Should your dog sleep in the bed?
Everyone who has a dog knows the following: as soon as the little one moves in, you want to have the cute puppy around you all the time - for many people this fact does not exclude the couch or the bed. But once the four-legged friend has got used to the luxury of the piece of furniture and the closeness to the favourite person, he doesn't want to give it up anymore. But the bigger the dog becomes, the discussion often arises among friends or partners: The dog sleeps in the bed - must that be? Should it be forbidden to him? Where are the advantages and disadvantages? In this blog I would like to give you a little insight into this topic.
Study says women sleep better with dog in bed
In 2018, three US researchers asked about 1000 female pet owners whether they take their pet to bed with them and how they feel about it. If you want to read the study yourself, you can find the abstract for now, but in English, here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08927936.2018.1529354.
But we have already summarized the results for you here. 55% of the interviewed dog owners took their dogs to bed with them. Of them 57% said they felt safer at night with their dog by their side:
- feel safer
- to sleep more calmly than e.g. with a cat or another human being
- to have an emotionally positive experience of falling asleep
Surely you can understand how relaxing it can be to see the face of your pet lying next to you, completely relaxed. For many pet owners, the calm breathing of the animals also helps them to switch off better themselves. So from that point of view, your dog is welcome to share the mattress with you if it doesn't bother either of you (and your partner, of course).
Disadvantages of the dog in the bed
However, it is also undeniable that some people - especially those who do not keep pets themselves - cannot understand what an animal has to do in bed. The arguments of these people are often repeated. Often come thereby
- the dog in the bed takes up too much space
- the whole bed is full of hair
- the bedclothes smell of dog
- the animal drools or even pees in the bed
Of course, this does not apply to all animals or dogs. Surely you have to "depilate" your bed or change the bed linen more often than people without pets. But this doesn't have to be a negative effect, does it?
Should the dog be banned from the bed?
As you can see from the article, there is no right or wrong answer to this question. There are arguments for both sides, but now you have to weigh them yourself. Depending on how you cope with it, if the dog sleeps with bed, nothing really speaks for or against. A prohibition is to be converted mostly anyway with difficulty, because as soon as one leaves the dwelling or is asleep, the quadrupeds sneak usually nevertheless into the bed. Here it would depend on the correct tactics to teach the dog something gently and on a long-term basis. But if we are honest - who could blame them for always wanting to be with their favourite person?
