How do dogs adjust to daylight savings time?

Working dogs take a day to adjust to the change in routine caused by Daylight Savings Time (DST), whereas pet dogs and their owners seem to be unaffected. To investigate how DST impacts domestic dogs, 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 did not 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 behaviour. 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.