LifeStages Dog Crate

I purchased many many crates for my dogs in the past 45 years, I bought the cheapest and I bought the most expensive. You used to have to get them at the pet store and pay anywhere from $90-$200 for standard great. Thank goodness for Amazon. I just added to my "stable" of dogs with an eight-week-old golden retriever named Bentley. Now he's just a little guy weighing in at 12 pounds but he will get bigger. Right now he fits in a small crate and I mean fits. He can get in it but he can't lay down or turn around. I needed to get him a crate he can grow into so I went online to Amazon and looked around. I saw my old friends Midwest who stood by me with durable crates during my dog show days. They always made a sturdy crate out of heavy-duty material that was well engineered and well put together. It's been a few years since I bought a crate and a few things have changed. Pretty much now everybody offers a folding crate that wasn't so back in the day Midwest was one of the first to offer that feature and they did it well and they still do. They have a variety of sizes more so than most manufacturers so I chose the middle middle size which is a little bigger than other manufacturers middle size. Some of the features I like was this one has double doors, one on the side and one on the end. Each closes and locks sturdily and securely with two hasps on each door. Nowadays the bottom tray is made of plastic instead of steel so with a little lighter and more resistant to corrosion and easily cleaned. I ordered this crate and it came promptly from Amazon as I am an Amazon prime member. It was packaged well and arrived without damage and I had it set up in less than 5 min.. The only problem was the location where I was going to use it was against a wall and the doors were all wrong. Well I solved that by swapping the ends by bending back four hooks on each end, then squeezing them tight again to finish up, this took all of 3 min. to do in my crate or I should say that Bentleys crate was ready to go. One of the big advantages of having the second door is that when I wanted to introduce Bentley to crate I left both doors open so he could wander in and out at his leisure. I placed a few toys and water bowl in their as well as a wee wee pad and some bedding. He was curious and wandered in and out. I will admit however, the first night he was full of screams and barks and crying for most of the night. It was his first night in a crate. The second night I placed him in the crate and he laid down and was quiet until early morning. When he saw me and heard me moving around a little bit he started vocalizing so I took him out. The Crate also comes with a divider so you can change the size as your dog grows. At this point I'm not even using divider and giving Bentley full run of the crate. I am really glad that Amazon is selling these and the price is phenomenal. If you go to a pet store I'm sure you will easily over $150 for this crate or poorly made imitation. I really recommend Midwest and I think you'll be very happy with the quality and the operation of this crate. if you're a first-time buyer, check the AKC standards for how big your dog will be, then buyer accordingly. Don't buy too small as you will have to buy bigger later on. I give this five stars I love it I know you will too and it's recommended buyIf you found my review helpful please click yes on the button below I really appreciate your support for that I intend to leave reviews to help others make decisions prior to purchase taste upon my recommendations or disclosure and I utilize your reviews to help me with my purchases as well. my reviews are honest factual and accurate thank you

I will say that I do not use this for a puppy, so I cannot state how it stands up to the excitement, activity, digging, and chewing of a puppy. I bought this for my older dog who suddenly and unexpectedly needed crate rest to heal a spinal injury. He is a ~55-60lb border collie, and this crate is perfect for his size. It seems huge in our living space, but he can just stand up (with a crate bed in it) without hitting his head on the top. He seems to like the space and has enough room to move around. He doesn't dig at it (did once briefly but not enough to tell how well it would stand up to regular scratching and digging). It was very easy to put up, which was nice. It's heavy and not something you want to be moving around much (we thought we'd move it up and down stairs regularly, but have decided not to due to its heft and our disinterest in having to take the pad out and fold it down each time). I do not think this will fit through a regular doorway when set up, but we have not tried.Crate water bowls work great on the wires of this, you can put them at any height.Having 2 doors is nice because it gave us options to figure out how to fit it into our living space where he could still be part of the family, but now we don't use 1 of the doors as it is against a table. (So if you really don't need the 2 doors and know where you'll put it to make 1 door work, don't pay extra for the 2nd door.) We keep that extra door latched and padlocked just in case he wanted to try to dig or shove the door open when we were gone for an extended time. (I worry he'd be able to unlatch a latch enough to get his head or neck stuck, as he's always been adept at using his nose/head/neck for opening gates and doors meant to keep him out.) My one concern is the latch system on this crate. It is fine and easy to use for people, but I don't trust that a dog who is digging excitedly at the latches and/or pushing at the sides wouldn't get lucky and pop the latch up and eventually open, so when we leave we also use carabiner clips on the one door we use for entry/exit, to be sure the latches don't pop up. It works well and gives me peace of mind that I won't arrive home to an already-injured dog with his head/neck stuck partway out of the crate.The IMK9 "travel dog bed for car or suv...48x28 size pad for large pet crate" works fabulously in here. It fits perfectly, and I thread the snap strap (for keeping the dog bed rolled up if not in use) through the crate wires and snap it closed in order to keep it in place. (Again, this is an older dog, so it works well since he's not too active or hell-bent on moving this pad around or digging under it. It would be nice if there were snap straps on each end to help a dog who might try to dig the pad up, you could strap it around either end of the crate.) You can see my review for that product on its product page.All in all, this was a good purchase for us and I appreciate that the price was affordable as we were not in a place to look around much or take our time deciding since our dog needed a crate ASAP to start healing. We've spent a lot of money on vet care and meds during this dog health crisis, and having to shell out much more than this (plus crate pad and bowls) would have been really hard to do.