Do you take a dog sleeping bag with you?

I was just thinking about this while hiking today. For those of you who have a pooch, do you take a sleeping bag specifcally for your dog to sleep in. How do you keep your pup warm at night?

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Dogs are surprisingly resilient, so unless you have a hairless dog, they can do very well in cool temps! That said, I do take a blanket for them to lay on, and assuming my tent is the right size (ie: don’t take a 6 person tent for just you and the dog) your body heat and sleeping bag are enough to snuggle with! Saves pack space if you don’t need a doggy bed!

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We bring a small dog bed for the tent. No covers needed! They’ll snuggle up with you if they get cold.

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I don’t take a sleeping bag, but I do bring an extra tarp/cover for the bottom of my tent. I have an ultralight Big Agnes tent, so it’s fairly thin. My dog likes to sleep in my tent with me, and I learned the hard way that her nails can easily rip a hole in the foot of my tent.

After having it repaired more than once, I always carry some liner :slight_smile:

Sleeps in bed - might as well over space in bag. But our mostly chooses to sleep on mat where he can see out windows. He loves watching the “night”

My pup is pretty warm-natured, so if it’s going to be cold enough that I think she’ll get cold I usually let her sleep in the tent. With that said, I do have a sleeping pad that I take for her, but that is primarily because she has her own pack so I don’t have to worry about the extra weight.

Definitely depends on the breed!
Short-haired dogs are obviously going to be significantly more sensitive to a cold night in the mountains. Labs, Pits, Vizslas, German SHORTHAIRS… lol.

Yeah, they are going to need a decent dog coat or “dog sleeping bag” of some sort. But your medium-long haired dogs, as @Amy_G mentioned, are very resilient to cold weather. Remember, Coyotes and Wolves live out there 24/7, and their genome is identical to your dog’s - the only difference is cosmetic (the way we’ve bred them to look).

We camp with our Siberian Husky often and he’s never had anymore than a small wool blanket to lay on and snuggle with (mid December, High Uinta Mountains - https://youtu.be/Qug6WDvBUe0)

Camping with a pup is the best!!! :smile:

My Zeus tends to sleep on the bed with me, but I’m single so it’s not a problem. During the day he spends most of it on the sofa (I have to keep it covered with a blanket to keep the dog hair at bay)…

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We’ve got two hounds that backpack with us and they definitely want to be IN the sleeping bag with us, even if there isn’t actually any room. So while we have a sleeping bag for the fidos, we’ve just created a system (what that looks like depends on the season and temps) that allows us to sleep well with the dogs in our bag(s) as well. They have plenty of hair but that’s their preference and we don’t mind letting them in.

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My dog, as far as I know, hasn’t even been in a tent his whole six years of life. However, sometimes I sleep in a sleeping bag at home, and he always loves to climb on top of me, lay down on my chest (keep in mind this is a ~70 pound black american labrador retriever who thinks he could be one of those little microorganisms that live on your skin and has no idea that personal space exists), even snuggle up in my sleeping bag with me sometimes. He does the same thing when he sleeps in my bed. He’s just a giant lapdog in his mind. So, it really depends on your dog and what they like to do. Do they get cold easy? Would you be okay with them sleeping in your bag? Would they even go in a sleeping bag? What kind of dog are they?

My short haired boxer does totally fine without anything special. We bring a layer to protect the floor of the tent; a little tougher than a standard emergency blanket, but the same idea. Ruffwear and Nemo make specific things for this, but the cheap option seems to work pretty well. We lay it over the human sleeping pads so those don’t get punctured either.
With the heat of two humans and one dog, it makes for a cozy night for all of us! We’ve camped with her in all seasons, even winter. She is a bed stealer though; if I don’t zip my bag closed for a nighttime bathroom run she will definitely be in it and will be immobile when I get back!!!

We take an extra sleeping bag for our two small dogs to share ( chihuahua mixes). We just drape it over their two small dogs beds and they make it work.

Sleep is so important for me, I prefer them to be warm over cold so they don’t shift around all night.

I’ve never camped in a place cold enough to need a sleeping bag for my shorthaired dog but if I did I would definitely get this adorable doggy sleeping bag:

We have the Ruffwear Highlands sleeping bag and pad for both our dogs. We use them as their main dog beds in the house and we take them in the teardrop, but when backpacking the dogs usually just snuggle up on our sleeping bags if they need to