How do I know what size bed my dog needs?

Measure nose to base of tail while the dog is sleeping stretched out on his side, then add 8 to 12 inches in each direction. That number is the minimum sleeping surface — the flat area he actually lies on, not the outer footprint of the bed. On a flat mattress the two are the same. On a bolstered bed they are not, and the gap is large: on the one bed in our stable that prints both numbers on its Amazon listing, the interior is 25 × 17 inches inside a 33 × 25 inch exterior — about half the footprint.

Why does my dog hang off a bed that is supposedly the right size?

Almost always because the size was chosen against the exterior of a bolstered bed. The listed dimension includes the bolsters, which take anywhere from four to fifteen inches off an axis — on the Orvis Couch X-Large, a 54-inch exterior holds a 39-inch interior. A 44-inch bolstered bed can hold less sleeping surface than a 36-inch flat one. Compare your dog's measurement to the interior — and if the maker does not publish an interior, that is not a detail, it is the answer: you cannot verify the bed fits before buying it.

Do any dog bed brands publish the interior sleeping surface?

Few, and it splits oddly. Casper prints an inner sleep area for every size on its own site and even in an Amazon bullet. Orvis prints interiors for its Memory Foam Couch and RecoveryZone lines but not for its Memory Foam Deluxe, its most expensive bed — re-confirmed absent 21 August 2026. Big Barker, Furhaven, PetFusion and Tempur-Pedic publish no interior figure on the bolstered or pillowed beds we checked. Flat beds — Big Barker Sleek, Bully Beds, K9 Ballistics — sidestep the question, because their entire footprint is sleeping surface.

Is a bigger dog bed always better?

Functionally, an oversized bed almost never hurts — sprawlers use every inch and seniors should never be undersized, because a bed too small to stretch out on forces the tight curl stiff joints can't afford. The exceptions are small nesters who want walls to curl against, and rooms or crates the bed physically won't fit. Undersizing is the error with consequences; our size chart covers the weight-band arithmetic.

Does a bolster make a dog bed worse?

No — for a dog who genuinely posts his head on a raised edge, the bolster is the feature he uses. The problem is only ever arithmetic: the bolster is included in the size on the box and subtracted from the surface the dog gets, and most makers never tell you how much. If your dog is a leaner, buy bolstered — but size it by the interior, and where no interior is published, assume the deduction is bigger than you think.

How Big Should My Dog's Bed Actually Be? We Measured Every Bed We Cover, Inside and Out

Measure your dog from nose to base of tail while he is asleep and stretched out, add 8 to 12 inches in each direction, and buy a bed whose sleeping surface — not whose box — covers that number. That has been our rule since our size chart shipped, and this article is what happened when we held every bed we cover to it on the same day. The finding: on flat mattresses the published size is the sleeping surface, so the arithmetic works. On bolstered and pillow-top beds it mostly cannot be done, because the number you would need is not printed — and on the beds honest enough to print it, the dog's share of the footprint runs a little over half. Before you buy anything, do the audit on the bed you already own. It costs nothing, and for a good share of readers the answer will be that the bed is the wrong shape, not the wrong brand.

Affiliate disclosure: Dog Orthopedic is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site we earn a commission at no extra cost to you — about 3% on most pet products, and the same rate on every product we compare, so no pick earns us more than another. Prescription medication earns us nothing, and seeing your vet earns us nothing; we recommend both anyway. Learn more.

Imagery: Lifestyle photographs on this site are licensed from Pexels (royalty-free) and credited per image. Pexels imagery illustrates conditions and contexts — it does not depict the specific dogs or test sessions described in the text. Product photographs come from Amazon's Creators API. Breed portraits are illustrations of typical breed type rather than photographs of individual dogs, and are not drawn to scale against one another.

The size on the box is the outside of the bed#

A dog bed has two sizes. There is the footprint — the rectangle it occupies in your hallway, the number in the listing title, the dimension the size label is based on. And there is the sleeping surface: the flat area a dog can actually lie on, which on any bed with bolsters, a headrest pillow, or a sculpted rim is smaller than the footprint by an amount the label does not state.

Only one bed in our stable prints both numbers in its Amazon listing. The Casper Medium is sold as a 33 × 25 × 6 inch bed, and its own feature bullet gives the "Inner Sleep Area" as 25 × 17 × 2 inches.⁷ Run the arithmetic: 425 square inches of sleeping surface inside an 825-square-inch footprint. On the one bed honest enough to print both numbers, about half the bed is bed.

Orvis, which publishes interiors on its Memory Foam Couch, shows the same shape at every size: the Medium is 40 × 26 outside and 28 × 21 inside, the X-Large 54 × 37 outside and 39 × 32 inside — the dog's share climbs from 57% to 62% as the bed grows, and never gets much past it.¹² These are not deceptive products. They are bolstered products, and a bolster has to live somewhere. The problem is only that the size label, the weight recommendation, and your mental image of the bed all ride on the outside number, while your dog lives on the inside one.

A dog sleeping curled tightly into a ball inside a raised-rim pet bed, occupying only the centre of the sleeping surface rather than stretching across it — A bolster bed's walls are real foam a leaning dog genuinely uses — but they are counted in the size on the box and subtracted from the surface the dog sleeps on.Photo: Stephen / Pexels

The audit: every bed we cover, measured on the same day#

Everything in this table was pulled from the live Amazon listing via the Creators API, or read on the maker's own page, on 21 August 2026. "Full footprint" means the bed is flat, so the exterior is the sleeping surface. "Not published" means we looked on that surface today and the number is not there.

Bed (linked variant)	Exterior (L × W × H)	Published sleeping surface	Maker's stated dog
Big Barker Sleek, Large¹	48 × 30 × 7	full footprint (flat) — 1,440 in²	50–70 lb
Big Barker Headrest, Large²	48 × 30 × 7	not published (pillow occupies an unstated length)	50–70 lb
Bully Beds, Large³	48 × 30 × 7	full footprint (flat)	large/giant breeds
K9 Ballistics Tough Ripstop crate bed, XL⁴	47 × 29 × 4	full footprint (flat)	sized for a 48″ crate
Furhaven Luxe Lounger, Jumbo Plus⁵	51 × 36 × 8	not published (bolstered edges, open centre)	"up to 150 lbs"
PetFusion Ultimate, X-Large⁶	44 × 34 × 10	not published (three-sided bolster over 4″ foam)	—
Casper, Medium⁷	33 × 25 × 6	25 × 17 × 2 — printed in the listing	—
Tempur-Pedic Pet Mattress, Large⁸	40 × 30 × 11	not published ("sculpted" surface)	—
Sealy Supportive Pet Mattress⁹	36 × 27 × 5	no stable surface — shredded foam and fiber fill	—
Coolaroo elevated bed, Large¹⁰	51 × 31.5 frame	fabric deck; no deck-only figure published	Large band (to 100 lb per maker's chart)
PupRug, Large/XL¹¹	55 × 50 × 2	effectively full footprint (rug-style)	large dogs

Three things fall out of the table.

The flat beds are the only ones you can size from the listing. Big Barker's Sleek edition, Bully Beds, and the K9 Ballistics crate bed publish one rectangle, and the dog gets all of it. That is not a virtue the makers advertise — nobody prints "our size is real" — but it is the single most useful property in the category for a buyer with a tape measure.

Our own affiliate link fails the audit. The Amazon ASIN we link for Big Barker is the Headrest edition: same 48 × 30 footprint as the Sleek, $40 more, and a pillow at one end whose length is published nowhere, so the flat remainder your dog stretches out on is a number neither Barker Beds nor Amazon will tell you.² If your dog sleeps stretched out, buy the Sleek — flat, $249.95 direct or on Amazon, every inch usable. We earn the same either way on Amazon and nothing direct; the geometry, not the commission, is the reason.

One weight claim fails on geometry before you ever reach the foam. Furhaven's Jumbo Plus is rated "up to 150 lbs" in its own listing title.⁵ A dog near that weight measures roughly 40 to 50 inches nose to tail base, which needs 48 to 62 inches of sleeping surface by our rule — more than this bed's 51-inch exterior, before the unpublished bolster deduction. We have long said its foam works to about 50 lb; it turns out the surface arithmetic gives out on the ceiling claim too.

The check the makers' own recommendations fail#

Here is the uncomfortable part, and we will show the work. Our rule — measurement plus 8 to 12 inches — is ours, printed in our size chart; no veterinary body has published a sizing standard, and a maker is entitled to disagree with us. But when you hold a maker's published interior against the maker's own recommended dog, the two frequently cannot be reconciled.

Orvis recommends its Memory Foam Couch Medium for dogs of 40 to 60 lb, and publishes its interior: 28 × 21 inches.¹² A 40 to 60 lb dog typically measures 28 to 36 inches nose to tail base — as long as, or longer than, the interior is, before adding anything. The Large, recommended for 60 to 90 lb, has a 32 × 25 inch interior; a dog at the middle of that band measures about 36 inches. At every size, the recommended dog fits the exterior and not the interior.

Is that a scandal? Not quite, and the honest version matters: bolster beds are bought for dogs who curl, and a curled dog occupies far less than his stretched length — our own chart lets curlers size down a step. If your dog genuinely sleeps curled against a wall every night, the Orvis recommendation is defensible. But two of our oldest rules cut the other way. Most dogs change position several times a night, and the stretched-out position is the one that needs the space. And a senior should never be undersized, because a bed too small to stretch out on forces the tight curl all night, and a stiff dog pays for that at 6am. The dog most likely to be bought an expensive orthopedic bolster bed — old, arthritic, large — is exactly the dog the curl exemption should never be applied to.

A golden retriever asleep on its side on a bare wooden floor, hip and shoulder taking the animal's full weight against a hard surface — The stretched-out side sleep is the position that needs the space — and the position your dog is most likely in at 3am, whatever he was doing when he fell asleep.Photo: Barnabas Davoti / Pexels

The two-minute audit on the bed you already own#

Before any purchase, run this on the bed in the room. It costs nothing and it settles the question this article is about.

Measure the dog. Nose to base of tail — where tail meets body — while he is asleep, stretched on his side. Not standing, not curled.
Add 8 to 12 inches. Toward 12 for sprawlers and seniors. That is the sleeping surface he needs.
Measure the bed's flat interior. Tape measure inside the bolsters, wall to wall — not the outer edge. On a flat bed, edge to edge.
Compare. If the interior is shorter than the dog-plus-8, the bed is too small no matter what size the label says, what the dog weighs, or how expensive it was.

If the bed fails, you have learned something a listing could not have told you, and the replacement decision starts from the measurement, not from brand loyalty. If the bed passes and your dog still avoids it, size was not the problem — the foam may have died, or the bed may be the wrong construction entirely.

A status note on two beds in the table#

We keep this table honest by saying out loud when a product's ground shifts, and two shifted this month.

PetFusion. The Ultimate remains a well-designed bed, but the brand around it is being absorbed. Petmate's website now carries PetFusion with the line "Now part of the Petmate family," and the Ultimate does not appear among the 26 PetFusion products listed there.¹⁴ The brand's original domain, petfusion.com, no longer hosts a store at all — on 21 August 2026 it redirected to a domain-parking sales page.¹⁵ The Amazon listing has read "usually ships within 1 to 2 months" for weeks.⁶ None of this changes the foam. All of it changes whether you should plan around this bed being purchasable next season, and we would not.

The Frisco bolster bed has been out of the table entirely since 14 August: its Amazon listing now sells a different brand's bed under the old ASIN, so there is no live listing for the product we reviewed, and we do not link dead or hijacked listings.

The two beds we would size into today#

#1 Pick

Big Barker

Big Barker 7-inch Pillow Top

9.4/ 10

Our score

$250–$460

Best for

Large and giant breeds with hip, elbow, or arthritis pain

The bed every senior-large-breed owner eventually buys, and the one we still recommend first for a dog over about 80 lb — because seven inches of foam is the only thing that reliably keeps a heavy dog's hip off the floor plane overnight. (It is not one solid slab, as we used to say: the maker's own copy describes a 3-layer build, a 2" base under a 3" support layer under a 2" comfort top.) It is also the only bed in the category with a clinical study attached, and we would rather you knew what that study is: forty dogs, no control group, no blinding, and outcomes scored by the owners who had just been given a free bed. That is a reason to be interested, not a reason to be convinced. Buy on the foam depth and the ten-year warranty, which are facts. And buy it direct — not because of a markup (like-for-like the price matches; we corrected our earlier claim in August 2026) but because the cheaper Sleek edition is only sold there. Amazon pricing matched the direct Headrest price when we last checked.

Pros

Seven inches of foam — a 3-layer build (2" base, 3" support, 2" top comfort) deep enough that a 100 lb dog's hip does not reach the floor plane, which is the whole job
10-year warranty — foam must retain at least 90% of its original shape and support, or it is replaced
The only bed in the category with a published clinical study behind it, even though that study is a single-arm pilot
Made in the USA
Microfiber cover unzips and machine-washes

Cons

Premium price
The cheapest edition (Sleek) was direct-only until 13 Aug 2026, when a matching Amazon listing appeared at the same $249.95: bigbarker.com sells a Sleek Large at $249.95 that Amazon does not carry, while the Headrest edition Amazon sells is $289.95 on both channels (verified like-for-like 2026-08-13 — we previously misread this as a $40 Amazon markup and have retired that claim)
Bulky — measure your space, not just your dog
Cover-only style isn't bolstered (consider Sofa edition for nesters)
The clinical study everyone cites is open-label, single-arm, and owner-scored, with no control group

View on Amazon Full review, sizing & downsides

The sizing case, which is different from the foam case we usually make: the Sleek edition is the only premium line in our stable where every published inch is sleeping surface — 48 × 30, 52 × 36, or 60 × 48, flat, with the listing's stated weight bands (the Large says 50–70 lb) actually passing our measurement arithmetic for typical dogs in those bands.¹ The honest cons stand: it is $249.95 and up, no density figure is published (nobody in the premium tier prints one except Bully Beds), the "clinically proven" line on the listing traces to an uncontrolled owner-scored pilot, and the 180-night trial only exists if you buy direct, where we earn nothing. The cheaper route first: if your current bed passes the size audit and the fist test, buy nothing.

#2 Pick

Casper

Casper Dog Bed

8.2/ 10

Our score

$139–$249

Best for

Owners who want the polished Casper aesthetic in a dog bed

Buy this if you've already had a Casper mattress and want a coordinated piece of furniture, not a clinical orthopedic bed. The foam is honestly described and the look is excellent. It is not the right bed if your dog has diagnosed joint disease — not because the foam is bad, but because the sleeping surface inside the bolsters is small and shallow, and because a one-year limited warranty with no flattening threshold is the weakest promise in a category where the good beds guarantee a measurable number of inches for a decade.

Pros

Two-layer foam construction Casper publishes in plain terms — "Visco Elastic Memory Foam and Polyurethane Support Foam" — rather than the unnamed "high-density foam" most of the category hides behind
Foam bolsters on three sides, so a dog who sleeps with his head posted on something has somewhere to put it
Removable microfiber cover, machine washable cold, tumble dry low
Looks like furniture, not a pet bed
Amazon has matched or beaten the direct price every time we have checked — exact parity at $169 on 14 August 2026, then $152.10 on Amazon against $169 direct on 21 August. Either way, no channel penalty

Cons

The bed is 6 inches thick but the dog does not sleep on 6 inches. The usable flat area is the "inner sleep area" inside the bolsters, and on the Medium that is 25 × 17 inches of foam — a footprint smaller than many 40 lb dogs
Casper's own two sales channels disagree about how deep that sleep area is. Casper.com says 3.5 inches for every size; the Amazon listing's feature bullet says 2 inches for the same Medium. We are not picking one for them
No foam density figure is published anywhere — not on Casper.com, not on the listing. Density is what predicts whether a bed flattens, and it is the one number this category has quietly agreed not to disclose
One year of warranty, and Casper's term for it is "Limited." Purpose-built orthopedic brands write ten- and twenty-year foam-flattening warranties with a stated threshold in inches
Premium for the design rather than the foam

View on Amazon Full review, sizing & downsides

Carded here for a reason that is nearly the opposite of a recommendation: Casper is the one brand in the stable that publishes its interior on every size — 19 × 12, 25 × 17, 35 × 25 — and that transparency is exactly what lets us tell you who should not buy it.⁷ A 25 × 17 inch sleep area over foam its two sales channels describe as either 2 or 3.5 inches deep (they disagree; we print both) fails our own chart's floor for any dog over 25 pounds. For a healthy small dog in a design-conscious home, it is a genuinely good product from a maker that showed its numbers. For an arthritic 70-pounder, the honest answer is the flat 48-inch mattress, and Casper's own published interior is what proves it.

What to do this week#

Tonight, while he is asleep and stretched out, measure your dog. Tomorrow, measure the flat interior of his bed. The whole audit takes two minutes, and it converts "the bed looks fine" — the exterior talking — into a number you can act on. If the bed passes, you have saved whatever a new one costs. If it fails, you have found one of the quietest ways a household works against a stiff dog: every night, for months, in a bed that was the right brand and the wrong shape. The gap between those two measurements is a delay you can close by the weekend.

Sources#

All Amazon data retrieved via the Amazon Creators API on 21 August 2026; all maker pages read the same day.

Amazon listing B0GRBXBPXH, "Barker Beds Large Orthopedic Dog Bed - 7" Memory Foam Mattress - 50-70 lbs - … 48"x30"x7"." amazon.com — $249.95, In Stock, buy box Big Barker (first-party). Flat mattress; the 48 × 30 footprint is the sleeping surface. Sibling sizes XL 52 × 36 × 7 and Giant 60 × 48 × 7 per the maker's line, verified 13–18 August 2026 in our Orvis comparison.
Amazon listing B0GRBX5TBL, "Barker Beds Large Orthopedic Dog Bed - 7" Pillow Top with Headrest - 50-70 lbs - … 48"x30"x7"." amazon.com — $289.95, In Stock, buy box Big Barker. No interior, flat-area, or pillow dimension appears anywhere in the listing; verified absent 21 August 2026.
Amazon listing B0125QND3W, "Bully Beds Orthopedic Dog Bed … Large (48L x 30W x 7H)." amazon.com — $249.99, "Only 4 left in stock." Sizes bullet verbatim: "Medium (34"x22"x4"), Large (48"x30"x7"), XL (52"x34"x7"), and XXL (60"x48"x7")." Flat mattress. The persistent 4-units-left figure is the availability risk we have logged on three separate checks since 13 August.
Amazon listing B0BK2HQG18, "K9 Ballistics Tough Ripstop Orthopedic Crate Bed, 47 x 29." amazon.com — $175.00, In Stock, buy box K9 Ballistics, Inc. Flat 47 × 29 × 4, sized for a 48-inch wire crate; note thickness varies by size across this line (2″ Small up to 4″ XL/XXL).
Amazon listing B07PYYJV11, "Furhaven Orthopedic Dog Bed … For Dogs Up to 150 lbs — Ultra Plush … Luxe Lounger Contour Mattress — Gray, Jumbo Plus/XXL." amazon.com — $64.99, "Only 8 left in stock." Feature bullet: "a calming dog bed space measuring at 51"L x 36"W x 8"H … bolstered edges to provide a supportive headrest for 'leaners,' while the open sleep surface gives 'sprawlers' the room they need" — no interior dimension given. Furhaven's own product page publishes its size chart as an image with no interior figures in text (read 21 August 2026).
Amazon listing B07VBWN862, "PetFusion Extra Large Dog Bed w/ Solid 4" Memory Foam … 44x34x10"." amazon.com — $226.45, availability "Usually ships within 1 to 2 months." Three-sided bolster; no interior dimension published.
Amazon listing B07BMHVWQK, "Casper Dog Bed, Plush Memory Foam, Medium, Gray, 25.0"L x 33.0"W x 6.0"Th." amazon.com — $152.10, In Stock. Feature bullet verbatim: "Inner Sleep Area-25 x 17 x 2 inches." Casper.com publishes inner sleep areas for all three sizes (19 × 12, 25 × 17, 35 × 25) with a 3.5-inch depth its Amazon bullet contradicts — the disagreement is documented on our Casper page.
Amazon listing B0GZJHP73K, "Tempur-Pedic® Pet Mattress Gray," Large. amazon.com — $109.99, In Stock, sold by Standard Fiber (the licensee). Item dimensions 40 × 30 × 11; "Soft, Sculpted Plush Sleep Surface"; no flat-area dimension published.
Amazon listing B0GKC5QV7F, "Sealy® Supportive Pet Mattress." amazon.com — $89.99, In Stock, sold by Standard Fiber. 36 × 27 × 5; "Filled With DuoLoft Shredded Foam & Fiber Blend" — a stuffed bed, so there is no fixed foam surface to measure, which is its own finding.
Amazon listing B001HX4294, "Coolaroo Original Elevated Dog Bed … Grey, Large." amazon.com — $38.54, In Stock. Item dimensions 51 × 31.5 × 8; the sleeping surface is the fabric deck inside the frame tube, for which no deck-only dimension is published on either the listing or coolaroousa.com (maker surfaces last read in full 20 August 2026, including the frame-height contradiction logged then).
Amazon listing B07SRJVJPX, "PupRug Orthopedic Dog Bed … Brown and White, Large/Extra Large." amazon.com — $159.00, "Only 9 left in stock." Item dimensions 55 × 50 × 2 — a rug-format bed: the most sleeping surface per dollar in our stable and the least foam depth under it.
Orvis. "Memory Foam Couch Dog Bed," item 20AM. orvis.com — read 21 August 2026: Medium 40″ × 26″ exterior, 28″ × 21″ interior, dogs 40–60 lbs, $309; Large 44″ × 31″ exterior, 32″ × 25″ interior, dogs 60–90 lbs, $349; X-Large 54″ × 37″ exterior, 39″ × 32″ interior, dogs 90–120 lbs, $389. 3-inch foam except X-Large at 4 inches.
Orvis. "Memory Foam Deluxe Dog Bed," item 20FJ. orvis.com — read 21 August 2026: Medium 34½″ × 26½″ and Large 41½″ × 31½″ "outside dimensions," $398–$469, and no interior or sleeping-surface dimension for any size — re-confirmed absent today, as first reported in our 18 August comparison.
Petmate. "PetFusion" brand collection page. petmate.com — read 21 August 2026: "Now part of the Petmate family, PetFusion continues its mission of delivering high-quality pet products…" 26 PetFusion items listed; the Ultimate memory foam bed is not among them.
petfusion.com — on 21 August 2026 the domain returned a 302 redirect to a Sedo domain-parking sales lander rather than a store. We report the observed redirect; what it implies about the brand's plans is not published anywhere we could find.

Square-inch figures and all percentages are our own arithmetic from the published dimensions above. The 8-to-12-inch rule and the foam-thickness floors are our editorial thresholds, stated in the size chart; no veterinary body publishes a bed-sizing standard, and we say so rather than borrow authority that does not exist.

This article is educational and does not replace veterinary advice. A dog who has recently started avoiding his bed, or is slower to lie down or rise, needs examining before he needs new bedding.

Frequently asked

How do I know what size bed my dog needs?: Measure nose to base of tail while the dog is sleeping stretched out on his side, then add 8 to 12 inches in each direction. That number is the minimum sleeping surface — the flat area he actually lies on, not the outer footprint of the bed. On a flat mattress the two are the same. On a bolstered bed they are not, and the gap is large: on the one bed in our stable that prints both numbers on its Amazon listing, the interior is 25 × 17 inches inside a 33 × 25 inch exterior — about half the footprint.
Why does my dog hang off a bed that is supposedly the right size?: Almost always because the size was chosen against the exterior of a bolstered bed. The listed dimension includes the bolsters, which take anywhere from four to fifteen inches off an axis — on the Orvis Couch X-Large, a 54-inch exterior holds a 39-inch interior. A 44-inch bolstered bed can hold less sleeping surface than a 36-inch flat one. Compare your dog's measurement to the interior — and if the maker does not publish an interior, that is not a detail, it is the answer: you cannot verify the bed fits before buying it.
Do any dog bed brands publish the interior sleeping surface?: Few, and it splits oddly. Casper prints an inner sleep area for every size on its own site and even in an Amazon bullet. Orvis prints interiors for its Memory Foam Couch and RecoveryZone lines but not for its Memory Foam Deluxe, its most expensive bed — re-confirmed absent 21 August 2026. Big Barker, Furhaven, PetFusion and Tempur-Pedic publish no interior figure on the bolstered or pillowed beds we checked. Flat beds — Big Barker Sleek, Bully Beds, K9 Ballistics — sidestep the question, because their entire footprint is sleeping surface.
Is a bigger dog bed always better?: Functionally, an oversized bed almost never hurts — sprawlers use every inch and seniors should never be undersized, because a bed too small to stretch out on forces the tight curl stiff joints can't afford. The exceptions are small nesters who want walls to curl against, and rooms or crates the bed physically won't fit. Undersizing is the error with consequences; our size chart covers the weight-band arithmetic.
Does a bolster make a dog bed worse?: No — for a dog who genuinely posts his head on a raised edge, the bolster is the feature he uses. The problem is only ever arithmetic: the bolster is included in the size on the box and subtracted from the surface the dog gets, and most makers never tell you how much. If your dog is a leaner, buy bolstered — but size it by the interior, and where no interior is published, assume the deduction is bigger than you think.

Know someone whose dog is doing this? Send it to them.

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