By Solana Kline: [honorary four-legger and staunch supporter of wags everywhere]
Budding sunrays work their way through the piñon shade that’s kept us sleeping. Being it’s Summer, we’re out in the camper in the high country, far from concrete heat, near trails and mountain tops and memories.
“Cuckaroooooooo! Cuckarooooooo!” I gently chortle the customary wake-up call to the pack from under the covers.
Betts (aka Snuggess) lifts her head perhaps only a micrometer from her down nest, only interested in leaving the snuggle-pile for the breakfast bell.
A head-sized blob rises up under the blankets, reminiscent of a Nessy sighting from afar. It is Mickey (aka Sir Mingsalot). He is minorly inquisitive but not inordinately concerned. Not enough to emerge from the undercover world of the dogpile.
The hounds both stretch all their appendages simultaneously and nestle back into the snug. After all, it’s still before 7 a.m., and we are above 9,000 feet where the mornings hold their cool for another couple hours. This is my favorite time of day, that morning stillness you don’t find anytime else.
Mickey has wedged his curled back as close as possible into the bend of my knees. Betts maintains her comical use of the human pillow and has nestled into my arm nook. This is a peace I am deliberately savoring these days with these two.
We didn’t always sleep together like a giant pile of spaghetti. This is a recent development in our pack dynamics. It’s recent to the last few years, anyway. All it took was two months sleeping mashed in a tiny tent and sardine-sidecar on our back-country motorcycle trip a couple of summers ago.
Before that, I was an antsy sleeper with any tiny noise or movement waking me up. As such, I relegated the pups to their plush pillowy beds under the unusually high bedframe, their own little beast cave.
I would yell “Dogpile!” as soon as I woke up each morning, and they would come lofting up onto the bed for morning snugs and pets before the busy-ness of the day rushed in. But my goodness, was I missing out. And our pack dynamics were missing out, too.
Maybe it’s the wisdom and gratitude that comes with age, or maybe it’s the immense pack bonding we did on the motorcycle trip. Either way, the overnight spaghetti dogpile is our new normal, and I can’t imagine it any other way.
With this new practice, I have noticed momentous shifts in our pack dynamics, especially in regards to trust and relationships.
The pups held a bit of distance from one another in their younger years due to their pre-adoption traumas. They now flop willy-nilly across and atop one another (and me!) Betty even sleeps directly on top of Mickey—who thoroughly delights in his newfound ability to have comradery, trust, and companionship. It is a daily hoot to see what warped configurations they (and me!) get into during the night.
Betts has no qualms laying across your neck on the pillows like the true pillow princess she is. Mickey used to have a firm aversion to sleeping near a human or another hound until our smoosh piles. Now he is the snuggliest of all of us and will joyfully roll onto his back and rub his face around the cozy blankets, nestling in as close as possible to whoever is nearest.
Sleeping together as a pack is an ancient practice, beginning as long ago as when humans and dogs began working together to survive in the wilds. There is cultural and archaeological evidence dating this cross-species co-sleeping back to the earliest dog-human domestication practices, anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Before all the modern human technologies like central heating, walls, and door locks, smooshing in together to sleep meant everyone stayed safer and warmer. “Three dog night” isn’t a saying for no reason.
In the colder global climes, there are rich histories of humans adding more dogs under the covers the colder the night got. Dogs on average have a much higher body temperature than humans at about 104 degrees.
It’s more than just an effective winter foot-warming strategy; sleeping together quickly and deeply builds pack bonding and health in ways that no other ritual can. Wild dogs and wolves sleep together in dogpiles, backs and/or limbs touching. It builds community, helps everyone sleep better, releases endorphins, and causes everyone to dream more often.
Pack sleeping is natural for canines, and for humans. Early humans slept in groups for the same reasons as dogs: security, bonding, belonging and community, affirming hierarchy, and warmth. Our pups consider we humans as members of their packs, and hopefully we consider them our packmates, too.
Logically, it makes sense that we’d all sleep together and—quite literally—have each other’s backs. Sleeping together means pack safety which facilitates better and deeper sleeping for everyone.
Maybe we should call it collaborative sleeping or symbiotic sleeping since, no matter our species, we all experience the physical, psychological, emotional, and communal benefits of sharing the bed.
Sleeping together as a pack allows for bonding and affection that wouldn’t otherwise happen. There’s even research demonstrating that humans AND dogs release oxytocin (the feel-good hormone) when they sleep together—meaning that symbiotic sleeping contributes greatly to the whole health of all the species in our pack.
As I write this, the slightest snore rumbles out of Betty, wedged between three pillows and the wall. Micks is flicking his paws and tail, sending out a quarter-strength sleep howl, deep in dreamland. It’s a delight to know them in these ways; to see us all grow closer and more attuned to one another because we snuggle.
These dogpiles are essential to being a true pack. It means letting our guard down, a necessary step in learning one another as trusted and known individuals living our wonder-filled lives together, not just as generic members of some other species.
I do think that for the whole pack there is a very real healing that takes place when we sleep together. It is heart and brain healing, the ultimate rebuilding of trust, compassion, and companionship. Where we let go of our past and wriggle into the spaghetti dogpiles for just a few more minutes before the alarm goes off….
Until next time, happy trails and happy tails!
