compare this to what your morning looks like right now.

After you finished off a hard day of work you will be looking forward to getting home as somebody is truly waiting for you. A dog welcoming you at home is somewhat similar to kids waiting for their Xmas presents. Just in case you had a bad day, a dog will be there to convert your frustration or stress into love and calmness.

Finally, you will be spending time with your new friend before you go to bed. Sitting on the sofa the dog will probably be lying beside you or to your feet letting you feel protected (and have warm feet). Likewise, it might have its head on your lap during your evening hours when you are watching TV, reading a book or are listening to music.

By the time you go to bed, you will feel loved, protected, calm and simply more balanced than you probably would have on without your new best friend.

Let’s get practical

Before getting a dog you should be sure that a dog is something for you. If you don’t love dogs forget it right away. Furthermore, you are taking over responsibility for a living creature that will be dependent on your support for its entire life (between 10 and 15 years mostly). Going to work, taking a vacation and different other situations may bring up the need for sacrificing things that you were easily able to do before. That said – if you love your dog you will get everything back at least two-fold with the joy, love and hopefully sleep that you will reap from it.