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As you can see from the images below, the most popular dog crates are the wire ones. I think people prefer them because we like the open look of them as well as for the practical detail that these fold flat, which can make them easy to carry. In hot weather, they are specially good for allowing fresh air to pass through them.

Dog crates come with metal pans for the bottoms, typically easy to slide out for cleaning. The metal isn’t the most comfortable thing for the dog, so a bed  or something comfortable is recommended. The Midwest crates are made by a company that has been in business for close to a hundred years. You may not be familiar with the Amazon Basics brand that often shows up on this list: Amazon has examined some of the products that they sell a lot of and made their own versions. The Amazon Basic products I’ve bought have been economical and sturdy. (I’ve got a computer mouse that’s taken rough handling.)

If your dog or puppy likes the hidden feeling of a den, you can put the crate in the corner of a room, thereby automatically giving your friend a bit of a protected feeling. That’s what we did with our Rottweiler, Lola, shown below lounging in her crate with several toys handy. She likes being able to look out the window. What the photo doesn’t show is that we put a piece of wood on top of the crate, cut to its dimensions, and then we had another table in our living room! We used it for houseplants.

You can also sew a dog crate cover, and that link takes you to an article here on this site with instructions for doing that… scroll down near the bottom. Many dogs love the cozy feeling this gives the crate. And for that reason, some dogs seem to prefer the crates built with a lot of plastic. These are the types often called airline-safe.

You may wonder why these things are called dog crates rather than dog cages. I don’t know the history of the usages, but the word crates just has a nicer feeling. Cages sound too much like where a dog would be confined at a vet hospital or a pet shelter.

This list is created by a bit of software I use which updates daily, so that it shows the most recent dog crates in the top ten at Amazon. (If the page happened to load without the images, just reload the page or wait a bit and they should appear.)

Since this list often includes exercise pens as well as crates, you may see both here. That’s fine with me, because we have an ex pen, as they are often called, and we find it very versatile. We use ours a lot when we travel with our dogs in a motorhome, as it makes a nice play yard at a campground. (Also handy as a clothesline for small items.)  I like them also for mellow older dogs who are already housetrained and are not going to try to jump out… ex pens typically have no top or bottom.

An ex pen can also be used along with a puppy crate when you are housetraining. Enclose the crate in the ex pen, put down pads or something absorbent in the ex pen area, and the pup is unlikely to do his business in the crate, specially if he has a nice bed in it. Again, the setup has to allow for the fact that ex pens are not as escape-proof as dog crates.