To bed or not to bed...that is the question

One of the most frequent assumptions people make is that a dog trainer will scold them for allowing their dog to sleep in bed with them. But the reality is that some professional dog trainers sleep in bed with THEIR dogs! So why the contraversy?

The reality is that sleeping in bed is a privlege. If the dog earns the privelege...and doesn't abuse it...I find no reason to boot your dog out of bed. How can a dog abuse the privlege? Ah, that's where all the dog psychology comes into play.

Dogs who respect their owners, are not destrcutive, are not commonly defiant, who never growl at or bite family members, dogs who don't suffer from separation anxiety--these guys are great candidates to sleep in bed with you. Why? Because they are well balanced, cooperative dogs. So if you enjoy sharing your bed with them, no worries.

The question remains, then, why not sleep in bed with the less balanced dog? "What can it hurt? Won't it bring us closer? Besides, I like it!"

Well of course you like it! Studies show that just stroking a dog lowers your blood pressure. Having that dog snoring snoring softly by your side all night provides a sense of well being and comfort to the human.

But in any relationship, we must consider the best interests and happiness of both parties. Yes, it benefits you to sleep with your dog, but how does this intimate sharing of sleeping space affect the dog himself?

Get ready for the dog psychology lesson now!

Because you spend more time being still in your bedroom than any other place, your bedroom, and especially your bed, smell more like you than any other place on earth. The dog's sense of smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than our own. Thus, he is well aware that sleeping next to you, bathing in your scent, gives him special status. For a balanced, well behaved dog, the special status is trust. That status causes no problems because your dog earns that trust every day.

For unbalanced, misbehaving or anxious dogs, the special status is power. Or at least that is how the dog interprets this privlege. In the wild, the canine who sleeps in the choicest spot is the Leader. The one who sleeps closest to the Leader is second in charge. It is normal in the dog world for a certain amount of competition to take place between the lead and second dogs. Thus, by permitting an unbalanced dog to sleep with you, you're actually encouraging him to challenge your authority.

This challenge does not always take the form of aggression directed at you. It can be much more subtle than that. If your dog does not respect your authority to place his body in a crate, he'll howl and bark for hours. If he does not respect your right to leave him to go to work, he'll chew apart your house. And so it goes.

If you sense any competition whatsoever between your children and your dog, here is more food for thought. In the human world, status is accorded by giving your child his own room. Your child has more status than the dog because the child has his own, private sleeping space.

But in the world of dogs, the least powerful, lowest status dogs sleep the farthest from the Leader. So your dog will be convinced that you are telling him that you grant him more power than your child because you have forced your child to sleep apart from you, while you permit your dog to snuggle against you all night.

That different view, your dog's view, can become important if your dog ever growls at your child over food, space on the sofa, or for possession of a toy. The only way to show your dog that he does not have more status than your child is to be sure that the canine does not believe that he has more status than your kids.

So the long and the short of it is this: if your dog sleeps with you and he's not nervous, destructive, aggressive or disobedient...enjoy sharing the covers. Otherwise, you might want to snuggle up with a teddy bear. They don't eat the house or growl at the kids!

Marc Goldberg, CDT
IACP Certified Dog Trainer