All the things I wish I knew before I got my first ever puppy!
If any of you read my ‘about me’ you’ll know that by trade, I’m a stuntwoman. And if any of you knew me personally, you’d know my speciality is driving and I’ve been doing professional stunt driving for film and TV for the past 5 years.
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Stunt driving comes with many risks, the main one been that you generally develop an unhealthy love for cars. Normally impractical fast cars that cost a bomb to run. Neither great qualities for your four legged friend.
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I’m going to do some posts later on with actual car recommendations, but as most people won’t be rushing out to buy a new car for their puppy straight away, this is a more generic post about…
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1) Prepping the car for your dog.
2) Prepping your dog for the car.
PREPPING YOUR CAR FOR THE DOG
Right, so car prep. I’d start off by saying, if you’re sentimental about the inside of your car, you’re not going to want the dog in it. I’m not ashamed to say that my baby (Cooper), is not allowed in my other baby, my M3CS. Instead he is relegated to my second car, a Mini Cooper- A Cooper for Cooper. Although I have just brought a BMW M140i which will be his new ride for the foreseeable!
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Firstly, the legalities of travelling with a dog in the car…
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Rule 57 of the highway code states:
“When in a vehicle make sure dogs or other animals are suitably restrained so they cannot distract you while you are driving or injure you, or themselves if you stop quickly. A seat belt harness, pet carrier, dog cage or dog guard are ways of restraining animals in cars."
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Personally, I have Cooper on a seatbelt on the backseat, I attach the belt to the front ring of his harness and give him just enough movement so he can sit up, but not enough that he can climb through to the front. You can pick up a seatbelt from Amazon for around £8.99.
If you have a smaller dog, you can buy a dog seat (Link below), they do look pretty ideal but unfortunately for dogs Cooper’s size, they just wouldn’t work out. I’d love to have Cooper riding shotgun with me, but I have no doubt that he’d be on my lap or eating the gear stick before I’d even pulled off the drive!
If you have leather seats, even if you’re not at all sentimental about them or aren’t worried about them getting scratched up, please please please get seat covers. As a human we all know the pain of the burnt bum getting into a car with leather seats on a hot summers day- you don’t want your dog to suffer the same fate!
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Material seats, again, I mean it depends how worried you are about them getting damaged/stained. My Dad has alcantara leather in his car which for all intensive purposes has a more material texture than it does leather. His dog, Hugo, a jack russell/chihuahua cross, is as good as gold in the car, he’d never chew anything and he’s only small, HOWEVER, there is dog fur/hair EVERYWHERE.
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Personally I’d highly recommend getting seat covers, and if you have a 5 door car, get ones that eliminate the footwell. A few weeks ago I took Cooper to the vet for his worming tablet, Cooper is normally great in the car, and fortunately for me he’s never got car sick, however, his worming tablet DID NOT agree with him in the slightest.
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I have seat covers in the back of the mini, but as it’s a 3 door, they don’t cover the footwell as the logistics of unclipping the covers from the front seats to let him in and out would be a nightmare. ANYWAY, we were driving home from the vets and I thought, hmm, I smell dog food? Cooper had vomited EVERYWHERE. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere other than the seat covers, if it wasn’t so disgusting it would have been quite impressive. He managed to get the cup holder in the centre console, the hand brake, down the sides of both seats and in the metal runners that the seats are attached to, needless to say I did not have a fun evening clearing that up!
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For the M140i, aka the new Cooper Mobile, I trawled Amazon looking for seat covers, reading several reviews and looking at the pros and cons of each one. In the end I brought the 100% waterproof Pecute Dog car seat cover (link below)
I got it through the post last week and I was straight away impressed with the quality of the material. I just fitted it this morning when the car arrived and it fits really well. The mesh is also great in-between the front seats as it allows your dog to be able to see you, but at the same time stops them from becoming a front seat passenger!
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The 2 side bits in particular are really easy to clip on and off, and really having the zip done up is enough to hold them up. Fingers crossed if Cooper has anymore vomiting episodes they’ll be more contained this time!
PREPPING YOUR DOG FOR THE CAR
So this was one of the things that is high up on the list of things that I wish I had done from day 1 of having him. I was a bit naive to think, as he’d done a 4 hour drive to get to me from the breeders home in Wales, that he’d be okay with the car. How wrong I was!
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Unfortunately for him, his first 2 car journeys were emergency trips to the vets, so not the most pleasant association with the car! We had to have one person in the back with him while someone else drove, and oh how he howled.
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It probably took about 2-3 weeks of cars regular trips till he settled down. But genuinely, the first few trips you would have thought we were torturing him. He just cried and cried and cried and cried and howled and barked and howled some more. Aside from been quite off putting while I was driving, I was genuinely a bit concerned about him! Thankfully he has settled down now and he pretty much just falls asleep instantly as soon as we head off!
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If I could go back in time, I would have taken him on a quick drive round the block everyday to get him more acclimatised to it. For me, I found the most effective thing to do in helping with the car situation, was as soon as Cooper was vaccinated, I started taking him to places that I knew he’d like. That way he started to associate the car with positive things. Now he’ll happily get in the car and I don’t hear a peep out of him the entire journey!
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Another thing to be wary of is a lot of dogs, especially young puppies, get car sick. In which case it is even more important to build up the drives slowly- and always carry baby wipes!
