I Sleep With Dogs. Do You?

Psychologists are all over the place when it comes to advice about sharing your bed with dogs, yet nearly half of all dog owners say they wouldn’t have it any other way. A girlfriend of mine used to say you shouldn’t own more dogs than can comfortably sleep in your bedroom. She and her husband raised Shiloh Shepherds and had nine of them in the bedroom most nights, yet reserved their bed for their little mixed breed.

According to Modern Dog magazine, whether or not you tend to snuggle with Snoopy at night depends largely upon — wait for it– your age and gender. Nearly six out of ten females between the ages of 18 and 34 regularly allow the dog on the bed, and though the group with the largest likelihood of throwing Fluffy off are married men over 45 years of age (maybe it’s all those trips to the bathroom), almost forty percent of them don’t mind sharing the sheets with the family hound.

Many of the rich, famous, and or powerful throughout history have extended bed privileges to their companion dogs. Pharaoh Rameses The Great had a hound called Pahates (no word on what sort of hound, but we’ll go out on a limb and say it was a Pharaoh Hound) with the official title “Bed Companion to the Pharaoh.” That may or may not have been good news for Pahates, considering how insecure the Egyptian royals tended to be about drifting off to the afterworld without every kitschy trinket they ever owned securely bundled about the burial chamber, much less their much beloved personal pets.

Could the course of history be influenced by whether or not Fido is included in pillow talk? Let’s take the case of one influential military man. General George Custer was at odds with his wife Libbie about whether dogs should be allowed on the bed. His wife agreed to allow the dogs into the bedroom, but drew the line at the bed. In camp, Custer always slept with his beloved deerhounds. In a letter to Libbie from the ill-fated Black Hills expedition, he wrote “the dogs surround me: Cardigan is sleeping on the edge of my bed. Tuck at the head, and Blucher nearby.” If Libbie had welcomed the deerhounds to the bed, perhaps Custer would have taken early retirement.

My question, dear DogBlog readers, is this: Do you? Do you sleep with dogs? If you own multiple dogs, how do you determine with which ones you share the bed? How does your partner feel about this arrangement? Please let us know. We’ll keep track of replies and let you know the truth about the sleeping arrangements of your fellow dog devotees.