Shouldd We Let Dogs Sleep With Us?

Do you sleep with your dog? Some people swear by it, and some are dead set against it. As a veterinarian, I used to equivocate when folks asked what I thought, but since adopting Zoom I’ve become a proponent of sleeping with your dog. Here’s why.

Zoom is a young border collie mix who was picked up running wild. A rescue group thought she could be rehabilitated, so they pulled Zoom from the pound before she was euthanized. Although not ungrateful, Zoom couldn’t tolerate the rescue's confinement; she slipped out of harnesses and houdinied through gates, the first dog to escape from their dog-proof enclosure. Zoom even became difficult to feed because when someone entered her enclosure to leave food, she ignored the food and rushed the door.

Zoom was 400 miles from me, but I felt her anxiety strongly through the photos posted on the rescue’s website, and adopted her. If this girl could not be fenced then I was the perfect pet parent because I had 40 acres and no fences.

 We found a harness that she couldn’t shrug off, and exercised without fencing using a long line. After our first week together, I unleashed her and let her go. She has never let me out of her sight. I solved her habit of rushing to the door when food was placed down by sitting beside the bowl and not moving until she’d eaten.

The habit we didn’t fix that first week, the habit that would take us four months to fix, was licking. After adoption, although Zoom was physically active and never left alone, she started licking; she’d soon licked bald patches on her legs and flanks. Licking can be physical problem or psychological problem, and because I thought she was happy, I approached her licking as a physical problem. Out came the drugs.

The licking was worse at night, which can happen with scabies, so I used Revolution—three doses—to eliminate scabies incognito—no improvement. Then, lime sulphur. No improvement. Next were probiotics in case she was licking to ease intestinal discomfort. Although gut discomfort can occur any time, it is often more obvious at night when there is no distraction from activity. No improvement. Changed the diet and added raw beef bones or peanut butter-stuffed Kongs to redirect the licking. No improvement. Went on to try acupuncture, herbal formulas, dog appeasing pheromone spray, lavender oil, Rescue Remedy, melatonin, massage with Tellington Touch technique, body wrap, the analgesic medication Deramaxx, the anti-anxiety meds, Zylkene and alprazolam. No improvement.

After four months of trying every veterinary and behavior trick in my bag, I started asking Zoom to sleep with me. My thinking was that Zoom was picked up running with another dog and might have spent the first few months of her life sleeping with this dog. She might be lonely at night. Voilà. The three-foot move from her doggy bed under the desk, which she loved during the day, up to my bed markedly decreased her licking within days.

Nowadays, Zoom sleeps where she wants: my bed, her bed, the floor. She licks, but only a little. So be it. Zoom has made me wiser, and she would like me to pass that wisdom on: some dogs need to sleep with their people.

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