‘You get to a point where you do not fancy sleeping alone and dogs have far better manners than men’: Do dogs belong on our beds?

Humans have long been concerned with vetting the company they keep. It is woven into our nature by well-worn, oft-cautionary adages: a rotten apple can spoil the barrel, the Devil you know is better than the one you do not and someone who chooses to lie down with dogs can expect to wake up with fleas. Indulgence and curiosity compel us to bend these rules and, in the case of dogs and sleeping arrangements, in a very literal sense.

For Devonshire author Callie Coles, no line is drawn between the dog house and the family home. With a trio of whippets, a brace of terriers, a dachshund and a labradoodle among their eight-strong pack, nowhere is off limits to anyone with four legs — including the children’s ponies, who wander freely in the house.

‘At the moment, the whippets and dachshund sleep in the kitchen, the others in the boot room,’ says Callie. ‘But I love dogs in the bed — when it is cold, they are a hot-water bottle. Another heartbeat is always helpful for sleep, especially when Toby, my husband, is away.’ When asked who would be ejected from the bed first, Callie is unequivocal. ‘The children! There is no peace with that noisy rabble about.’

Historic dog-sleep data is scarce, but more recent surveys suggest that anywhere between half and three-quarters of owners share a bed with their dog. In fact, one research paper touts canine bed-sharing as equally worthy of study as co-sleeping with children. The subject of dogs in beds fascinates us — and is by no means an underground phenomenon.

‘For nearly 20 years, I had a no-bed rule,’ says Caroline Munby, a Dorset dog enthusiast. ‘Then I rehomed Mina, a rottweiler, in 2013. She immediately clambered onto the bed and buried herself under the covers.’ Soon, Pudding, a teckel, joined the throng and, given her diminutive size, she needs a boost: ‘When it is time for bed, Pudding runs to her side of it and asks to be lifted up.’

For gundog trainer Susie Stewart, a horror film broke the habit of a lifetime. ‘A friend took me to see The Silence of the Lambs and I freaked myself out,’ she explains. Her black labrador, another Pudding, ended up in the bed — and that was it. ‘Once a labrador has been in a bed, there is no going back!’ she laughs.

Some owners, of course, are reluctant adopters of the trend, with even the most stoical of couples giving in to the proliferation of yapping and scratching at the bedroom door. These dogged souls eventually roll over and accept the inevitable — some even buying new beds to accommodate a canine occupant.

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Others, however, will not be moved. British event rider Bubby Upton, who owns a miniature bull terrier, Simba, is one such owner. ‘I spend my life training horses with the utmost precision and control, but I have the most feral dog you can imagine,’ she says with a wry smile. Fiercely loving, yet impossibly wilful, Simba can often be found atop the kitchen table ‘making the most awful noise’. ‘I call his name and he looks the other way,’ she shrugs, ‘but we do have the best cuddles.’

As an athlete, Buppy's relationship with sleep is committed and serious. ‘I am very particular,’ she explains. ‘I must have at least eight hours uninterrupted and I like clean sheets. I will cuddle Simba on the sofa all day long, but my bed is my bed.’

Have dogs always had a paw in bed-sharing? Records are patchy, but we know that various toy dogs — or ‘comforters’ — were constant companions and fellow inmates of Mary, Queen of Scots when she was Elizabeth I’s prisoner for 18 years. It is believed that one intrepid creature was even found among her skirts, whimpering and covered in blood, after she was beheaded in 1587.

Dash, a tricolour King Charles spaniel, was the closest companion of a young Queen Victoria. The Queen doted on him, even leaving the celebrations for her coronation at Buckingham Palace to bathe her beloved pet. Nothing explicitly tells us Dash made it into the royal bedchamber, but it is said that Victoria’s first act as Queen was to have her bed removed from her mother’s room. One cannot help but wonder if the young monarch made space instead for her favourite pooch.

Winston Churchill had a particular fondness for poodles; his constant companion throughout the Second World War was a chocolate-brown miniature called Rufus. The little dog went almost everywhere with him — even, writes Piers Brendon in his book Churchill’s Bestiary, occasionally cosying up to him in the ministerial bed. Boundaries were set, however, when the presumptuous poodle trotted into the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street. ‘No, Rufus,’ Churchill reportedly said. ‘I have not found it necessary to ask you to join the Wartime Cabinet.’

If a dog’s life can be mapped ever further onto his master’s by day, his sleeping arrangements must follow. Andrew Wyeth’s Master Bedroom (1965) tenderly depicts such a shift — the family dog fast asleep with his head resting assuredly on the master’s pillow. ‘There is something comforting about waking up and hearing a little dog snore,’ says Susie, whose current sleeping companions are Bedlam and Riot, a working chocolate-labrador mother-daughter duo. ‘You get to a point where you do not fancy sleeping alone and dogs have far better manners than men.’

Bed-sharing sometimes comes to a natural conclusion. Marketing and PR manager Hollie Bladen’s yellow labrador, Moose, would sneak upstairs and wriggle between her and her husband, Will, in the middle of the night. ‘She would use her bodyweight to force Will out of bed,’ Hollie says, adding that Moose now sleeps in the kitchen of their Hampshire home.

As well as teasing on the shooting field, Susie has faced not-so-subtle interventions — her mother hoped to buck the bed-sharing trend with a gift of exquisite white linen. ‘I simply put a quilt on top for the dogs — the sheets are pristine to this day.’

With comforts manifold and joys bountiful, it is worth daring to lie down with the dogs, albeit not on a hearth, rug or kitchen floor with a lowly hound. Instead, provision is made upstairs for a pooch-shaped bedmate. It is not a case of lying down with dogs at all. Rather, the dogs are invited to lie with us.