We recently welcomed an eight week old Spoodle puppy, and found a ‘whelping box’ to keep it safe in our apartment early on.
The pen was very small and didn’t fit our space the way I wanted, so I began printing custom parts to get it just right.
As we learned more about the joys of puppy ownership, the pen quickly needed to evolve: Hiding the edge of the grass so it couldn’t chew, holding the door open so it didn’t lock itself out of the crate, securing the crate to the walls so it couldn’t push it out of the way, and most importantly… making the walls progressively taller so it couldn’t escape.
The puppy quickly outgrew the initial size of the pen, so in addition to the pen getting taller… it also got wider!
Over time, I estimate over 50% of the pen is now 3D printed:
- Matching uprights to make the walls taller
- Pipe-sized connectors to fit PVC pipe for a material-efficient wall solution
- Custom walls to wrap around obstacles (wooden upright)
- Actual wall pieces
- Slot-in floor ramps to keep the walls straight + cover the edge of the grass
- Locking mechanism for the crate door
- Post end caps
- Loops for Velcro where the crate door opens
- Post-end camera mount
* It probably would have been easier and cheaper to just buy a larger / taller pen from the beginning, but it wouldn’t have fit our space as well as this does, wouldn’t have been modular for a range of configurations, would have lacked features like the camera mount / door lock, and I would have struggled to combat the various challenges over time as the puppy found more and more vulnerabilities.
