Bedsure Elevated Dog Bed Review: Long-Term Use in a Home Boarding Setup

When you run a licensed in-home boarding setup out of your mudroom for eleven years, you learn to judge a dog bed the way a short-order cook judges a grill. You learn which ones come out of the wash looking worse, which ones hold the smell of the last guest no matter what you do, and which ones a nervous first-time boarder will actually sleep on instead of staring at from the corner. The Bedsure elevated dog bed is one of the few that earned a permanent spot in my rotation, and after years of near-daily use, I have a pretty clear picture of what it does well and where it falls short.

I'm Renata. I live on a few acres outside Loveland, Colorado, and for eleven years I boarded four to six guest dogs at a time in a converted mudroom with a fenced side yard. My own dog, Juniper, is a 48-pound Australian Shepherd mix who supervised every single guest like it was her job. This review is about the long haul: how the Bedsure elevated bed held up to a constant stream of dogs, how it cleaned up, and who I'd actually recommend it to.

How I've Used It

I bought my first Bedsure elevated bed in the fall of 2016, about two years into running the boarding business, after a particularly memorable incident involving a nervous beagle we boarded one Christmas and a very expensive orthopedic foam bed. The beagle was fine. The foam bed was not. She had dug a nest in the middle of it within the first hour, and by morning the cover was shredded and the foam core had a hole you could fit a fist through. I needed something that could be hosed off, dried quickly, and wouldn't hold onto the previous dog's scent no matter how many times I washed it.

Since then, the Bedsure bed has been in near-constant rotation. It lives in the boarding room during the day and moves to the covered porch on warm afternoons when the guest dogs want to sun themselves. In the coldest weeks of January it comes back inside and sits against the wall where the heat vent blows on it. On summer afternoons it went back and forth between the mudroom and the porch almost daily from May through September. It's been slept on by Labs, border collies, a senior hound with arthritis, and more puppies than I can count. It's been hosed down, scrubbed with dish soap, sprayed with enzyme cleaner, and left to dry in the Colorado sun more times than I can remember. The frame has never wobbled, the feet have never cracked, and the mesh has never torn, even when a young Lab decided it was a trampoline.

The one thing I'll note up front: this is not a plush bed. If your dog is used to sinking into a thick foam cushion, the mesh surface will feel different at first. Some of my guest dogs took a day to warm up to it. Most of them, especially the ones who ran hot in summer, came around quickly once they figured out the air moved underneath them.

Juniper treated the Bedsure as her inspection station. Every morning before the first guest came out of the boarding room, she'd walk over, give the mesh a sniff, and step onto it to make sure it was still up to her standards. She's 48 pounds, so the large size gave her room to stretch out without hanging off the edges. I mention this because a bed that a picky herding dog approves of is a bed most guest dogs will accept, and that was the real test for me.

What Makes the Bedsure Elevated Bed Different

The whole idea of an elevated bed is that it gets the dog off the floor. That sounds simple, but it does a lot of work. In summer, air circulates under the mesh and carries heat away, which matters in a boarding room with four or five warm bodies in it. In winter, it keeps the dog off a cold concrete or tile floor. And because the surface is mesh, any accidents or drool drain right through instead of soaking into a foam core. On a 95-degree July afternoon you could feel the difference between the mesh and the concrete beside it, and the dogs knew it too.

The frame is what sold me. It's a sturdy steel tube design that assembles in about a minute without tools. The first one I put together on the mudroom floor in under two minutes while a border collie watched from the doorway, and it never needed tightening again. The legs have rubber feet that grip the floor, which matters when a 70-pound dog decides to rearrange the bed at 2 a.m. I'd had a cheaper elevated bed before this one, a no-name brand from a big box store, and it folded up like a cheap lawn chair the first time a heavy Lab stepped on it. The legs buckled inward and the mesh sagged to the floor. I returned it the same week and ordered the Bedsure instead.

The mesh surface is a woven fabric that's taut but has a little give. It's not like sleeping on a trampoline, which is what I expected. It's more like a firm hammock. The frame sits high enough off the floor that air moves underneath, but low enough that even the senior hound with arthritis could step onto it without help. Dogs who like to sprawl flat seem to do fine on it. Dogs who like to curl up in a ball also do fine, since the mesh gives just enough to cradle them slightly. The 49-inch size fit the largest guests, including a Great Dane mix who boarded with us one summer, with room to spare.

Cleaning and Maintenance: The Real Test

This is where the Bedsure bed wins, and it's not close. A foam bed that gets peed on is a project. You have to strip the cover, wash it, pray the inner foam didn't soak through, and then wait two days for everything to dry. An elevated bed gets hosed off in two minutes. The mesh doesn't absorb anything, so the smell doesn't linger the way it does in foam. I found that out one night when a young Lab with a nervous stomach had an accident at 2 a.m. With a foam bed, that would have meant a 2 a.m. laundry project and a bed out of commission for days. With the Bedsure, I carried it to the porch, hosed it down, and it was dry by breakfast.

My routine was simple. Once a week, or more often if a guest had an accident, I'd take the bed outside, hose off the mesh, scrub it with a little dish soap, rinse it, and lean it against the fence to dry. In Colorado sun, it was dry in under an hour. If something had soaked through to the frame, I'd spray it with enzyme cleaner and wipe it down with a damp rag. The mesh cover is removable and machine washable, and I did run it through the washing machine a few times over the years when a guest was particularly messy. It always came out clean and went right back on the frame without a fight.

The mesh also doesn't hold fur the way fabric beds do. It sheds most of it, and what's left brushes off in seconds. For someone running a boarding business, that alone is worth a lot. I've washed plenty of beds that took three cycles to stop shedding guest dog hair. The Bedsure bed never needed that. A quick pass with a rubber grooming mitt and it looked like new, ready for the next guest.

A foam bed that gets peed on is a project. The Bedsure bed gets hosed off in two minutes and dries in the sun in under an hour. That's the whole difference.

How It Held Up Over Time

I'll be honest about the wear. After about three years of steady use, the mesh on my first Bedsure bed developed a slight sag in the middle. Not a tear, not a hole, just a little more give than when it was new. A 70-pound yellow Lab slept in the exact same spot every night for two straight weeks one winter, and that's when I first noticed it. The middle dipped maybe an inch and a half when he stepped off. It never became unusable, and the bed still supported dogs fine, but if you're particular about a perfectly taut surface, you'll notice it eventually.

The frame, on the other hand, looked almost new after years of use. No rust, no wobble, no cracked feet. I did have one rubber foot pop off when I dragged the bed across the porch, but it pushed right back on. The mesh never tore, even with puppies who treated it as a chew toy. I had one determined chewer, a terrier mix who boarded with us for a week, who managed to put a small hole in the corner of the mesh. She worked on it for three days before she got through. That's a dog who could destroy a crate pad in an afternoon, so I don't hold it against the bed. I patched the hole with a scrap of nylon and it held for another year.

The fabric has faded a little from all the sun, but that's cosmetic. The stitching has held. The zipper on the mesh cover, which is removable for washing, has never jammed, which is more than I can say for some beds that cost twice as much. I bought a second Bedsure bed in 2020 so I could rotate them, and it has been through the same routine with the same results. The first one is still in the garage, waiting for a foster dog or a warm afternoon, and it's still perfectly usable.

Who This Is For

The Bedsure elevated bed is for anyone who needs a bed that can take a beating and come out clean. It's ideal for boarding facilities, doggy daycares, kennels, and people with dogs who spend time outside. It's also great for dogs who run hot, since the airflow underneath keeps them cooler than any foam bed I've used. If you have a dog who likes to sleep on the cool bathroom floor in summer, this bed gives them that same feeling while keeping them off the hard tile.

It's also a good choice for a multi-dog household where beds get rotated, washed, and shared. Because it doesn't hold odor, you don't have to worry about one dog's scent putting off another. In my boarding room, that was a real concern. A new guest who could smell the last guest on a foam bed would sometimes refuse to lie down. That never happened with the Bedsure bed.

Who Should Skip It

If your dog has arthritis, hip dysplasia, or any condition that needs deep orthopedic support, this is not the bed for them. The mesh is firm and supportive, but it's not a cushion. My vet's advice has always been that older dogs with joint issues do better on a thick orthopedic foam bed with good pressure relief. I'd point you to that kind of bed instead, and I'd say the same thing to anyone who asked me in person.

I'd also skip it for a dog who is a dedicated chewer of anything fabric. The mesh is tough, but it's not indestructible, and a dog who is determined to shred a bed will eventually find a way. And if your dog needs a sense of being enclosed or nested to sleep, a flat elevated bed won't give them that. Some of my guest dogs who liked to burrow under blankets never fully loved the Bedsure bed. They'd use it, but they preferred a cave-style bed when they had the choice.