Is this normal? My dog wakes himself up barking

July 28, 2015 6:44 PM

My dog is about 5 years old. I've had him for 3.5 years. In the last month or so he has started barking in his sleep. Sometimes he's puppy-dreaming and quietly yipping and moving his feet. About half the time he barks really loud and wakes himself up. This is a definite change in his behavior. Should I be worried?

Everything else is the same in my dog's life. Same food, same water, same house, same people, same walks and frequency, same routine, same everything. I can't for the life of me figure out any environmental or social change that is correlated with this change in his behavior.

I am a cat person, this is the first dog I've ever had as an adult, so I don't really grok dogs. I love my dog, I just don't know what's normal for dogs. Is this a normal kind of dog thing? Do dogs change like this as they get older? Or should I be worried about this?

posted by OrangeDisk to Pets & Animals (10 answers total)

Every dog I've ever known has done this. Totally normal.
posted by MsMolly at 7:09 PM on July 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

Is it really hot where you live right now? It's been in the upper 80s/low 90s here and it's been messing with my dog's sleep. He hasn't been barking but he has twitched himself awake a handful of times in the last couple weeks, which is unusual for him. (When I corner him into the room with AC he sleeps much better.)
posted by phunniemee at 7:10 PM on July 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yep, totally normal. We can usually tell when ours is building up to it. Her paws start to twitch and her mouth starts moving. Then she starts making little low-pitched whimper barks before building up to a full-fledged bark. Once she wakes up she usually tosses out a few more just for good measure. We think because she heard another dog (her asleep self) bark. It's pretty cute but it usually don't happen in the middle of the night and she goes for long stretches without barking that loud so it might just be a phase.

I've read that the most common dog dream is where they're chasing something so we like to think that she barks when, in her dream, she caught one.
posted by VTX at 7:13 PM on July 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

My dog does this. She also goes through phases of sleeping better through the night.
posted by J. Wilson at 7:26 PM on July 28, 2015

July is fireworks month around here. Dogs really hate them. Maybe it is that.
posted by Oyéah at 8:15 PM on July 28, 2015

I've owned 5 dogs over the years. They've all done something like this. Don't worry. Enjoy your pup. I believe it's customary to include a photo with these questions. :-)
posted by humboldt32 at 8:19 PM on July 28, 2015 [8 favorites]

Things I've personally witnessed my dog do that woke herself up:

- snore too loudly
- chase *whatever she was dreaming about*
- sneeze
- bark
- fart

Barring any other worries, totally normal and nothing to worry about.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:22 PM on July 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Here's one of my dogs yipping in her sleep. Usually her feet are twitching and she's scrunching her face up while making these sounds. Sometimes she wakes herself up doing this. Totally normal.
posted by workerant at 5:49 AM on July 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Totally normal.

My dog sometimes howls in her sleep. It doesn't wake her up, but it sure gets my attention. it isn't her usual Woooooooo (rhymes with "goo") howl, it's more like Woahhhhhhh (rhymes with "go") and it's really high-pitched for her. The first time I heard it I thought there was a strange woman screaming in my house. Scared the hell out of me!
posted by Elly Vortex at 6:46 AM on July 29, 2015

My dog is a greyhound and doesn't really bark much - at most he gets whiny when he sees other dogs because he wants to say hi, or on rare occasions I can get him riled up enough to bark at me once or twice in the house. But he barks in his sleep all the time, and I agree with others that it seems to come and go in phases. I always tell people who ask about him that he barks more in his sleep than awake--they seem to think I'm joking but it's honestly true.
posted by misskaz at 7:06 AM on July 29, 2015