Are you sleeping with your pets? Read this first!

In an article written earlier this year, WebMd’s Daniel DeNoon writes about a new report that sleeping with your pet’s may be as dangerous as having bed bugs!

While I’ve had pets around me, and sometimes sleeping in our bed my whole life (pets sleeping with me doesn’t last long because I’m a notoriously restless sleeper and my pets voluntarily choose to sleep elsewhere), this report is concerning.

“Bubonic Plague

Humans get bubonic plague from fleas. Chomel and Sun recount various cases of plague linked to sleeping with cats. These include a 9-year-old boy from Arizona who slept with his sick cat.

And a 2008 study of plague survivors found that 44% of them slept with their pet dog, while only 10% of matched comparison subjects slept with their pets. This dog-in-bed plague risk remained significant even after the study authors took into account a large number of other factors.

This last factoid is troubling because dogs — unlike cats — can carry plague fleas without showing symptoms of the disease.”

You can read the rest of the article here: http://www.webmd.com/news/20110114/bed-pets-more-dangerous-than-bedbugs

Not sure what to think about this – and I won’t stop sleeping with my dog, either.  I’ll just make sure he has no fleas 🙂