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Do you let your dog on to your bed? I posed this question on Instagram the other day and, it turns out, there is no middle ground. “Jesus Christ, no fecking way!” wrote Gail, accompanied by a vomiting emoji. This was not the validation I was looking for, reading her reply from my bed, alongside Bertha, my five-year-old whippet, who was curled into a bagel-shape under my armpit.
But I’m not alone in thinking dogs make wonderful bedfellows. “If you’re going to get into bed with me, you’re getting into bed with my dogs,” says the interior designer Flora Soames. “Sleeping alongside dogs offers deep comfort. It’s all I’ve ever known.”
I have official backing because The Kennel Club is all for it, as long as your dog is happy: “It’s vital that sharing a bed is their choice,” says Charlotte McNamara, its head of health. “It’s important that dogs still have their own separate sleeping area: a private space to retreat to when they want to be alone.”
I may have had other plans when Bertha arrived. I had a crate and a stair gate and vague ideas about dogs not going upstairs, but that is all a distant memory now because we all live in all the rooms. Nowhere is off limits; there are no boundaries. And truly, what could be cosier? A freshly made bed, clean pyjamas, a good book and a quietly snoring whippet: absolute heaven. Dogs on beds really come into their own when you’re ill: when my 12-year-old had tonsillitis, Bertha spent all day on his bed, a comforting nursemaid more attentive than a human could ever be.
So Bertha now sleeps in all the beds. Some nights she stretches between my husband and me. Other nights she sandwiches between teddies on my younger son’s bed. She likes to get under the duvet in my older son’s bed, sometimes right down to the very bottom, by his feet. The spare bed in my study is her daybed: she likes to sleep there after her walk, in a spot where the morning sun hits just right. She has dog beds, too. She has a green striped Mungo & Maud one by the back door, for afternoon sunbathing. And she has an early-evening bed, too, in corduroy, from Hindquarters, positioned by the fireplace where she can watch the children watch telly.
She has so many options, I wonder if it’s an embarrassment of riches. Some nights she changes her mind at three in the morning and I am woken by the feel of her soft paws on the duvet, circling. Maybe this is a whippet thing. The designer Luke Edward Hall, whose whippet Merlin is Bertha’s brother, tells me his two do the same: “At night, they move between our spare bedroom, their own beds and our bed. It’s a bit of a circus but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
What do we love so much about dogs on beds? Dogs enhance life, they enrich it, add soul and joy. Proximity to a contented dog makes life feel better. Bertha is about as far from a wild wolf as you could get: she craves billowy duvets, cashmere blankets and sheepskins; she is domesticated — and then some. And she is incredibly clean most of the time because she absolutely hates mud and puddles. Having her on my bedspread doesn’t feel disgusting to me, it feels deeply companionable.
The studies on this subject don’t prove anything either way. Some say those of us with dogs on our beds have overall worse sleep quality, others seem to suggest it has lots of positive effects on our physical and emotional health. So I’ll submit to you evidence of my own. When I find myself awake at night, worrying about which worry to worry about most, I reach over to the silken down of Bertha and rest my hands between her velvet ears. Her total lack of worries, her simple and immediate way of living fully in every moment, is a balm.
Perhaps this is why we love our dogs so much: their ability to access some profound place of peace. The sandbag weight of a sleeping dog next to you is a sentient stress blanket. No wonder we’ve been sleeping next to our dogs for thousands of years: because there is simply nothing better.
Eight dog beds for those who completely disagree with the above:
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