Dave's Daily reports the case of a narcoleptic dog from Chubbuck, Idaho named Skeeter who falls asleep when he gets excited.   Whenever the dog gets his food, sees a squirrel, or meets another dog or human, the toy poodle collapses into a deep sleep.   This poses some problems requiring the dog to be hand fed.   Also for the usual doggy walk, his leash has been replaced with a baby stroller.   The vet prescribed ritalin.   I'm not sure why you would want to wake a sleeping dog but the family says Skeeter is their guard dog!

Narcoleptic dogs are pretty rare,   They have been studied by a group at Stanford University since the 1970s.   Apparently narcoleptic dogs have no particular health problems beyond those of less sleepy ones.   Life expectancy is about the same as it is for healthy dogs.

Stanford bred a colony of narcoleptic dogs made up primarily of Dobermans.   I wonder if the AKC will recognize them as a new breed.   I also wonder if and when the university will share this line with the rest of us.   The university offered no details about how you get narcoleptic dogs to mate.   Maybe that's where the ritalin idea came from.

I can imagine approaching a junk yard fence with 5 or 6 Dobermans laying around sleeping.   You still wouldn't venture inside there.   Yet the junkyard would have little risk of legal liability for dog bites and since they sleep a lot, you would think the food bill might be decreased as well.   There are any number of other advantages a sleeping Doberman has over its more wakeful cousins.   It could become a very popular breed but let's leave it out of the competitive ring since this might have its own set of problems.