Built a custom car seat for my pet dog: Here’s how I did it

That idea got more wind when we thought of having long annual road trips of 12-16 days duration from this year on and include her always on such trips.

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We adopted Rumi way back in May 2008 when she was 2 months old. A friend’s female lab had given birth to 7 puppies and we were lucky she chose us as her pet parents. Life has been much brighter with her around.

Rumi at 2.5months

Rumi is a happy 5.5 year old dog now.

Ever since then we have made it a point to take her along almost every where we go. So road trips saw an increase and we started picking up offbeat pet friendly places so that she get to run around offleash and have a gala time. We started enjoying offbeat stays close to nature more and have since then altogether avoided hotel stays and always preferred homestays and Air Bnbs.

As we started travelling, I started realizing that the pet seat covers that were in the form of hammock were claustrophobic and the space offered by them was pretty minimal. I was always looking for some DIY solutions that would act as a seat extender or create a flat space in the area right from the start of rear seats to behind the front seats that would make long road trips very comfortable for Rumi.

That idea got more wind when we thought of having long annual road trips of 12-16 days duration from this year on and include her always on such trips. After replacing our Ford Aspire with the new Slavia last month, a plan for a 16 day road trip down south from Mumbai to Kanyakumari was finalized. Along with this came the plan to finalize a bed cum seat extender for Rumi.

We researched a lot of ideas regarding the same online and came across lot of options related to making a bed with wooden/iron rod legs that reside on the floor area and makes the whole space in the rear seats a flat bed area. Attaching a reference picture for the same downloaded from Google.

However, we thought of avoiding the same as in extreme unforseen cases, these iron rods/wooden legs would pose a risk to car passengers. So this idea was shown the door. I wanted to customize the rear seat area in a way that can be used with different combinations of people sitting along with Rumi. We thought of making a foam cushion of different sizes to fit the exact rear space. For the same a comfortable front passenger seat position was fixed and the driver seat was adjusted according to a comfortable driving position for myself. This way the foam cushions would get a snug fit and once we put a comfortable thick blanket over the whole rear space it would be one single flat rear seat space.

Trying rear cushions at a nearby mattress shop led to the realisation that these cushions were quite soft and were compressing a lot when a decent amount of pressure was put. We suggested to put a thick and good quality thermacol in these blocks to give it some firmness. Finally the ratio was set at 80 percent thermacol and the rest 20 pc foam over the top to provide comfort.

Thermacol ones were cut according to the sizes finalized leaving the 20 percent area on the top for foam fixation. There were 3 blocks decided as the area in the rear space differed for the space behind the passenger seat as well as the driver seat. The third block would require to have a completely different size as the floor hump along with the ac vents has to be considered to fit the same. Attaching pictures below for reference.

Rear leg space measurements were taken for 3 seperate areas

Thermacol trial to finalize the fit

I finalized a cover for these cushion blocks and waited for couple of days to pick them up. Finally picked them up 2 days back and I am pretty happy with the outcome. I am attaching the pictures below.

Rear seat space without cushions with just the pet seat cover

The 3 cushion blocks

Rear seat space with the cushion blocks fit in

First trial (Happy Dog)

These cushion blocks will ensure that Rumi can lie down facing us too rather then horizontally across the rear seats. This will also minimize motion sickness for her as she will be lying down in the direction of the motion as against sideways direction prior to getting these blocks made. Now we are looking forward to the taking her along for long road trips across India given that she will be comfortable over long distances.

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