Dog cars

Another blogger has been talking about the various vehicles that dog people use to get them to their events, and she listed the ones that she had in the past decade or so.  It made me realize that I've been driving the same sort of car for that long!  I don't have any pictures of it, but over ten years ago I was driving a black Volvo wagon and in 2005 we traded it in for a silver one.

 This is it when it first came home - if I remember correctly it had about 20,000 miles on it at that point.  It's got over 185,000 now!

It fits all three dogs and a goodly amount of junk in it, gets great mileage - about 30 mpg on the freeway - and is built like a steel box, which is why I get these cars.  With all of the long distance driving I do, I want to be as safe as possible.  But, it does have it's limitations, mostly that it's not all that comfortable to sleep in, and impossible to sleep in without help if all three dogs are along on the trip.  Here are a couple of views of the inside with crates and dogs.

So the first thing I did, when I quit working and had to start saving money, was to get a tent.

 

This works pretty well but requires that I take most of the stuff out of the car, as the dogs sleep in the tent (and I change clothes in there) but I sleep in the car once it is mostly empty in the back.  So the next try was a motorcycle trailer -

This thing is pretty cool!  It only weighs about 350 lbs so the car doesn't really notice it, and the tongue weight is only 25 lbs, so it is easy to park.  And it's really easy to set up & take down, only takes a few minutes.  Its great to not have to haul crates out of the car in order to have a place to sleep and it's really great to be on the grounds in the morning!

However, I can't drive like a bat out of hell when I'm pulling it  ;-( and eventually it's probably going to upset the car's transmission.  I was planning to buy a Ford Transport but I haven't been able to sell our full sized trailer, so this is just going to have to do for now!