I've never been a big Costco shopper but I've always known they have the best deals in dog beds. I found myself there recently and saw 42" x 36" rectangular beds on sale for $18.99. Do you know how ginormous 42" x 36" is? That's the kind of bed that would have fit my 130 lb german shepherd comfortably.
My only complaint about the beds was that they were too big and would take up too much floor space. Still, I couldn't resist buying at least one to see how they would fit in our house.
I've learned a few things over the past few years from fostering. First off, if a dog has an accident on a dog bed, you're kind of out of luck. You can wash the bed cover, but the stuffing in most beds are not washable, or otherwise, too big to fit in a normal washer. So if any urine (or worse) seeps through the cover and into the stuffing, there's not much you can do to really clean it.
With Popeye's ongoing allergies, I've also become much more aware of dust mites. Beds, including the dog beds, are a magnet for them.
So with this spanking new Costco dog bed, I decided to try to protect it as best as I could. I read that goretex, a synthetic fabric that is waterproof and breathable often used in outerwear, can help protect beds from dust mites because the pores in the fabric are smaller than the size of the mites. That means that the mites are too big to pass through the fabric. Some HEPA filters utilize goretex for this reason.
I happened to have tons of leftover goretex-like material from back when I was making the mermaid pants for Popeye's hind legs. So I made an inner cover for the new dog bed. I didn't have a piece of fabric that was large enough for the bed so I just sewed 2 pieces together and basically made an oversized pillowcase. At first I was going to attach a zipper but then realized it wasn't necessary. There was just enough fabric to make the length super long, so instead of a zipper to seal the cover, I could just fold over the excess length.
Place the bed stuffing inside the waterproof case.
And then put the regular bed cover over it.
This particular bed is going in one of the XL crates in our bedroom that Boomer and Phoebe like to sleep in.
Now, should we ever have a dog in the future that has an accident on the dog bed, we can just remove and wash both covers and the stuffing will remain clean. Additionally, the inner cover will prevent at least somewhat (the fabric isn't "goretex", just something similar and I'm not actually sure how small the pores are) dust mites from inhabiting the stuffing.
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