Seeing a dog loose in the back of a pickup truck really makes me feel homicidal. Talk about road rage. When I see this I want to toss the driver into the back of the pickup truck, get behind the wheel, and do some drifting around some tight corners, leap some creeks Bo and Luke Duke style, and alternately slam the gas and brake pedals to the floor. Hope they can hang on (if not, oh well!). See here’s the thing, DOGS CAN’T HANG ON!
Ten thousand dogs die per year because they’re thrown from the back of a pickup. So we have Rover in the pickup’s bed, wagging his tail, hanging his head out in the breeze for a good long sniff, clearly enjoying himself, scrunching down to keep his balance, trusting master, and then a huge semi truck flies by on the freeway and Rover is fatally airborne. Driver pulls into rest stop ten miles later. Hey where’s Rover? Insert long string of profanity here (by me, now, not at the rest stop).
Why are people so stupid? Seriously. I want to know.
Dogs can also easily suffer from heat stroke, or have their eyes or sensitive noses damaged by flying debris as they joyfully sniff the breeze. This is also why it’s a bad idea to allow Rover to stick his head out of the car window. It’s cute and entertaining, I agree, but would you let your children stick their heads out of the window when you’re cruising down the freeway? Um, not. If so, you don’t deserve to be a parent.
There are a few restraints you can install into the bed of the truck. The important things are:
- The system has a padded body harness, not a neck leash. A neck leash can kill the dog in an accident by breaking it’s neck or choking it. A neck leash is for WALKING your dog, people. Even then a body harness is better.
- The harness restricts your dog to the center of the bed. If the dog can hit one of the side of the truck or worse fly partially out, the dog may survive but could be seriously hurt or maimed in a minor accident.
Something like this is okay. The problem here is the dog isn’t in the center of the bed.
This sucks – “Safety” my ass.
This sucks and pisses me off. It’s death trap for your dog. Hopefully people are smart enough to see how dangerous this is.
Incidentally, if you have an SUV you’re not off the hook. What do you think will happen to Rover if he’s in the back unrestrained and you rear-end somebody? Rover becomes a sixty pound projectile and you’re in his path. He flies through the window. He hits the dashboard. He hits your kids in the head before he crashes through the wind shield. To be honest, I’ve been guilty not restraining my dog myself in my SUV. When I’ve been good I’ve put a body harness on him and leashed him to a tie down in the back. Not perfect, but it would probably save his life. I’ll do better here, I promise.
The BEST thing to do is crate your dog (in a SUV or pickup truck bed) and strap that crate in properly. If you have a pickup, it’d be better if you had a shell to further protect Rover from strangers and the elements (in addition to the crate). BTW, if you think that crating your dog is caging your dog and is mean, frankly you’re an idiot uneducated person and haven’t done your homework at all. If this is true, I feel sorry for your dog.
This is very good, though I wish the picture showed it strapped into the pickup truck bed.
These look very good.
You get the idea. Please comment if you have more info on this topic, or you know of good products to keep rover safe, even if they’re not pickup truck related.
Some more good reading:
- http://www.elpasotexas.gov/weather_task_force/trainning_tips2.asp
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4631498/
- http://www.hsus.org/pets/pet_care/dog_care/why_dogs_and_pickup_trucks_dont_mix.html
The picture is of my dog, whom I love very much and want to keep safe.
P.S. Drifting is not for street driving, though the link I provided implies this. I’ve seen lot’s of videos where idiots people get into their Civics and think they’re going to drift around the local mountain roads and they end up off the road, down a hundred foot embankment. You’ve been warned.
