Seatbelt Harnesses

Let’s start with a major pet peeve I have- when I see people driving with their dog in their lap. This is unsafe on so many levels that it drives me crazy. At the same time, I get how it happens. If I had to take June or Larry somewhere on my own, one of them would certainly try to be in my lap, and at some point, I might find trying to keep them out of my lap a more dangerous distraction than letting them be there.

However, while I understand the logic that can lead to having a pet in your lap while driving, I’m still against it, because that scenario can be easily avoided by using a dog seatbelt harness.

I’m actually a little mad at us because we don’t currently have seatbelt harnesses for June and Larry. Well, that’s not quite true, we have one for June, but our experience with it is that it is more dangerous to her and more of a distraction to us than when she’s not in one.

With her current harness and the way its supposed to be attached to the seatbelt, she gets all caught and twisted to the point that we’re afraid she’s going to strangle herself. So we end up pulling over and trying to fix it (maybe we attached it wrong) over and over again. And maybe we are doing something wrong, but if it’s that easy to do it wrong, and that dangerous to our dog when we do attach it wrong, then it’s not worth it.

The first dog seatbelt harnesses we bought were the Comfort Ride Travelin’ Dog Car Harness (this is NOT a sponsored post. I just happen to really love this seatbelt harness.) We got these for Moree and Smokey. We were able to adjust them easily; they attached to the seatbelt in an intuitive manner. In fact the way they attached to the steatbelt, via a strap with a climbing hook that looped around the belt (both lap and shoulder portions) and then attached back to the harness made getting in and out of the car quick and simple. The extra padding on the chest meant I didn’t worry about them being injured in a sudden stop

The extra padding was also the only problem with this harness. If you were taking the dog on a long walk or to the dog park, you wanted to take the harness off before the exercise, in order to keep the dog from overheating. Still, because they were easy to put on and take off, that wasn’t a big deal. (And if you were just getting out of the car for a potty break while on a long road trip, leashes attached easily and the harness didn’t need to come off.)

So why haven’t I bought these for Larry and June? Because none of the pet stores in our area- PetsMart, PetCo, or Mud Bay carry them in store. I could order them online, but while they have sizes listed, I don’t find those particularly useful, especially with a dog shaped like June. And Larry has a nice wide chest (for his size) but narrows really quickly. For something like a seatbelt harness, I really want to be able to put it on my dog, make sure it can be adjusted to fit before I buy.

Right now, the dogs don’t go far in the car, just to a couple different dog parks or the vet, but some of the dog parks require us to drive on the freeway, and I keep thinking about getting them new seatbelt harnesses.

I guess I’ll have to make it a project to go to the different stores and see what they have, if they have the Comfort Ride in stock (in the right size) or if there’s another harness that I think will work as well.

Seatbelt harnesses don’t just keep my dogs safe in the car; they keep me safe from distractions, and therefore protect everyone on the road.