Dog Bed Size Calculator

How to measure a dog for a bed

Wait until the dog is asleep, or at least flat out on its side, and measure from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail, where the tail joins the body. Not the tip of the tail: a kelpie’s tail would put it in a bed a size too big. A soft tape measure is easiest; a piece of string laid along the dog and then against a builder’s tape works just as well.

Add 20 cm for a dog under 10 kg, 25 cm from 10 to 25 kg and 30 cm above that. That is the length the dog needs to lie on, and it is the figure to compare with the listing. The margin grows with the dog because a big dog throws its head and legs further when it stretches, and because a bed that is exactly dog-sized has a dog lying half on the floor by morning.

Size for the longest position your dog uses. Plenty of dogs curl nose to tail in July and sprawl on their backs in January, and a bed sized for the curl is useless for the sprawl. The RSPCA’s test for a bed is that the dog can lie comfortably in all its natural positions, with room to stretch its legs out.

Flat, bolster, round or elevated

• Flat mattresses and cushions give all their area to the dog, so the listed length is the lying length. They suit sprawlers, big dogs and old dogs that should not step over a wall.
• Bolster and sofa beds have walls on three or four sides that a dog can lean on or rest its chin on, which curlers and anxious dogs love. The walls take 10 to 15 cm a side, so the inside is 20 to 30 cm shorter than the outside. Always find the inside measurement.
• Round and donut bedssuit dogs that only ever curl. A round bed about the dog’s stretched length plus 10 cm across the inside is enough. Past about a metre of dog, round beds stop making sense: big dogs sprawl.
• Elevated cots are mesh stretched over a frame, and the frame size is the lying size. Air moves under the dog, which is why they are the Australian summer bed, but they cushion nothing, so an old or bony dog wants a mat on top. Check the weight rating as well as the length.

Heat, cold and the Australian year

A thick bolster bed that is perfect in a Canberra July is a hot box on a Darwin afternoon. In summer the answer is airflow: an elevated cot on a verandah, or a cooling mat on the floor, in the coolest room of the house. In winter it is walls and a raised base that keep the dog off a cold tiled floor. Many households end up with two beds, and that is not an extravagance, it is the climate.

Old dogs, puppies and crates

An older dog with stiff joints does best on thick, supportive foam with a low entry. The RSPCA suggests orthopaedic or memory-foam beds for older dogs and those with joint problems, and a bed that is easy to step onto matters more than its walls.

A puppy chews. Buy a cheap, washable bed sized for the dog it is now, and the good bed once the chewing stage is over, sized for the adult: the crate size calculator’s breed table gives the adult length to work from.

In a crate, use a flat mat cut for the crate’s size rather than a bolster bed, which eats the floor the dog needs. The six crate sizes run from 61 cm to 137 cm inside, and mats are sold under the same inch names.