Driving Safely With Your Dog
Article from GRREAT TIMES Newsletter by Jill Hoehlein, 1/2001.

Many of you know that traveling with your pet can be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. We often travel with our dogs - going to visit relatives, going camping and hiking, getting away for a relaxing weekend at a bed and breakfast on the Eastern Shore, or just going to the store. With all the gear that we put in the truck, we never have space for multiple crates. So we had gotten lax about the safety issue. We wear our seatbelts, but what about our dogs' safety?

C.A.R.E. offers the following good reasons for restraining your dog:

• Prevent driver distraction. Not much different than when you put a small child in a car. This is not just for your safety, but also for those other drivers that you may hit!
   

• Protect your dog. Did you know that in a collision the occupants of a vehicle can exert a force many times their own weight? Seat belts help you by distributing the load and absorbing some of the force; this helps to prevent serious injury or death.
   

• Don't let your dog become a statistic. The National Highway Safety Association states that "3/4 of all occupants who are ejected from a vehicle are killed," and for survivors, the average the cost of injuries can run over $5000.
   

• Protect passengers from a flying dog. A large dog can be the equivalent of hundreds of pounds of force easily resulting in injury to another occupant.
   

• Make it easier for rescue workers to help in an accident. A dog that has been through an accident is likely to be in shock, confused, in pain, and/or protective of its owner. Your dog may actually try to prevent a rescue worker from reaching you, thinking it must protect you from further harm. It has been reported that police have had to shoot dogs due to this circumstance.
   

• Prevent runaways and escapes. If the dog has been terrified or injured in an accident, it may run away, perhaps running into traffic causing another accident and possibly its death, or be lost in unfamiliar territory. Or, you may have left to pay for gas and a tempting cat or squirrel darts past and out the window your dog goes. There are even records of dogs jumping out of moving vehicles.
   

• Prevents carsickness or fear of riding in a car. Since the dog is now stabilized, if you brake hard or take a sharp corner, it is less likely to be anxious. This security may be all that the dog needs.
   

• It's the law. While it's not the law here yet, some states and counties are making "seatbelts" a requirement for pets and if you're traveling, you may pass through a locale where it is required. After seeing dogs thrown from open pickup trucks, I am all for this idea, even if that means a little "loss of freedom."

After discovering the above reasons and volunteering at a local vet clinic where I have seen some very bad injuries, I decided to search for a safe way to travel with my guys. I came up with a harness system that I feel good about - the harness is wide and heavy duty, so I don't have to worry about it cutting into the flesh like narrow webbing would and since it's sturdier than a leash, it should hold in case of an accident. The "leash-like" attachment to the vehicle is a sturdy nylon webbing that extends about 10-20 inches. It attaches to almost anything in a truck or car; the metal is the same as that which is used with livestock. It will attach to seatbelts, racks, and cargo hooks.

I sincerely hope that you will take this to heart and consider the safety of your dog the next time your latch up your seatbelt.