Edition 4. Dog Sizes by Breed, and What a Breed Cannot Tell You
Somewhere in the house there is a dog asleep in a shape that would be hard to describe to anyone. Nose tucked under a back leg, or flat out on one side with all four legs pointing the same way. That shape is what a residence has to be drawn around, and it is the reason a breed name can only get you part of the way there.
Why do breed size charts disagree with each other?
Look up the right size for a Labrador and you will find several answers. The charts are built from different things. Some begin at weight. Some begin at a breed standard written for the show ring. Some are drawn around a box that already exists in a warehouse, and work backwards from there.
A Labrador is not one dog. It is a range. A chart that answers with a single box has quietly chosen one dog out of that range and hoped yours is close to it.
What the breed list on the size guide is actually sorted by
The size guide names breeds against each of the eight sizes, and how that list was built matters more than the list itself. It was built from measurement, and the breeds were placed afterwards. Each size holds a range of dog lengths, and a breed sits in a size because dogs of that breed usually measure into that range.
So the name is an index. The number is the thing. The Atelier says it in one line on the size guide. We ask for a breed because it is a useful shorthand, and we size to the tape. Where the two disagree, the measurement decides.
The one measurement everything starts from
Your dog, from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail. The base is where the tail joins the body, the point where it starts to move when they wag, rather than the end of the tail. That single figure places a dog on the ladder.
Size 1 — Petite takes dogs up to 15 inches. Size 2 — Small runs to 19, Size 3 — Demi to 23, Size 4 — Medium to 27, Size 5 — Midi to 30, Size 6 — Large to 33, Size 7 — Grand to 38, and Size 8 — Estate to 42.
Six of the eight are released. The Grand and the Estate are fully drawn and shown at full size on the guide, and neither has opened yet. Commissions have not opened for any size.
Where a breed name stops being useful
Two dogs of the same breed land in different sizes often enough that it is worth measuring before you assume. A rangy working Labrador and a stockier show-line Labrador are the same word and a different tape.
The size guide holds the line in both directions. A dog of a listed breed who measures inside a range belongs in that size. A dog who measures past 42 inches does not, however familiar the name. Above that mark the ladder ends and the commission is Bespoke, whatever the breed. Great Dane, Mastiff, Great Pyrenees and Leonberger are named on the guide because they pass 42 inches as a matter of course, rather than because no other dog could.
What the residence adds beyond the dog
A residence is drawn to the dog's length plus the room to use it. Every size carries six and a half inches of interior floor beyond the dog it is sized for, the same figure at every size, because it is what the drawings are built around rather than a number chosen size by size. Each size takes a range, and every dog inside a range gets the full six and a half inches, because the size is drawn for the longest dog it takes.
The heights on the guide are the residence itself. The plinth it stands on adds roughly two to three and a half inches.
At the two largest sizes the doorway of a real house sets the width rather than the dog. The Size 8 — Estate is drawn to the widest a residence can be and still get into a home, and it needs a 42 inch entry, so the Atelier confirms the path from the street to the room before that commission is accepted.
What to do if your dog sits between two sizes
Measure again on another day, because a dog who has just eaten stands differently from one who has just woken. If the figure still sits on a boundary, that is a conversation rather than a coin toss, and the Atelier would rather have it before anything is drawn. Where a dog is still growing, the Atelier sizes for the dog they are becoming rather than the puppy they are this month.
Every commission measures the dog before anything is built. A dog who turns out to sit outside the range their breed suggested goes back to a conversation rather than into a workshop.
Three measurements, and the third is the one to take
Length places the dog on the ladder. Standing height and the curl decide whether the room fits once they are in it. The curl is the one most people skip, and it is the posture a dog spends most of its life in, so it is the one the Atelier would most like to have. Wait until your dog is properly asleep, then measure across the widest part of them as they lie. Whatever shape they have chosen is the right one to measure.
Those three, with the bedding allowed for underneath, are the Four Measures every residence is drawn around. The sizing edition sets them out in full.
So look up the breed if it helps. It will get you to the right row. Then go and look at the dog asleep in the other room, in the shape no chart has ever seen, and measure that.
The Atelier List hears first.
A PupHut residence is intended for suitable dogs and households. It is not an escape-proof, chew-proof, scratch-proof, travel or behavioural-training crate.
