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If you’re eating early, why can’t I?
This coming weekend is unpopular for many people across the country: spring daylight savings time. We’re about to lose an hour of sleep, though at least we have Sunday to recover (my condolences to anyone who does have to get up early for any reason). For most of us that lack of sleep just makes us grumpy during the day; unless we have our whole lives scheduled down to the exact hour or minute, it doesn’t have much impact.
Our pets, however, might feel the daylight savings shift more strongly than us. Pay attention to them this weekend; they might be cranky themselves. Lazy dogs might not want to end their naps to go out on a walk earlier than expected. Or some cats might turn their noses up at food if that comes an hour before the normal time.
In the wild animals pattern their lives around the phases of the sun, but domesticated pets follow their own versions of our schedules. Daylight savings can really mess with their internal rhythms for a few days, or even a week, until they readjust.
For some pets that might not mean much. Maybe Buddy isn’t obsessed about his feeding time, but he does like to wait for Jimmy to come home from school. In the fall he might end up sitting by the door an extra hour, possibly becoming agitated when Jimmy doesn’t return when expected. In the spring Buddy might still be elsewhere in the house when Jimmy comes home, and become confused at the change.
In my house my pets definitely notice daylight savings much more in the fall than the spring, so at least I’m getting a break this weekend. The days after “fall back” daylight savings are filled with not-so-silent mutiny as dinner is demanded by all three pets at the time they believe it to be. They don’t understand that daylight savings means they have to wait another hour.
Of course in most cases these stories just make for amusing anecdotes about our pets. If you have a more nervous pet that really gets upset by the perceived change in routine, you might want to do something to soothe its worries. The switch in time might be worse on some pets if you really follow certain routines down to the minute: always feed them at 6 p.m. on the dot, take them out in the mornings at precisely 7 a.m., etc.
The best thing to do is to gradually ease your pet into the change. In the week before daylight savings start shifting, by degrees, your pet’s routine. Start feeding/walking/whatever it 10 minutes later (or earlier, depending on whether you’re facing spring forward or fall back) each day until you’ve got it eating/walking/whatever at what will soon be its normal time.
It may seem silly to have to do this for our animals. I don’t think it’s really necessary unless you’ve noticed that your pet seems really stressed by these changes. Otherwise, you can just put up with the “where’s my dinner?” glares.
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