Hi all, When travelling with your dog in the car what approach to you use? Crate in the boot, boot guard mounted on rear seat and dog free in the boot, harness on a back seat, something else entirely? We've used a relatively small carry case so far for a trip to the vets and a couple of socialisation journeys but Harvey will soon out-grow this.
Re: Car travel In my Defender I've got a cargo cage with a dog gate for the back. In our "real" car which is a Toyota Yaris we just put the head rests up on the back seats and Lady goes in the boot. That wouldn't work for a dog that wants to leap about though. She's never attempted to get to the front in the Yaris. We tried the dog guards that you can buy in car accessory shops and they tend to be a bit hopeless from the point of view of a secure fix long term. I got the car cage and dog gate from Travall (are you in the uk?). www.travall.co.uk. They are very good though not the cheapest and make cages for specific vehicles so the mountings are secure.
Re: Car travel Charlie regularly travels in 3 cars. My little run about in London, which we use for very short trips to nip to the common and pets at home and so on. He sits on the back seat, unrestrained. Well, he often jumps into the front seat too and just sits looking out of the front window. This is bad, bad, bad - obviously. In my rusty old landrover, which I use to get to the beach and walks in Cornwall, he is in the back unrestrained on a big rubber mat to stop him sliding around, and doesn't jump into the font because I've never allowed it. This is quite bad. In OH's car, which I use for going on the motorway, he is in the back seat in a fitted canvas hammock (to stop him chewing anything). I have a proper seatbelt harness for him. Which he hates, but recently I have got him to start wearing it. This is good.
Re: Car travel Julie,you are hilairious......and you are lucky you have got a much better behaved car traveller than my escape artist.... UncleBob ,others have heard the true horror of my story before, but we ordered a dog guard after Dexter climbed through from the back of the ranger over onto my lap on a 7 lane highway with 120 Kms speed limit....nightmare and in Julie's words ....not good. He used to whine a bit but once the guard was up he stayed put despite giving the impression he was going to make it through the sides and I just ignored him....so whining stopped and car travel became a lot easier.it took him a while to realise it was a lot more comfortable to travel sitting down rather than standing and bracing himself against the car motion.....even now he will only lie down if well and truly knackered,there's an old piece of carpet in the back too that he sits on .....harnesses didn't work for us,he was too small for the one I got and Houdini'd out of it on another massive,but less busy road.....not good!
Re: Car travel My dogs travel in a very strong Guardsman cage in the back of my estate. I was involved in a rather nasty car crash several years ago, thank goodness without the dogs. The car was totally wrecked front and back, in fact I had to be cut out, but the cage (just an ordinary fold up metal one then) stayed intact, a little dented but the dogs would have survived and would still have been safe in the car rather than running loose on a busy road. So as you can gather I'm a little paranoid about their safety now.
Re: Car travel Mandy, what a horrible experience. And you are right - we should be planning with worst case scenarios in mind...
Re: Car travel Mandy is totally right. We should all really have sturdy crates in our cars for our and our dogs safety. However......we are pretty much the same as David only no fancy defender and just an utterly filthy wee hyundai Getz. Too small for a crate.
Re: Car travel Thank goodness you were ok.....I changed from my first vet because it was in a massively congested industrial area,in which I've seen an accident everytime I have visited.it was too scarey....the drive there was bad, avoiding the potentially hazardous clips from huge trucks ,and then the parking on the main road......it's a lovely practice with UK vets but it felt like an accident guaranteed to happen ...so I changed to my local vet who have been golden the last few weeks ....
Re: Car travel [quote author=drjs@5 link=topic=3132.msg33319#msg33319 date=1383397433] Mandy is totally right. We should all really have sturdy crates in our cars for our and our dogs safety. However......we are pretty much the same as David only no fancy defender and just an utterly filthy wee hyundai Getz. Too small for a crate. [/quote] We should but it's not always possible, I have a Volvo estate but they are pretty low and you just wouldn't get a crate in, so we just have to just the fold down netting thing, thankfully my 2 just sit quietly but even so I worry if we had an accident that they would be injured :'(
Re: Car travel [quote author=drjs@5 link=topic=3132.msg33397#msg33397 date=1383427327] I'm thinking Heidrun's accident will maybe make us reassess our current position :-\ [/quote] Yes, please everybody think carefully how and where your dogs travel in the car. My car was a Defender and I only got the new Trans K9 box three weeks ago. I can't tell you how relieved I am that I bought that box for my four spaniels. I think it saved their lives and definitely prevented serious injury. When they were taken out of the car at the scene of the accident and I was strapped to a board in the back of the ambulance the paramedic said to me 'I don't know much about dogs but all their tails are wagging and they look perfectly ok to me'. What a relief it was to hear those words! I will never ever let my dogs travel in anything other than a sturdy properly designed dog box.
Re: Car travel This is the box. It has got a partition in the middle and that's exactly how the dogs travelled on Saturday. Alice and Murffi in one side and Ziggy and Caddie in the other. Trans K9 heard through Facebook about my accident and have contacted me and offered any necessary repairs to the box free of charge. A few of the rivets are a bit stretched but otherwise the box is intact.
Re: Car travel That was very efficient of K9 and welcome too. It's not going to be possible for people to have such a cage if they don't drive tall vehicles like Land Rovers, Defenders etc. What are the alternatives for those people, me included a Volvo estate user and also larger dogs means larger cage?
Re: Car travel Does that limit injury to the dog in the event of an accident? Is the box bolted to the floor? Are the dogs ok on a long journey in a crate? Sorry too many questions.
Re: Car travel If you don't have anywhere to put a box like that then have a look at the Sleepypod Clickit dog harness which attached to the child seat anchor points in the back seat. It's the only harness that has passed crash tests (i.e. where the harness didn't break or the dog wasn't catapulted through the windscreen http://sleepypod.com/clickit We have two sports cars : with no back seat and there is no safe way to transport a dog in them. :-[
Re: Car travel There are several firms that sell custom made cages to fit most estates and hatchbacks, Barjo, Guardsman, MMG, Barnsbrook, TransK9 and many more. They are expensive but so worth it. It's also worth looking on ebay and agility.net too for second hand ones especially if you own a little older vehicle. I picked up my ex police Guardsman cage for £50 about 7yrs ago now, fits my VW Passat estate perfectly.
Re: Car travel I have a dog guard from Toyota in my Avensis estate which is very robust. They told me the fabric netting luggage guard wouldn't stop Riley travelling through the car. Most estate car manufacturers make a dog guard that fits well. I'm going to get a crate though for several reasons....dogs safety, allowing us to pack stuff in the boot without affecting his safety and it will let me leave the boot open at training so he doesn't overheat.
Re: Car travel This is Charlie's seat belt harness - it is crash tested in the US and Europe. https://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=3577 Following us hearing about Heidrun's accident, Charlie was wearing it in the back seat this morning - and he wasn't happy about it. Tough luck. He'll just have to get used to it.
Re: Car travel [quote author=Oberon link=topic=3132.msg33609#msg33609 date=1383557482] If you don't have anywhere to put a box like that then have a look at the Sleepypod Clickit dog harness which attached to the child seat anchor points in the back seat. It's the only harness that has passed crash tests (i.e. where the harness didn't break or the dog wasn't catapulted through the windscreen http://sleepypod.com/clickit We have two sports cars : with no back seat and there is no safe way to transport a dog in them. :-[ [/quote] That wouldn't be any use to us as we have a large family aswell : David made a good point about whether these crates are anchored to the floor, if not surely serious injury can be caused to the dogs crashing around inside a metal crate?
Re: Car travel This particular model fits the back of the Defender perfectly. There is no room for the box crashing around in the back of the car. They make other models for all sorts of other cars and yes they can be attached to the floor through special anchorage points. I know some of you use special seat belts for your dogs but it just wouldn't be enough for me. I am going to buy another box for our other car. At the moment there is just a normal dog guard in the back of the Audi but I am no longer happy with that arrangement.
