What Size Kennel Does My Dog Need?

Kennels and Their Uses

• A dog kennel (also called a crate) is a portable cage made of wire or plastic and wire combinations that has a front door panel that latches shut. Dog owners use kennels to give their dogs private "dens" to retreat to and sleep in, as a tool for housebreaking dogs, and for transporting the animals from place to place safely. Many people put their dogs in kennels overnight so the dog can't get into mischief during the night.

How Big?

• Standard sizes for dog kennels are 18-22 inches, 24 inches, 30 inches, 36 inches, 42 inches, 48 inches and 54 inches. The size you buy depends entirely on how large your dog is. According to "Dog Owner's Guide," an online magazine, a kennel should be just large enough for the dog to walk into, turn around, and lie down in comfortably.

Buying a Kennel

• If your dog is still a puppy, you probably won't want to keep buying larger crates as it grows up, so the most financially reasonable approach is to buy a crate large enough to accommodate your dog when it is fully grown. Of course, individual dogs may grow up to be smaller or larger than their breed standard, so you may have to make your best guess as to which size will work for your dog.

Warning

• There's a drawback to this theory, however. The reason that crate training helps you to housebreak your dog is because by nature, a dog doesn't want to soil its sleeping quarters. Thus when you put the puppy into the crate, it will wait to relieve itself until you take it out again.
  You can run into a problem, though, if your puppy will be much larger when it's grown. A male 10-week-old great-Dane puppy, for instance, probably won't be much more than a foot tall and not much longer than that, but when he grows up, he will stand at least 30 inches high at the shoulder and measure a little more than that from shoulder to tail. Thus, if you put that puppy in a kennel big enough to accommodate him when he's grown, there's plenty of room for the pup to relieve himself at one end and still keep his bed clean.
  Fortunately, you can buy kennels that have removable panels, which you can put in place to reduce the area the pup has access to.

Amenities

• If you intend to use the kennel to transport your dog by air or vehicle, be sure it has little dishes attached to the inside of the door for holding food and water.