You bring home your new puppy. They are cute, they are wild, they play for twenty minutes straight, and then they collapse into a puddle of fur and sleep for three hours. You wake them up to play. They play for fifteen minutes. They pass out again. Repeat all day. You start to wonder if something is wrong with them.
Nothing is wrong with them. They are doing exactly what puppies are supposed to do. Puppies need 18 to 20 hours of sleep per day. Sometimes more, depending on the breed and the individual dog. That is not a typo. Eighteen to twenty hours. If you are getting a full night’s sleep from your puppy, you are doing great. If they sleep through the night and nap all day, that is the dream.
Sleep Is When the Growing Happens
Puppies grow at an insane rate. In their first six months, they go from a tiny furball you can hold in two hands to a dog that is half (or more) of their adult size. Their bodies are building bone, muscle, organ tissue, and a brain. All of that takes energy and happens during rest.
When a puppy sleeps, their body releases growth hormone. This is true for humans too, but it is especially true for puppies. Sleep is not just rest. It is the time the body does its most important construction work. Cutting sleep short in a puppy is like shutting down the construction site halfway through the build.
Sleep Is When the Brain Wires Itself
Puppies are also learning at an unbelievable pace. Every new sight, sound, smell, texture, person, and dog is a piece of information the brain has to process and file away. That processing happens during sleep. Specifically, during REM sleep, the brain is busy forming the neural connections that turn “raw experience” into “skill and memory.”
When your puppy wakes up from a nap and seems slightly better at the thing they were practicing (loose-leash walking, recall, the name game, getting used to the sound of the dryer), it is not your imagination. They literally learned while they slept.
How to Tell If Your Puppy Is Sleeping the Right Amount
Most puppies will self-regulate their sleep. They play hard, they crash, they sleep, they wake up and want to play again. The cycle is short and intense.
A few signs that things are on track:
– The puppy has bursts of high energy followed by obvious tiredness (yawning, slowing down, getting fussy, getting bitey).
– They are easy to put down for naps in their crate or pen.
– They wake up alert and ready to engage, then crash again a couple of hours later.
– They are growing on schedule for their breed.
A few signs that something might be off:
– The puppy is sleeping noticeably more than usual and is hard to wake up.
– The puppy is sleeping less than usual and seems wired or hyper all the time.
– The puppy is restless during sleep, whining, or showing signs of pain.
– The puppy is not growing on schedule or is losing weight.
If you see any of those, a vet visit is in order. Puppies do not usually “just sleep less” for no reason.
A Mistake I See a Lot
The most common mistake new puppy owners make is forcing the puppy to stay awake. They worry the puppy is missing out, or they want to play, or they want the puppy to be tired at bedtime. So they keep the puppy up, push through the yawns, and end up with an overtired, cranky, bitey puppy that fights sleep like a toddler.
Overtired puppies do not settle down. They get wired. They get bitey. They get the zoomies. They lose their ability to learn because their brain is overstimulated and exhausted. Then they finally crash in a way that looks like a tantrum, and everyone is stressed.
The fix is counterintuitive: put the puppy down for a nap before you think they need one. If the puppy has been awake for an hour, it is probably time. If they are starting to bite the furniture or your ankles, it is definitely time. Sleep begets sleep in puppies, just like in human babies.
How This Connects to Grooming
When I do a first groom on a puppy, the appointment is short on purpose. Twenty to thirty minutes, max. We do not push through. We do a little bath, a little dry, a little brush, and we stop when the puppy is done. If that means the haircut is not perfect, that is fine. We will get there over the next few appointments. The priority is teaching the puppy that the van is a calm, safe place where they get fed treats and then take a nap.
Puppies that get pushed past their limit at the groom often end up hating the groom for life. Puppies that get to nap when they need to end up being the easy, happy adults you see at the salon.
Stay fresh and furry, Nicole / Vroom Grooms LLC
About the Author
Nicole is the owner and certified groomer behind Vroom Grooms LLC, a mobile dog grooming service serving Northwest Ohio. She has been certified since 2020 after completing 640 hours of hands-on training, and works with a lot of puppies in their first-groom visits. You can catch her live on Twitch at DogGroomerNIcole, where she streams real appointments and talks through how she reads each puppy in the moment.
This post was drafted with help from Nagini 🐍, her digital assistant, who keeps the blog running, handles the tech side of the website, and makes sure Nicole spends more time with dogs and less time wrestling with WordPress.