It’s OK to let sleeping dogs, humans lie together
Fergus, a beagle mix, makes himself comfortable in bed at his home in Columbus. Researchers found that humans and dogs who share a bed both sleep reasonably well. slightly better when the dog was off the bed; dogs slept the same whether they were on the bed or in another location in the bedroom.
“This goes against the lore that you should have the dog sleep elsewhere,” and not in the bedroom, said Dr. Lois E. Krahn, the study’s senior author and a psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist at the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Her 6-year-old golden retriever, Phoebe, routinely sleeps on the floor in the bedroom — and in the colder months joins her and her husband on their bed.
Where the pet sleeps “depends on the animal’s temperament,” said Dr. Carlo Siracusa, a veterinarian and the director of animal behavioral science at Penn Vet in Philadelphia.
Some dogs might not belong in the bedroom, such as very young or old pets who don’t sleep through the night, a sick pet or a reactive pet who might become aggressive when startled or woken up suddenly.
If a pet is already sleeping in your bedroom and interfering with your sleep, you can take steps to transition a pet out of the bedroom. Siracusa said it is best to make the transition a gradual one rather than abruptly kicking the pet out of the bed or bedroom. That might mean first moving a dog from the human bed to a comfortable spot elsewhere in the bedroom, and then moving the pet just outside the door.
Krahn said the next step in her research is to study a larger group of dogs and their owners, and also to see if having one or two humans in the bed makes a difference.