Pros and cons of sleeping with your pet

Catharine Bliss enjoys sleeping with her eight-month-old Aussie, Phoebe, and says she loves the warm snuggles the dog offers.
“But she will sometimes wake up and bark at deer or turkeys,” Bliss said. “She also sleeps hard and won’t move so I can’t move.”
Phoebe typically divides her time between sleeping at Bliss’s feet in bed and sleeping on the bedroom floor.
“Sometimes she starts on the bed and ends up on the floor,” Rochester’s Bliss said. “Or vice versa.”
Dave Zill of Dodge Center enjoyed sleeping with his pet as a child, but now as an adult he prefers his dogs Bentley and Stella to be in their kennels at night.
“We don’t like dog hair in the bed,” Zill said of himself and his wife Deborah. “Plus we both feel it’s easier to get better sleep without a pet taking up space.”
Jenna Behnke, a supervisor at Leashes & Leads in Byron, estimates that 85 percent of pet owners opt to sleep with their pet. She said pets offer companionship to their owners who choose to sleep with their pets, and are nice and snuggly. “They’re nice to wake up to in the morning as well,” Behnke said.
Years ago, Mayo Clinic did a study on sleeping with your pet and found that it disrupts sleep. Mayo researchers recommended people have their pet in their bedroom at night, but not in the bed with them.
Zill said he enjoyed the safety, comfort and security offered by co-sleeping with a pet during his childhood. Katelynd Beier of Mantorville echoed that sentiment, saying she enjoys the sense of security she gets from sleeping with her dog Diesel.
A three-year-old Black Lab pit mix, Diesel is a bed hog, and that’s the chief drawback of sleeping with him, Beier said. Behnke said this is a common complaint.
“Even if you have a king-size bed, some dogs like to sleep right up next to you,” Behnke said. “So you don’t get much room.”
Beier said the bed gets a bit crowded when her husband, a truck driver, is home.
“The only con I have is Diesel hogs the bed,” she said. “Otherwise I don’t really have any other issues. I’ve gotten used to him over the last three years.”