Yes, dogs can get bitten by bed bugs. Bed bugs feed on the blood of any warm-blooded mammal, and dogs are no exception. However, bed bugs strongly prefer human hosts, so dogs are typically secondary targets in a home with an active infestation.
How Bed Bugs Feed on Dogs
Bed bugs hide in the environment during the day and emerge at night to feed. They don’t live on your dog the way fleas or ticks do. A bed bug might crawl onto your dog while it sleeps, feed for several minutes, then retreat back into a crack in the baseboard, a seam in the mattress, or a fold in bedding. By morning, the bug is gone.
This feeding pattern is what makes bed bugs on dogs easy to miss. You won’t find them burrowed into your dog’s coat during the day. A dog’s fur also makes feeding harder for bed bugs, which is one reason they gravitate toward exposed human skin instead. Areas with thinner hair, like the belly, inner thighs, or ears, are more vulnerable to bites.
Signs Your Dog Has Been Bitten
Bed bug bites on dogs look similar to other insect bites: small red bumps or welts, often clustered together or arranged in a line. Your dog may scratch, lick, or chew at the irritated area more than usual. In some cases, the skin around the bites can become inflamed or develop a mild rash.
The tricky part is distinguishing bed bug bites from flea bites, which look nearly identical on a dog’s skin. A few clues can help. Fleas live on the animal and leave behind dark specks of digested blood (flea dirt) in the fur. Bed bugs leave no such evidence on the dog itself. If your dog is scratching but has no fleas or flea dirt, and you’ve noticed bites on yourself as well, bed bugs are worth investigating. Check mattress seams, furniture joints, and baseboards for the bugs themselves, which are flat, oval, reddish-brown, and roughly the size of an apple seed.
Can Dogs Spread Bed Bugs?
It’s unlikely that your dog will bring bed bugs into your home. While a bug might occasionally hitch a ride on a dog’s fur after feeding, bed bugs generally leave the host and return to their hiding spot before daylight. Unlike fleas, which establish colonies in an animal’s coat, bed bugs don’t set up camp on pets. A dog sleeping in an infested room might carry a stray bug in its bedding, but this isn’t a common route of introduction. Bed bugs far more often enter homes through luggage, used furniture, and clothing.
Health Risks for Dogs
Bed bugs are not known to transmit diseases to dogs or humans. The primary concern is skin irritation and the discomfort of itching. Dogs with sensitive skin or allergies may develop a stronger reaction, with more pronounced swelling or secondary skin infections from excessive scratching. If your dog’s skin looks raw, weepy, or unusually inflamed around bite sites, a vet visit can help manage the irritation before it worsens.
Cleaning Your Dog’s Bedding
If you suspect bed bugs, your dog’s bed and any washable fabric it sleeps on should go through a hot wash and dryer cycle. Bed bugs die within 20 minutes at 118°F, but their eggs are hardier and require 90 minutes at that same temperature to reach full mortality. The simplest approach: wash bedding on hot, then run it through a dryer set on high for at least 30 minutes. A loosely filled dryer on high is capable of killing all bed bug life stages, including eggs.
For items that can’t go in the washing machine, like a large orthopedic dog bed, you can place them in a sealed bag and use a portable heat chamber or simply run them through a commercial dryer. The target temperature is at least 120°F sustained throughout the item. Vacuuming your dog’s sleeping area thoroughly and disposing of the vacuum bag in a sealed plastic bag outside your home also helps reduce the population between treatments.
Keeping Dogs Safe During Extermination
Professional bed bug treatment typically involves either chemical pesticides, heat treatment of the entire room, or both. Both approaches require precautions for your pets. Before any pesticide application, remove your dog from the treated area along with its food bowls, water dishes, toys, and bedding. If foggers (bug bombs) are used, all animals need to leave the home entirely.
After treatment, keep your dog out of sprayed areas until the product has dried completely or for whatever duration the pesticide label specifies, whichever is longer. Good ventilation during the drying period further reduces your dog’s chemical exposure when it returns. Heat treatments are generally safer for pets since they don’t leave chemical residues, but your dog still needs to be out of the home while rooms are being heated to 120°F or above for several hours.
If you have fish tanks in any treated room, cover them completely to prevent vapors or dust from entering the water. Birds and reptiles are also more sensitive to pesticides than dogs, so every pet in the household needs a plan during extermination.