Sleeping with Your Pet Can Make You Sick

I used to have a dog named Max. Max was short for "Maximum dog that I can have in my apartment." Max was half Chihuahua and half Black and Tan. I bought him when he was about a year old and had him for a little over ten years before he passed on.

Max was what the vet said was an "overly friendly" dog. When I came home from work he would jump up and down on his little spindly legs for what seemed like forever before he would calm down. Sometimes, at night, I would let him sleep with me.

This didn't happen every night though. Sometimes I would refuse to let him in the bed if he needed a bath or he had raw spots in his fur from grass allergies that he medicine for. If he got the fleas I also wouldn't let him on the bed. Sometimes I just didn't feel like having a companion in bed or my girlfriend took his place.

The bedtime procedure went something like this: When Max saw that I was headed for bed, he would test me out by jumping up on the bed. If I didn't want him to sleep with me that night I would tell him to sleep on the couch. He would usually obey me and head for his own bed with his tail between his legs.

Sometimes I would change my mind in the middle of the night and call for him. I could hear the pitter patter of little paws as he ran as fast as he could and jumped into the bed and zoom, right under the covers. In a matter of about a minute he was sound asleep.

But there are some dangers to letting your pet sleep with you. Recently there was a report about a woman who fell asleep with her Dachshund at her feet. The dog chewed off part of her foot. She was a diabetic and didn't have any feeling in that foot. The dog must have thought that the foot was diseased and decided to do her a favor by removing it.

But there is another danger that is far more common. According to CNN:

"Cuddling with pets puts you at risk of catching some icky bugs, warns a report published in the February issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the public health journal of the Centers for Disease Control."

Becoming really ill from sharing your bed with your dog is pretty rare, but there are some pathogens that can be spread between humans and animals, especially with children and those with compromised immune systems.

The authors report that some serious diseases have been transmitted to people by having their pets sleep with them, kiss them, or lick them on the face. There have been a couple of cases of meningitis and one case of bubonic plague that was transmitted to a child by a flea ridden cat that slept in the bed with him.

But again these are rare. You're much more likely to get a case of the fleas and get itchy.

Source: http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/22/a-furry-dilemma-sleep-with-your-pet-catch-his-bugs/?hpt=Sbin