I am in the market for a couple of heated dog beds. The old girls need a little TLC for these Winter temps. They are sheltered from the rain and wind, but still the porch is very cold. I try to preheat the porch area before going off to work, but it really is impractical the way I'm handling the problem to date. Need some help here.

Have any of you tried a heated bed for your dogs? Any experiences...good and bad?

Thanks

Never looked into a heated dog bed before. What kind of dogs? Do they sleep together or seperate when its cold? Dogs retain their heat on the surface they lay. Different strategies for different dogs. They may not even be cold and may reject the heated bed because its too warm.

You need to look at how they sleep when its cold out. Do they stay balled up the entire time or do they lay on their side after a bit? If they stayed balled up the entire time then they are trying their best to trap the heat. If they ball up a while and then turn over, stretch out, lay flat then they have built up enough het on their bed and are comfortable. You migh try just increasing the thickness of the insulating barrier they sleep on. Maybe try a piece of 1.5 inch styrofoam insulation under their bed. I had a timber wolf/huskie/sledd dog once and he didn't need any of that. He was fine on the concrete with just a blanket (tough sumb!tch) and moved off anything I thought would keep him warmer.

I now have a lab and a pointer and usually I am only concerned with the pointer getting cold because he dosent have any insulating hair. When it gets real cold like this (5 degrees here this morning) I put his neoprene hunting vest on before I go. Both dogs pile into one dog house where I have a huge costco dog bed stuffed in there. They share and generate heat and are fine although happy to get back in the house when we get home.

Search - Hound heater dog house furnace.
I be afraid of chewing with the pad's
I use a small electric heater with thermo. kinda ducted to back of 2 crates.(heater is away from anything remotely flammable)Crates are also on styrofoam ins. as above.I only use this at night though otherwise there outside in kennels with dog houses stuffed with cedar shaving's

looking into hound Hound heater for outside kennel look's pretty good.

Keep us posted on what you come up with

Slab, open the door and let them sleep on you're bed..problem solved.

I'm a softy with my newer dog. I put in a dog door. After his initial teething crap everything has been aces.
He did not dig the dog run and I didn't feel like dealing with the neighbors....
Last dog loved the run.

Next we'll be hearing about heated fish hooks so the fish doesn't suffer a "brain freeze"...

Well, one of the dogs is approaching 17 years old and is a short haired border collie mix....got her as a right-off-the-nipple pup. She's old, feeble, and a little rickety, mostly deaf and more of a road block as one maneuver's about the house, but I love her and I'll try to see that she gets what she needs.
The other is a 12+ year old lab mix who is somewhat more capable of handling the cold, but these temperatures push her abilities to the limit.

The two don't sleep together and will complain if their space is infringed upon by the other. Both have outside beds, one is a house designed originally for three dogs with separate compartments. That got reduced to two compartments briefly, but is now one big compartment with three doors. As I write this, I think that perhaps converting it back to two compartments may be the thing to do. It is padded with a 6" memory foam floor and blankets on top. The doors are mill felt.
The second bed is made of two vinyl covered boat seat pads (each made of two inch foam) and a bed comforter folded on top. It sits in the open air against the house beneath a semi - enclosed porch.
I have been keeping a parabolic heater set on medium pointed at the open bed. It's on all day. The dog house gets heated briefly in the morning with a propane heater (like used in drift boats), but I turn off the heater when I leave for work.

I'm thinking that two heated dog beds would be satisfactory and less of a fire hazard, but have no experience with them. I thought about an electric blanket, but I seem to recall warnings about piling the wires on top of each other, and I'm concerned that the dog(s) would do just that while "making" their bed.

I've got to make a decision soon.....Winter's coming.

I put heat tape into the floor of a dog house once..my lab loved it.

Built a fancy dog house for my blue healer.she never went in it always slept on the flat roof,rain or shine.She was a tough critter.

Sounds like your dogs have a great dad Slab Happy, I can't imagine a better set-up than what you described already.

I know you won't start shopping for a pup, but someone should give you one...

As you guys know from the coon post I have a dog door into my laundry room, works great if you can deal with the raccoons helping themselves to the dog food on occasions.

Shinything - Healers rock! Best dog(s) I've ever had! Three in 40 years was enough for me. I could not deal with another loss. Good memories.

Captain

I gave up mine in the divorce.At that time I had k.c(healer) and bear(blk lab).

K.C was a great dog but she was not exactly the most social critter.She would never back down from a fight and she would go straight for the jugular,no rubbing teeth with her.Watched her litterally rip thr lower lip off a puppy.If she could catch it was dead.Including mother in laws pet squirrel,and several grouse.

I left her with the ex as I decided she was better of staying home and being the watch dog than she did out with me every day on the jobsite being social.i think her problem came from being rescued from a bad situation where as a pup she had to fight for food with some odd 14 dogs and was for awhile living on dog flesh.I loved her dearly though.