Letting your dog sleep in your room..? Maybe the answer to a good nights sleep.

If you think that having your dog in the bedroom while you sleep is a distraction, you're barking up the wrong tree.

A new study has found that sleeping with a dog – whether it's a Chihuahua or a Great Dane - helps people to sleep better.

The researchers suggest that sleeping with pets brings comfort and a sense of security to people, helping them to sleep easy.

A new study has found that sleeping with a dog – whether it's a Chihuahua or a Great Dane - helps people to sleep better. But, the researchers highlighted one caveat to their findings – don't let dogs sleep under the covers with you.

Researchers from the Centre for Sleep Medicine on the Mayo Clinic's Arizona campus looked at the effect of sleeping with a pet on sleep quality.

Dr Lois Krahn, an author of the study, said: 'Most people assume having pets in the bedroom is a disruption.

"We found that many people actually find comfort and a sense of security from sleeping with their pets."

The study involved 40 healthy adults who had their sleep evaluated with a dog in the bedroom over five months.

Both the participants and their dogs wore activity trackers to track their sleeping habits for seven nights.

The results revealed that sleeping with dogs helped some people to sleep better, despite the breed of dog.

The researchers highlighted one caveat to their findings – don't let dogs sleep under the covers with you.

Researchers from the Centre for Sleep Medicine on the Mayo Clinic's Arizona campus looked at the effect of sleeping with a pet on sleep quality. According to the study, adults who snuggled up to their dogs in bed sacrificed sleep quality.

DOGS HAVE SIMILAR SLEEP PATTERNS TO THEIR OWNERS

Researchers have previously confirmed that canines do in fact dream.

Now, they say that in fact, they dream in a similar way to humans - and may even dream about their day as we do.

For a typical medium sized dog, their breathing is fairly regular and somewhere around 20 minutes into the sleep cycle, you can see the eyes moving around the closed lids and their breathing will become irregular.

It turns out that small dogs dream more frequently and have shorter dreams and larger dogs dream less but have longer dreams.

Puppies spend a much greater proportion of their sleep time than adult dogs in REM sleep, no doubt condensing huge quantities of newly acquired data.

Adult dogs spend about 10-12 percent of their sleeping time in REM sleep.

'Dogs dream about doggie things', a Pointer will point at a dream bird and a Doberman Pinscher will chase a dream robber.

*This article was originally posted by Daily Mail Australia on 9 September 2017.