First Coast Pet

Posts Tagged ‘canine hip dysplasia’

Before choosing a large orthopedic dog bed for your large dog, you need to measure your dog and consider a few other things.

Measure your dogs height from floor to head, and its width from nose to base of tail. This gives you an idea of how large the diameter of the dog bed should be.

After this you then need to pay attention to your dog’s sleeping profile. Dogs usually prefer to curl themselves up or stretch themselves out while sleeping? This is important, as most dog beds are designed to only accommodate one of the two sleeping profiles. If your dog does not seem to have a single style of sleeping, then you could opt for a sofa style bed. A sofa styled large dog bed is both long and wide to accommodate a stretch sleeping style, sofa style beds also have bolstered sides to support the curling sleeper.

Instead of using the dog’s physical dimensions, use its diameter while sleeping if he or she prefers to sleep in a curl style. Use this measurement when purchasing a curl style bed.

For stretch sleeping style dogs, you now need to size the bed taking the measurements that you obtained earlier. Allow an extra 12 inches in addition to your dogs body size on both dimensions to ensure the bed is large enough to comfortably accommodate your pet. Similarly with a curl bed, ensure that there is an extra 8 inches on the diameter.

You should know your material. There a variety of fillers used in orthopedic dog beds. Which offers the highest quality? Look at the equivalent material used in human mattresses. For comfort and support of high quality, memory foam is the material of choice for their mattress. Egg crate or convoluted foam is only seen in toppers. Why give your dog second best if its not good enough for a human. Maximum support for a large and heavy dog is needed.

With the above simple criteria you should now be able to better identify suitable orthopedic dog beds for your dog.