But soon, the dog made it clear he wanted to be on the bed. When Jamie Contreras and her husband, who live near Portland, Ore., got their bulldog mix puppy, Cooper, they planned for him to sleep in a crate next to the bed. When that happens, I go find her and bring her back to bed. On a few occasions, my dog Maddie has chosen to sleep elsewhere, and I find myself waking up even more wondering where she is. One question the Mayo Clinic study didn’t address was how sleep changes for dog owners if the dog leaves the bed. “Find some other place as spectacularly good - or maybe they want to sleep with your son.” “They don’t have to sleep in the bed,” she said. She said that if someone was having trouble sleeping because of a dog, they should try to find another cozy spot for the pet to enjoy. Horowitz recently got a new puppy, a Schnauzer-cattle dog mix named Quiddity, who sleeps with her son. “We actually have to lift them onto the bed. “They’re getting older, so they can’t leap up onto the bed anymore,” she said. Horowitz said that when her dogs, Finnegan, a lab mix, and Upton, a Great Dane-bloodhound mix, started crowding the bed, the solution in her house was not to kick them out, but to “expand the size of our bed.” It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous.”ĭr.
#Sleeping dogs images full
“For some reason, there is this sense that we have to maintain our dominance over them by having full possession of these things. “I think it really came from this idea that dogs should be segregated from the best parts of the house - they shouldn’t be in the kitchen, the dining room, on the couch or on the bed,” Dr. Once a dog experiences sleeping in bed with a human, it can be a hard habit to break, said Alexandra Horowitz, a professor at Barnard College and author of the book, “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know.” The study’s authors noted that the dog’s sleep efficiency “was unaffected by their location.” And notably, the monitoring devices detected the dogs enjoying about two minutes of playtime each night. Although the difference was statistically meaningful, it translates to roughly 14 minutes of lost sleep for people who sleep with their dog compared with those who had their dog in the same room. If a dog was sleeping on the bed, sleep efficiency dropped to about 80 percent, which is less than ideal but not bad either. In the Mayo study, the sleep efficiency of people whose dogs slept in the room was close to that, at about 83 percent. Ideally, you’ll stay asleep about 85 percent of the time you’re in bed. (The clock doesn’t start until you close your eyes for the night - staying up to read a book doesn’t count.)Įveryone has brief periods where they wake during the night, but they often don’t even notice. The researchers measured sleep efficiency, which compares how many minutes you actually sleep after going to bed.
![sleeping dogs images sleeping dogs images](https://cdn-products.eneba.com/resized-products/qv8utffr3z5s4malxjpa_350x200_3x-0.jpg)
Although the scientific literature makes a compelling case that our pets are good for us in many ways, research into the effects of co-sleeping is more limited.Ī small Mayo clinic study of 40 adults used human and dog body monitors to measure whether having a dog in the bedroom or in the bed had an effect on sleep quality. Various studies have estimated that about half of all pet owners allow their pets to sleep in the bed. Like many dogs around the world, Maddie, a 13-year-old Shih Tzu, is a co-sleeper who shares her bed with a human. I know this because after this nightly ritual, I’m often wide-awake, listening to her gentle snores.īy now, you may have figured out that my bed buddy is a dog.
![sleeping dogs images sleeping dogs images](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/1b5d5b47040377.5607f38273ef4.jpg)
![sleeping dogs images sleeping dogs images](https://tailblazerspets.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/sleeping-dog-845x550.jpg)
Fortunately for her, she has no trouble going back to sleep. Every night around 2 a.m., my sleeping partner wakes me up because she’s thirsty and needs a bathroom break.