I need car harnesses for my two dogs - which are the best ?? Also recommendations for back seat protectors.

Thank you !

I used to use RAC car harnesses and for seat protecters I used "Over The Top Textiles. I have their van seat covers, totally waterproof and the hair does not weave itself into the fabric.

Over The Top for me too, especially the hammock style ones, you can hide all manner of carp under them in the footwell :)

Tests on Dog Harnesses Show 100 Percent Failure Rate

Center For Pet Safety

It's really, really scary.  I had read before that harnesses didn't do much for the dog but did protect human occupants from dogs becoming flying projectiles.  This says they aren't much good for that either.  Crates don't seem to be much better.

> It's really, really scary

:( Normally the dogs travel in the boot (dog guard etc) (couldn't use a crate for the younger one as it made her very sick/nervous because of the noise) - this has always worked well, but there are odd occasions when we need to put things in the boot and/or have something like a ladder on the roof rack or a trailer and we
can't open the boot easily which isn't very safe in an emergency :( It's difficult to decide what to do :(

> Over The Top for me too

Thanks. They're nice but quite expensive. Will just depend whether we go down the harness route ................ It's a better option when you have two cars as dog guards etc can't be moved from one to the other.

Anyone else got any thoughts about harnesses ??

You can get cheaper types, have a look on E bay.

I have a DogsTrust harness that has an attachable loop for use with a seat belt - it came with Cooper when we first got him. I replaced it a couple of years ago with a new one - it cost around £10 from them. I only use it if he is in a car that doesn't have crates in it but it seems to work well and is certainly better than nothing at all - although it's not that often that anyone else offers to have him ;-) but he always travels on it in my daughter's car as she doesn't have crates.

In my car the boot is crated for the dogs but Cooper is often better at travelling on the seatbelt harness than barking his head off in the crates :-)

It's scary that there isn't anything safe available.

I had a car harness for my dog when I had just the one, as a non-driver I needed it if we went out in a friend's car. At first I had the attachment that clips to the harness then clips into the belt socket at seat level... but this was useless as he moved around and sometimes put his paw on the red button, releasing himself.

The other option is to attach the harness to the seatbelt without any plugging in... not great, although of course the seatbelts will freeze during braking.

Hobson's choice at the moment, having just bought my own car. The hatchback boot area is ok for one dog, but I can't find a crate or tailgate which fits and can't afford a bespoke one. I have installed a dog guard though... so that's one dog almost catered for., although she won't be very protected from the back.

For the other dog my choices are more limited, it's not a good idea to have the two dogs loose together (even if I had room). I've bought a Kurgo Zip Line which runs between the seatbelts on the back seat and has a strong leash to clip to it. Best of a bad lot of choices, and I'm not fooling myself it will be any good in case of an accident.

However - attached somehow has got to be better than unattached at all, if just from the distraction point of view. Neither me as a passenger, nor my friend as the driver, appreciated it when Dog 1 stepped on the seatbelt release button and then decided to sit on my lap!

Plan is to stick with this for now, until I can upgrade to a car which will take two crates securely fastened to the floor, and/or a tailgate.

Bergan make safety tested harnesses. You can get them here.

Thanks all - just have to decide what we want to do now :)

Bergan make safety tested harnesses

I'm fairly willing to bet they were one of the brands in Jetstone Jewels link, that failed further safety testing.

I use a harness for my Shih Tzu so he can sit in the back seat. One time he fell off the seat under hard braking in a near miss. Another time he walked out of it, I think it had loosened itself over time. So after that I always check to make sure all the adjustable parts of it are tight. There is a part of the harness for the seatbelt to go through but it is too long so it allows my dog to walk across the seat. I'd rather he was strapped in properly but there doesn't seem to be anything decent on the market. Sometimes he travels in a plastic pet carrier but of course at this time of year its too warm for that I think.

As there is no legislation in place to make manufacturers to test the harnesses, Which? should be contacted to see what they can do. A big organisation like that might be able to make something happen. Surely better than doing nothing.

If you were going to buy a car you would want one that had the full 5 euro ncap stars rating for crash tests, but when it comes to dog harnesses we could be putting our dog in something the equivalent to zero stars in a test. 

Have a look at this awful car harness at Pets at Home. It looks like a disaster waiting to happen. If there was an accident, the poor dog would be lifted by its neck and flung from one side of this to the other. Its a disgrace that its even on sale :(

I saw a report somewhere that all car harneses in UK failed the safety test, I think it was pets at home magazine or which! .

>  that all car harneses in UK failed the safety test

The problem is that there isn't a 100% safe option anyway - even for humans in cars :( There is always a risk and there are lots of factors - position in car, whether in harness, crate, dog guard, number of journeys made/distance of journey, type of vehicle etc etc etc. Different types of accidents will have a different outcome. We all have to way up the risks dependent on our own situation.

This was to a point that it actually causes more injury to the dog because of the elastic band type effect :( mine travel in the boot with a boot guard up.

> mine travel in the boot with a boot guard up

Mine do too - but there are going to be a few times now that that isn't going to be a practical option so I want an alternative. I'm prepared to accept the risk of having them on the back seat in a harness. It's better than not having a harness on :)

I thnk id just put the seat belt on em instead lol. I have used them in the past though. There must be a international company that doa decent one.

I contacted Pets at Home a few days ago to ask if any of their harnesses are crash tested, I got a reply from them today that they have checked with their buyer and the products are not crash safety tested. There are only the Kurgo car harnesses in the market that are tested. Pets at Home are looking into this and hope to bring in a suitable product late Spring 2014 - So they say.

I actually thought the Kurgo harness was one of the worst I had seen. So I looked and found the Kurgo crash test which shows how bad it is, I mean the dog fell off the seat in their own test. Here is is http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-i8VjqU1jLY

My two Clix Safe harnesses arrived today. They seem to fit the dogs OK, so we will try to fit a road test in before Thursday (when we will do a three/four hour drive down south round the M25). If we have any concerns we won't use them and will just have to put the dogs in the boot and leave some things behind (our daughter has moved into her new house today and we are planning to take a load of things down for her including a ladder that needs to go on the roof making opening the boot difficult).

Sorry if it's suggested/tried, but if your dog doesn't like the noise of rattling cages, have you tried the soft crates? Properly strapped down they'd be safer than harnesses and don't rattle. I use them in the caravan for that very reason x

> if your dog doesn't like the noise of rattling cages, have you tried the soft crates

They wouldn't give any protection in a crash, would they ? Fortunately both my dogs sit/lie in the boot perfectly happily with no guard etc - they don't climb over and don't chew etc :) (The 15 year old has never been a problem in the car and we only had a crate for the younger one when she was a puppy because she was a chewer - until we found it was the cause of her sickness) If we go short distances - to our local common which is 2 miles down a quiet country lane - we don't use the dog guard. I don't want to invest in anything expensive at the moment as we are getting a new car in the autumn and both dogs are elderly (15 and 11) and our needs may change :) We don't make many longer journeys with the dogs.

They would stop them being hurled through the windscreen but no, if the car crumbled they would be useless, but so would a harness. Not such a worry if your dog is rarely in the car though, mine are in it for hours as we travel to shows a big distance away so it's different.