How to Choose a Dog Bed That Actually Gets Used

Dogs sleep somewhere between twelve and sixteen hours a day, more for puppies and old dogs. So the bed is the piece of kit your dog uses more than everything else combined, and it's the one people buy on looks.

Before ordering anything, watch your dog sleep for a few nights.

Match the bed to the sleeping position

Most dogs use two or three positions across a night and shift between them. The useful question is which one they hold longest, and whether the bed you're considering makes that position possible.

A dog that sleeps stretched flat in a donut bed ends up with its head on the bolster and its back end on the floor. That's the single most common reason a bed goes unused.

Sizing

Measure the dog lying on its side with the legs extended, from nose to the base of the tail, then add fifteen to twenty-five centimetres. For a bolster bed, measure the internal space rather than the external dimensions, because a 90 cm donut bed can have a 55 cm sleeping area once the walls are accounted for.

Manufacturer size labels are close to meaningless across brands. Ignore 'Large' and read the centimetres.

Fill and support

This is where price differences actually live, and it matters most for dogs carrying weight, older dogs, and large breeds.

• Shredded foam or fibre: cheap, comfortable at first, compresses within months. Fine for a young light dog, poor for a heavy one.
• Solid memory foam: keeps its depth, distributes weight off the pressure points at the hips and elbows. The right choice for arthritic and large dogs.
• Bean or pellet fill: moulds well, shifts away from the middle over time and needs topping up.
• Raised camp-bed style: excellent airflow, good for dogs that overheat, offers no cushioning at all on hard joints.

The check that matters: press down hard with the heel of your hand. If you can feel the floor through the bed, so can a 30 kg dog's elbow. Callused, hairless patches on the elbows are usually a bed problem rather than a skin problem.

Washability

Check before you buy, not after. You want a removable cover with a full-length zip, machine washable at 40 degrees minimum, and ideally a waterproof inner liner. Beds where the whole thing goes in the machine are convenient until the filling clumps permanently after the second wash.

Washing weekly at 60 degrees matters if anyone in the house has a dust mite allergy, so check the cover tolerates it.

Where to put it

Dogs are social sleepers. A perfect bed in a spare room gets ignored while the dog sleeps on the hall floor outside your door, which tells you what it actually wanted.

• In the room the household uses, with a view of the door. Dogs like to see who's coming.
• Against a wall or in a corner, so the dog's back is covered.
• Off the main walkway. A bed in a doorway means being stepped over all evening.
• Away from radiators and draughts. Two beds in different spots lets the dog choose by temperature, and most will.

Two decent beds in the right places beat one expensive one in the wrong place. That's the whole lesson.

If your dog won't use the new bed

1. 1Put it where the dog already chooses to sleep, rather than where you want the bed to go.
2. 2Put an unwashed t-shirt or the old bedding on it, so it smells like the household rather than a warehouse.
3. 3Feed a few meals on or beside it, and scatter treats on it during the day.
4. 4Give it two weeks before concluding anything. New objects take time.

If it's still unused after that, the bed is the wrong shape for how the dog sleeps. Go back to the table at the top.