Veehoo Chew Proof Elevated Bed Review: Living With It Every Day With a 58-Pound Pit Bull

Two foam beds in eleven months. That is the number that finally made me stop buying whatever the pet aisle had on the shelf and start reading the box instead. Biscuit is my six-year-old blue-nose pit bull, 58 pounds of jaw and stubborn, and she does not chew out of boredom or worry. She chews because the edge of a soft bed feels good between her back teeth, and once a seam opens, that bed is finished. I would come home to a snowstorm of foam across the living room rug and a dog looking up at me like I had clearly bought the wrong item.

Fourteen months ago I bought the Veehoo Chew Proof Elevated Dog Bed in the 42 by 30 inch size. It lives on my covered back patio through the warm months and in the corner of my living room when the cold comes, and in all that time there is no hole in it, no torn seam, and nothing pulled loose. There is no foam inside it to pull out in the first place, which turns out to be the entire point. I am writing this down because it took me two ruined beds and a great deal of vacuuming to work that out, and if your dog is the same kind of chewer, you can skip the vacuuming.

How I've Used It

The bed came flat in a box with the screws and a hex tool included, and I put it together myself on the patio in about twenty minutes with a glass of iced tea and my reading glasses on. There was no point where I needed a second pair of hands to hold four pieces in line while I turned something. I am 56 and I am not handy, and I still got it square on the first try. The frame is aluminum, the cot surface pulls tight across it, and the finished bed measures 42.13 by 29.92 by 7.09 inches and weighs 7.76 pounds.

Because it weighs under eight pounds I move it alone. In warm weather it stays out on the covered patio where Biscuit can watch the gate and the alley. When the cold comes I carry it inside and set it in the corner by the bookshelf, and it takes about thirty seconds each way. That sounds like a small thing until you have owned a bed that had to be dragged across a floor with a dog standing on it. Fourteen months of that back and forth and the frame is still square, the fabric is still tight, and I have not had to patch it, tape it, or take it away from her.

What I do not do with it is treat it as a crate or a place to park her. It is where she rests, and that is all. The walks are the harness, the chewing is the rubber toy in the freezer, the bath is the shampoo, and this bed is the rest. Keeping those jobs separate has made all of them easier to judge. When something goes wrong with one of them I know which thing to look at, instead of blaming the whole pile of gear at once.

Why an Elevated Cot Ended the Chewing

A foam bed gives a determined dog a starting point. There is a seam, the seam has thread, and the thread can be worried loose with a back tooth over the course of an afternoon. Once it lets go, the foam comes out in chunks the exact size and texture of a toy, and the game is on. Biscuit was never eating beds out of anxiety or spite. She was working an edge, which is what she does with anything soft left where she can reach it. Take the edge away and there is nothing to work.

The Veehoo bed has no foam core and no loose cover to get a grip on. The sleeping surface is a cot fabric stretched taut across the frame, and there is no seam sitting proud where a tooth can get underneath. The listing calls it chew resistant rather than chew proof, and I noticed the wording, because I have learned to read for the difference. What I can tell you is that after fourteen months of daily use by a 58 pound pit bull there is no damage on mine that I can find. That is one dog, not a laboratory.

The frame also changes what happens underneath. This bed holds Biscuit seven inches off the ground, so air moves under her instead of a foam slab holding her body heat against the tile. On a July afternoon in Albuquerque that is the difference between a dog who gets up every ten minutes and a dog who sleeps through the worst of the heat. The bottom of the frame has a non skid surface, so it does not skate across the floor when she launches onto it, and the surface is stain resistant, which matters if your patio has a mud season.

What Biscuit Thinks of It

Biscuit ignored it for the first week. She sniffed the legs, walked a full circle around it, and lay down on the concrete beside it with her chin on her paws, watching me like I had insulted her. I did not push it. I put one of her old blankets on top for a few days and then took the blanket off, and around the eighth day she stepped up and went to sleep. What finally convinced her, I think, was me sitting on the edge of it. I am not proud of how long I sat there. But she came over, put her front paws up, and that was that.

What she does on it now is sprawl. The 42 by 30 inch surface is long enough that she can stretch out flat instead of curling into a ball, which she could never do on the smaller foam beds. She runs hot anyway, and this surface does not hold heat the way fabric over foam does. In August she will lie on it in the shade for two hours and get up cool rather than damp. Fourteen months in, it is the first place she goes after a walk, before the water bowl.

The honest part about comfort is that this bed is firm. There is no padding under her hips and elbows, just the taut cot surface. Biscuit is six and she does not have arthritis that I know of, but on a cold morning she gets up a little stiff, and I notice it more on this bed than I did on foam. If your dog is older, or already sore, or likes to sink into something, this is not the soft option. It is the option that survives.

She worked the edge of every foam bed I bought her. There is no edge here for her to work.

How It Compared to the Foam Beds I Replaced

The two beds before this one were both foam, both soft, and both gone inside six months. The first got shredded along the front seam. The second lasted longer only because I flipped it over and hid the damage from myself for a while. What foam gave me was a bed that felt good to a dog and dissolved under a determined jaw, and what that cycle gave me was the feeling that I was buying the same product over and over with a different label on the box.

I am not going to pretend the Veehoo bed is as comfortable as foam, because it is not. Foam has give. It cradles. A dog sinks in and stays warm. This is a taut surface over a frame and it feels like what it is. What I got in exchange is a bed that has survived fourteen months of the exact behavior that killed the other two. That trade is worth it to me. It might not be worth it to you, and you should decide that before you order rather than after.

The other difference is upkeep. A foam bed goes in the washing machine when it gets dirty, or at least the cover does, and then it goes in the dryer. This one does not. You wipe it or hose it off and leave it in the sun to dry. Twice this year Biscuit came in from the yard with wet muddy feet and got up on it anyway, and both times I wiped the surface down and it came clean. Stain resistant is not the same as self cleaning, but it is a lot better than a cover I have to unzip.

Where It Falls Short

The firmness is the first real drawback and I have already said so. The second is the shape. Biscuit used to rest her chin on the raised edge of her foam beds, and there is no bolster here, nothing to lean against. She solved it by hanging her head off the side, which looks miserable and apparently is not. But if your dog sleeps curled into a corner and leans on the walls of the bed all night, this flat cot gives them nothing to lean on, and they may go back to the floor.

The third is size. The 42 by 30 inch model suits my 58 pound dog with room to spare, and the listing recommends this size for dogs in the Labrador and collie range. If your dog is bigger than that, measure before you order, because this surface is not going to stretch. The fourth is assembly. Twenty minutes and a hex tool is not a hardship in my house, but it is not tool free either, and if you are the kind of person who returns anything that needs a screwdriver, know that going in.

The last thing, and this is the one I would want somebody to tell me. Chew resistant is a claim about fabric on a frame, not a promise about your dog. I got fourteen months of clean use out of mine because Biscuit works soft edges and this bed does not have one. A dog who is determined to get through hard material is a different animal, and I would not tell you that my result is going to be your result. I would tell you it is the best run I have had.

Who This Is For

This is for the owner of a strong, heavy chewer who has already lost a bed or two and is tired of the cycle. It suits a dog in the 50 to 70 pound range who runs hot, likes to sprawl flat, and spends time on a patio or in a yard where a raised cot makes sense. It suits a household where the bed has to move with the seasons, because this one is light enough that one person can do it. And it suits anyone who would rather hose something off than unzip a cover.

It also suits the person who has been told their dog is too strong for soft bedding. I heard that for two years and mostly ignored it. What I would say now is that the dog is not too strong for soft bedding, the soft bedding is just the wrong shape for her jaw. Once the shape changed, the problem stopped. That is a small distinction and it cost me two beds to learn. If you are where I was, standing in the aisle wondering whether the more expensive one is any different from the cheap one, this is the one that was different for me.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your dog is a senior with sore hips, or a dog you know sleeps better with padding and a wall to lean on. Skip it if your dog is a determined chewer of hard plastic and metal, because chew resistant fabric on an aluminum frame is not the same challenge as foam, and my result does not transfer to that dog. Skip it if the bed has to go into the washing machine, because this one has to be wiped or hosed and left to dry. And skip it if you want something soft, because it is not.

The one thing I would ask you to do before you decide is measure your dog while they are stretched out flat, not while they are curled up. Biscuit measures a good deal longer asleep than she looks standing in the kitchen. The 42 by 30 inch surface fits her with room to spare, but a bigger dog on the same surface would be hanging off it, and a bed a dog hangs off is a bed a dog stops using. That is a ten second job with a tape measure and it saves a return.