Weekend in The Hague
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Driving with a dog, but sure!
From the point of view of traffic law, a dog is considered a “load” during a car journey, which must be secured according to the road traffic regulations. Goal: To ensure traffic safety. Violations are punished with fines – Right as I think!
I am sitting in the car. The dogs are in their dog box. Our goal: A big gas round on the Rhine. I’m driving off. 30km/h are allowed on this road – That’s what the traffic sign at the side of the road tells me. I see a football rolling onto the road from afar. A short time later a child jumps onto the road to catch the ball again. I make an emergency stop and hear the dogs in the trunk bumping against the box. Everyone involved got away with a fright. That’s when I really realized: It can happen so fast!
Not seldom I think: “I just drive to the doggy round the corner, there I just throw the dogs into the car” – If I had thought that also on the day with the little boy and the football, a dog would have flown safely through the windshield. Or two. Maybe all three. “Safety always has right of way” is something we should take to heart in traffic, for the sake of our dogs and our fellow men.
We have chosen the Knuuf Dog Box for safe driving with dog. Before Mateo came into our lives, we already had a smaller version of the Knuuf (size S) for Mojo and Rana. The special thing about this dog box: it is foldable. If you can use the trunk for other purposes, you can simply fold the Knuuf dog box. The box weighs a whopping 4.5 kg and can be easily transported with a hand strap. I find this quite practical!
Due to the car accident in Portugal we lost our two year old car, which was classified by the insurance as an economic total loss. So we had to look for a new car. It was important for us: The trunk must be big enough to accommodate all three dogs. Actually, there are few “small but nice” cars with a big trunk, but those who search for a long time will eventually find what they are looking for and so we were allowed to call a VW Sports Van our own after 2 months of searching. The old Knuuf dog box took up half of the space in the new trunk and I soon realized that we needed a new, bigger box – although I was absolutely satisfied with the old, smaller box. When the dogs had the choice to ride with the front buckled on the passenger seat or in the trunk in their box, they always preferred the box.
So I short-circuited with Laura, the owner of Knuuf Hundeboxen and asked her if she could imagine a second box next to the already existing one. We soon realized that there would be a risk that Mateo would not have enough space in the second box. So we came to the conclusion that a new, larger dog box for the car would be more sensible.
Thanks to Knuuf’s individual customisation and the configurator, we were able to easily design a dog crate according to our own ideas, which in the end would fit perfectly into the boot.
We have decided on the following additional gadgets:
Front entrance:
You can choose to open the front entrance for an opening from top to bottom or vice versa. We have decided on the variant “opening upwards”. This gives me the possibility to fold the net upwards – so it is protected by muddy dog paws.
Emergency exit:
A point I find super important. The emergency exit is located at the back of the Knuuf dog box. So you can open the box in the car by yourself and “free” the dogs in case the electrical system of the trunk fails or the trunk cannot be opened anymore because the car has been deformed by an accident. The emergency exit is also practical in case your dog has choked on something or has other health problems. As a passenger you can always keep in contact with your dog without having to wait for an opportunity to stop and thus let valuable time pass by.
Bumper protection:
A must for us! The old Knuuf dog box had no bumper protection and our bumper looked accordingly – long live the dog claws 😉 Just Mojo is a candidate, which supports itself before the jump from the box again beautifully at the bumper and takes a lot of momentum. With the 70cm long bumper protection of the new dog box not only the car remains scratch-free, it also serves as a slip protection for the dogs. It was not seldom that Mojo or Rana slipped into the box while getting in and out.
Visco-elastic foam:
Everyone who knows Mojo knows: He likes it soft! The foam filling yields in the right places due to a memory effect and adapts to the imprint of your lying quadruped. Thus an optimal pressure relief takes place – optimal for longer car journeys. This prevents pressure pain, an important point for me especially for our three-legged dog Mateo.
But how safe is a dog box like that anyway?
The Knuuf dog box was designed to give way in the upper part of the box under heavy load. This is the so-called side impact protection. Everybody knows the worst-case scenario when driving with a dog: there is an accident and the dog can break out of the dog box while driving (or just because of the accident) and gets on the road. To prevent this, the Knuuf is made of double-walled scratch-resistant polyester fabric with a safety net. During an accident, it is possible that your dog could be injured if the aluminium bars deform the standard dog box. Therefore, reinforced plastic and as few aluminium elements as necessary have been integrated into the Knuuf dog box – for minimal risk of injury from open or sharp edges.
If you are looking for a unique, individual, stowable and light dog box, which also looks chic and is made in Germany – Then I can warmly recommend the Knuuf dog boxes. For me and my dogs there is no alternative.
Amazing! This blog looks just like my old one! It’s on a
entirely different topic but it has pretty much the same page layout and design. Superb choice of
colors!