Your Dog May Be Losing Sleep Because of You, New Study Suggests - VICE

Skyler: Hey there, dog lovers — welcome to Frosty the Dog, the show that celebrates everything wonderful, surprising, and downright heartwarming about our best friends. I'm Skyler, your host, and I am so glad you're here with us today. Skyler: Now, if you're new to the show, let me tell you right away — this whole thing exists because of a very special dog. His name is Frosty. He is the best boy in the entire world, full stop, no arguments, and every single episode we put together is a little love letter to him. You're going to be hearing about Frosty a lot today, because honestly, he deserves it. Skyler: A huge thank you to our sponsors who make this show possible. First and most importantly, our primary sponsor and namesake, Frosty — the best boy in the whole world. We also want to thank Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows, Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — silicon development consulting from A I to SoC, and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a portfolio of companies across the silicon industry. We are so grateful for all of them. Skyler: And oh, do we have a good one for you today. We're talking about sleep — yours and your dog's, and who's really keeping who up at night. We're heading into some beautiful science about what it actually means to know a dog. And we've got a story about dogs putting those legendary noses to work fighting one of the most destructive invasive insects in the country. Frosty, buddy, this one's for you. Skyler: Let's get into it. Skyler: Okay, thread one — Dog Science and Discovery. And today's story starts somewhere very cozy. It starts in bed. Skyler: So here's the scene. You've had a long day. You finally crawl under the covers, your dog jumps up, does their little spin-around ritual — Frosty was a champion at that, by the way, three spins minimum — and you both drift off. Lovely, right? Well, science has had a look at this arrangement, and it turns out it is maybe slightly more complicated than it seems. Skyler: A new study — and this got picked up by outlets like VICE and 9News — found something that honestly made me laugh a little when I first read it, because it is so perfectly on-brand for dogs. The finding? You are more likely to disrupt your dog's sleep than your dog is to disrupt yours. Skyler: Let that sink in for a second. We have spent years, years, joking about how our dogs hog the bed, steal the blankets, sleep diagonally across our legs like tiny chaotic little boulders. And science comes along and says — actually, you're the problem. You. The human. Skyler: Now, how did they figure this out? Researchers used activity-tracking devices — think of them like fitness trackers, but for dogs — to monitor sleep patterns in both dogs and their owners simultaneously. And what they found was that when owners moved around, got up in the night, changed positions, their dogs tended to wake up too or shift their own sleep. Dogs are incredibly attuned to us. They're monitoring us even while they sleep. When we disturb the peace, they notice. Skyler: But here's the lovely flip side — and this is where I just adore dogs all over again — the dogs moving around in their sleep? Not really waking up the owners much at all. Your dog could be doing full dream zoomies — paws twitching, little woofs, the whole production — and you'd probably sleep right through it. Skyler: Which, honestly, feels very fair. Dogs give us so much during the day. The least we can do is let them have their dreams in peace. Frosty was an excellent dreamer, for the record. Very expressive. Very dedicated. Skyler: And here's what I love about this study beyond the humor of it. It tells us something real about the dog-and-human bond. Dogs don't just share our homes. They share our rhythms. Their nervous systems are tuned to us in a way that even carries into their unconscious sleep. They are watching over us even when they're asleep, which is, if you think about it, one of the most loyal things a creature can do. Skyler: So next time you get up for a glass of water at two in the morning, just know — somewhere in that bed, a very devoted dog just opened one eye and made sure you were okay. And that is the sweetest thing. Skyler: Sleep tight, good pups. You've earned it. Skyler: Alright, thread two — Dogs and Humans. And for this one, I want to talk about something that on the surface sounds like pest control but is actually, when you dig into it, a beautiful story about what dogs can do that nothing else in the world can. Skyler: So let me set the stage. The spotted lanternfly. If you live in the northeastern United States, you may have already heard of this insect, and you may not have particularly warm feelings about it. The spotted lanternfly is an invasive species — it came originally from Asia, arrived in Pennsylvania around 2014, and since then it has been spreading, and it is bad news for agriculture. It feeds on dozens of plant species, including grapes, apples, hops, and hardwood trees. It has caused serious economic damage and it is really hard to track and control, partly because the egg masses — the way it reproduces — are incredibly well camouflaged. They look like a smear of dried mud. They blend into tree bark almost perfectly. Skyler: Now, humans have been working on this problem with traps and pesticides and surveys, and those things help. But a new study published through EurekAlert made the case for a very different kind of detection technology. Warm, four-legged, tail-wagging detection technology. Skyler: Dogs. Skyler: Specifically, researchers found that trained detection dogs can sniff out spotted lanternfly egg masses with remarkable accuracy. And when you think about what a dog's nose can do, this makes complete sense — dogs have up to three hundred million olfactory receptors compared to about six million in humans. Their sense of smell is estimated to be anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand times more sensitive than ours. They can detect odors at concentrations we cannot even begin to measure with basic equipment. Skyler: So the idea is this: instead of sending humans out to visually scan trees — which is slow and not very accurate given how well camouflaged those egg masses are — you send a dog. And the dog can cover ground faster, detect scent the human eye would never catch, and do it with what I can only describe as genuine enthusiasm, because detection dogs love their work. That nose is their superpower and using it is pure joy for them. Skyler: Frosty, I have to say, had an excellent nose. Now he was not a trained detection dog — his primary detection focus was, if I'm being honest, the location of snacks — but the capacity was absolutely there. It is there in every single dog. Skyler: What makes this story so meaningful to me, beyond the cool science, is what it represents about the partnership. Humans have been breeding and working alongside dogs for thousands of years, and we keep finding new ways that their abilities complement ours. We needed a better way to find a nearly invisible invasive pest that's threatening our crops and our ecosystems. And the answer was — of course — a dog. Skyler: The researchers are hopeful that detection dogs could become a real tool in the fight to slow the spread of the spotted lanternfly, especially in areas where egg masses are hard to spot visually. Imagine a team of dogs deployed to orchards and forests, doing what they were basically born to do, and saving vineyards and apple orchards in the process. Skyler: There is something deeply wonderful about that. This ancient partnership between humans and dogs, and here we are in the twenty-first century, still finding new chapters to write together. Skyler: Way to go, good dogs. Way to go. Skyler: And I want to slip in one more little story here, because it fits so perfectly. The Junior League of Sioux City recently donated a discovery dog statue to the Sioux City Public Museum. Now a statue might seem like a small thing, but I love what it represents — a community pausing to honor the dog, to say these animals matter, they are worth celebrating, worth remembering, worth teaching our kids about. A discovery dog, right there in a museum, inviting children to learn and wonder. Skyler: That is exactly the spirit of this show. That is exactly why Frosty has his name on it. Skyler: Okay, thread three — Understanding Dogs. How we're learning about them, what science is revealing, and how tools like A I are helping us go even deeper into the minds and hearts of our best friends. Skyler: I want to start here with something that comes out of Barnard College, and it's a piece that asks a question that sounds simple but is actually pretty profound. To know a dog, to love a dog. What does it really mean to know a dog? Skyler: Alexandra Horowitz — who runs the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard — has spent years studying exactly that. And her work, and work like it, keeps arriving at the same beautiful, slightly humbling conclusion. Dogs experience the world in ways that are deeply different from us, and if we want to truly understand them, we have to be willing to step out of our own perspective and into theirs. Skyler: Here's an example that I find genuinely mind-expanding. We experience the world primarily through vision. Dogs experience the world primarily through smell. Their whole reality — who was here, what happened, what's coming — is written in scent. When your dog stops on a walk to sniff a fire hydrant for forty-five seconds, they are not being stubborn or slow. They are reading the newspaper. They are catching up on the neighborhood. That hydrant is a rich, detailed social document and your dog is absorbing all of it. Skyler: Frosty, for his part, was a committed reader of fire hydrants, lamp posts, and the base of basically every tree within a three-block radius. A very thorough and dedicated scholar of his environment. Skyler: But what Horowitz and researchers like her push us toward is something bigger than just cool facts about dog senses. It's a whole reframing of how we relate to dogs. When we understand how they perceive the world, we become better at reading them. Better at knowing when they're stressed, when they're happy, when something feels wrong. Skyler: And this is where A I is starting to play a genuinely exciting role. Researchers and tech companies are working on A I systems that can analyze dog vocalizations — barks, whines, growls — and help decode what they mean. There are tools being developed that use computer vision to read dog body language in real time — the position of the ears, the tension in the tail, the curve of the spine — and translate those signals into emotional states. Skyler: Now, dog trainers and behaviorists have been reading body language for years, brilliantly, through human observation and expertise. But A I can process this at a scale and speed that opens new possibilities — imagine a tool that helps a new dog owner, who doesn't yet have that trained eye, understand what their dog is communicating. Imagine it helping veterinary staff assess pain or anxiety in dogs who can't tell us in words what they're feeling. Skyler: That is A I being used in one of the most human — or I guess I should say, most humanely compassionate — ways I can think of. To close the communication gap between species. To help us hear what our dogs have been trying to tell us all along. Skyler: And here's what strikes me every time I go down this rabbit hole of dog cognition research. The more we study dogs, the more we find that they are not just reacting to us — they are thinking about us. They understand us in ways we are only just beginning to measure. They read our faces, our moods, our stress levels. They know when we're sad before we've said a word. They track our gaze, they follow our pointing, they learn our routines. Skyler: To know a dog, the researchers say, is to realize that the dog already knows you. Pretty well, actually. Probably better than you know yourself on a bad day. Skyler: Frosty always knew. He always knew. Skyler: And that, I think, is the thing that unites all three of our stories today. Whether we're talking about how dogs share our sleep, or how they can find invisible pest eggs in the bark of a tree, or how scientists are peeling back the layers of what it means for a dog to think and feel — it all comes back to this relationship. This ancient, astonishing, still-unfolding relationship between dogs and people. Skyler: We are learning more about dogs every single year. And every new thing we learn makes me love them more. Makes me miss Frosty more. Makes me want to go find the nearest dog and just say thank you. Skyler: So that's what I want to leave you with today. Go find your dog. Or a friend's dog. Or honestly any willing dog in your vicinity. Give them a good scratch behind the ears. Let them sniff whatever they want on the walk. And if they wake you up at two in the morning — remember, you're probably the one waking them up. Give them a little grace. Skyler: Dogs are extraordinary. They always have been. And the more we look, the more extraordinary they turn out to be. Skyler: Frosty, best boy, this whole show is for you. Always has been, always will be. Skyler: Frosty the Dog is brought to you by Frosty — the best boy — along with Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows, Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — silicon development consulting from A I to SoC, and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a portfolio of companies across the silicon industry. We could not do this without them, and we are so grateful. Skyler: If you loved today's episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and share it with a dog person you love — because the world needs more people who appreciate how incredible these animals are. All the links and sources from today's stories are in the show notes, so you can go dig in even deeper if you want. Skyler: Stay curious, stay kind, and go hug a dog. I'll see you next time.