The Day I Tried EHEYCIGA Orthopedic XL Dog Bed for Hazel

The morning I noticed was a Tuesday in September, early, before the dew dried off the backyard. Hazel was on the kitchen floor where she lies while I make coffee, and when she got up she took her time. Then she went out, came back, and stood at the bottom of the two brick steps without climbing. She had never done that. I stood at the screen door with my coffee going cold and pretended I had not seen it.

I am not a veterinarian. I am 61, retired from the church office here in Aiken, and what I know about dogs comes from the ones I have had, mostly this one. Before I changed anything I called Dr. Patel and asked her what she thought.

In January I ordered the EHEYCIGA orthopedic extra large dog bed for the corner of the living room. Before that she had a flat pillow bed, thin as a pancake by last winter, and when she lay on it her hips were on the floor. The only other thing I had done was put a runner rug down the hallway, because the laminate in this house is slick.

The bed is 44 inches long, 32 wide and 6.5 thick. The EHEYCIGA listing describes memory foam plus egg crate foam, bolsters on three sides, and the front left open so a dog walks straight on without stepping over anything. There is a waterproof film between the fleece surface and the bottom fabric, a removable cover, and a non-skid bottom. The listing gives a 100 pound maximum. Hazel is 64.

It came rolled and compressed, and the instructions say to let it expand for 24 to 48 hours, so I did, in the spare room where the cat would not get on it. The first night I put it down in the corner of the living room. Hazel sniffed the bolsters, turned around twice, and lay on the laminate next to it. The second night she got on it.

The first night she lay on the laminate next to it. The second night she got on it and stayed.

Ten months later the EHEYCIGA bed is still in that corner, and it is where she naps in the late afternoon while I am out with the tomato beds. It has not moved, and that is the non-skid bottom doing its job on a slick floor. I wash the cover about every two weeks, which the listing makes possible because the cover comes off. It does come off. Getting it back on is a wrestle, and I have gotten better at it and I still do not enjoy it.

The waterproof film the listing mentions has earned its keep twice, once when she came in wet from the garden and once in March when her stomach was off. The bed takes up a good deal of floor. In a small room it would be a piece of furniture, not a cushion you kick out of the way. After ten months there is a shallow dent in the foam where her hips go. That is foam doing what foam does, and it has not changed how she lies on it, but I will not tell you it looks new, because it does not.

Here is what I will not tell you. I will not tell you this bed fixed the way she gets up. She is 10 years old, she is slower than she was two years ago, and she still takes her time off the kitchen floor in the morning. What I noticed is narrower than that. She circles less before she lies down. She used to leave the old bed and finish the night on the floor, and she does not do that anymore.

One more thing about the word orthopedic on the listing. It is a description, not a medical device. What the EHEYCIGA listing actually says is memory foam and egg crate foam, and foam holds a heavy dog up in a way a thin pillow does not. Read the foam, not the adjective. And talk to your own vet before you decide a bed is the answer to anything, the way I talked to Dr. Patel before I ordered mine.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to measure your dog first. Hazel is 64 pounds and the extra large is generous on her, which is what I wanted, because she likes to stretch out flat. If your dog is smaller, a bed this size is mostly floor space. I would also tell you to give it the full two days the instructions ask for before you make up your mind, because that foam comes out of the box flat and it needs the time.

I would tell you that a vet visit is the first call when a dog gets stiff and slow, not a shopping cart. I say that as a woman who made the call second. I would tell you a bed is one small piece of a routine. In this house the routine is a chew with breakfast, oil over her kibble, a bite in the evening, the socks on the laminate, and the EHEYCIGA bed at night. I cannot tell you which of those matters most. I can tell you she still does her slow walk around the block every morning, and that is the thing I count.

And I would tell you to buy a bed you can wash and one that does not slide when a dog pushes off it, because she will push off it, and the non-skid bottom on the EHEYCIGA has kept it in the corner where I put it. That is the whole of my advice. It is not much. But nobody is paying me to say it, and I am only telling you what happened in my living room.