Pet Auto Safety

The Dog Seat Belt Gang
Becky Anne, Achillies, Smokey

Shortly after starting the art website, Nature by Dawn, Inc. opened another website called Pet Auto Safety.com. Dawn’s dogs have always worn a dog seat belt ever since she discovered them about 10 years ago. Dawn had three dogs at that time and it was difficult managing three dogs in the car. When she saw that there was such a thing as a dog seat belt, she asked herself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”. When she decided to be an entrepreneur, opening a site for pet auto safety supplies was her most favorite idea. Pet Auto Safety.com is an inspirational website where Dawn is passionate abouit spreading the word on pet auto safety in cars. Since Pet Auto Safety.com, Nature by Dawn, Inc. has also implemented this blog.

When I first saw Maya, she was only four months old and in need of a good home. She was so adorable and I had been wanting a second dog for some time, so I agreed to take her from her previous owner (who had only adopted Maya a week ago).

Since getting Maya was a rather in-the-moment thing, I was completely unprepared to take her home in my car. So I did the best I could to block her from getting from the back seat into the front seat. But Maya was determined to sit up front with me.

I was just a little over a block away from home and was coming upon an intersection with signal lights. Because I was trying to push Maya back into the back seat, I completely overlooked the fact that the lights were red. Thankfully, I only got honked at and did not get into or cause a car accident.

Needless to say, I ordered a dog car seat belt for her as soon as we got home. Maya has worn her dog car seat belt ever since. (Of course we had to buy a new one when she got bigger - See the photo above.  Yep, thats my Maya!)

Pet Auto Safety.com is looking for more stories about dogs. Tell us about rescued dogs, doggie good deeds, dog survival stories, and especially about travel incidents with your dog. Have you been in a car accident with your dog? Did your dog have a bad airline experience? Have you seen a dog in the back of a pickup get thrown out? Did you have to stop suddenly with your dog unrestrained in the car? Did your dog distract the driver and almost cause a car accident?

Share your dog’s story! We’d prefer stories with happy endings. But if the story is tragic, maybe we can still share it and hope that it prevents tragedies in the future.

Labrador Retrievers are great dogs, but they can be a bit difficult to handle at times. Someone told me that my dog, Maya, has GLS. “What’s GLS?” I asked in a worried tone. “Goofy Lab Syndrom!”. Goofy Lab Syndrom is the perfect way to explain why Maya acts so crazy sometimes. She gets so excited that she doesn’t hear my commands and just jumps around and whines as though she had won a trip to Camp Snoopy. Maya is a great dog, very smart, and mostly well-behaved. But when she sees people or other dogs, she just goes nuts. There is no cure for GLS. You just have to keep working with your labrador retreiver and hope that someday he or she grows out of it. (in 5 or more years ?). To read more about the greatness of Labrador Retrievers, check out the article, About Labrador Retreivers.

Joni in Pennsylvania ordered a medium Tru-Fit Smart Dog Car Harness from Pet Auto Safety.com. Because we did not have a photo of a dog wearing this size of a dog car harness, Joni was eligible to enter the photo contest. She sent in this cute photo of her Jack Russell Terrier mix wearing the Tru-Fit Smart Dog Car Harness. Upon review of the many photos we received, we determined that this photo was not only the cutest, but the best taken photo. Joni’s dog, Jake, is now on our web site wearing the Tru-Fit Smart Dog Car Harness. Joni says, “Jake is a Jack Russell terrier mix we adopted from the local SPCA. He’s very active in the car and this harness has helped a lot.”

Thank you, Joni!

From the Pet Auto Safety.com Team.

Watch out for Sephi and Maya!  They are going to travel in our Pet Auto Safety car from Overland Park, KS to Austin, TX just before the big Easter weekend.  They are going to go to visit their human grandparents, human aunts and uncles, and their doggy cousins.  It is going to be quite a housefull of both dogs and humans.  The doggy cousins include Fritz the Yellow Lab, Kalua the Toy Chihuahua, Killer the Lhasa Apso, Lucky the Chihuahua mix, Callie the Chocolate Lab, Tinkerbelle the Italian Greyhound mix, and Mocha the Toy Chihuahua.

Sephi and Maya will be sitting in the back seat of the car and they will each be wearing a dog car harness.  The back seat of the car also has an Extend-A-Seat so that they have more room to move around and I don’t have to worry about them falling on the floor.  We will stop at several rest stops along the way since it is a 12+ hour drive.  This way the dogs can go potty and get a fresh drink of water from their portable dog travel bowls.  Rest generally have pet areas just for those people who travel with their dogs.  I won’t forget to pick up after Sephi and Maya and I won’t let them in the rest area bathrooms.

It should be a fun trip!  Wish us luck as we travel in pet safety.

A recent customer from Soquel, California purchased the Small/Medium Black Dog Car Seat Belt from Pet Auto Safety.com. Shortly after her purchase, she submitted an adorable photo of her American Eskimo Dog wearing the dog seat belt. The photo was of excellent quality and we needed a dog wearing a dog seat belt of this size so we gave her a refund of her purchase (not including shipping) and posted her photo on our websites. Her dog is the dog on our Dog Car Seat Belts page wearing the Small/Medium Black Dog Car Seat Belt. The dog is also seen above and on our Nature by Dawn, Inc. website.

You too can win a free dog seat belt! Dog seat belts are great for keeping your pet safe while traveling in the car. But we understand that economic times are tough right now. So we are offering a way for you to win a free dog seat belt. Simply purchase a dog seat belt for your dog from Pet Auto Safety.com, submit a quality JPEG photo of your dog in the car wearing the dog seat belt, and we will review the photo to see if we can use it on our sites. Purchasing and submitting a photo does not guarantee that you will win. Be sure to read the contest rules and regulations on our Win a Free Dog Seat Belt page for more information. This page will also tell you which sizes of which brands of dog seat belts we need a photo of.

Maya is at the new facility for Day Play and overnight boarding.  You can check her out on their video cam at http://www.woofsplaystay.com/woofs-watchers.asp.  Just select the low resolution or high resolution public web cam.  There are several views to look at.  Maya has mostly been seen on the “Medium Dogs Inside 1″ camera.

I used to live in the country where it was very well known that coyotes would attack sheep, cattle, chickens, and even other dogs. I had 5 acres of land but kept a half an acre fenced so that my dogs would not roam around and get attacked by these coyotes (or mistaken for coyotes and get shot by a farmer). In the fenced yard, my dogs were safe.

However, Duce had a tendency to dig. Like my other dogs, he was kept in the house at night but let outside during the day for potty and play. I liked to be outdoors too so I was generally able to keep an eye on him and stop him from digging. But one day, he dug out and disappeared. I looked and looked for him but the country is a big place and there was still a lot of wild and wooded areas that made it harder to find him.

I really loved that dog and I miss him very much. He was shepherd/chow mix and a beautiful and lovable dog. It wasn’t until recently that I heard about a GPS pet tracker. The company I work with called PetAutoSafety.com sells one in particular called the RoamEO pet tracker. If those had been invented when I had Duce, I would have gladly have purchased one. That way, when Duce got out I would have been altered and hopefully would have been able to track him down and get him back home before he got hurt. This is a great product and probably one of the best pet trackers on the market because it is so easy to use and there is no monthly fee. I have the RoamEO pet tracker now although my dog Missy is almost exclusively and indoor dog. I use it mostly when we go camping or hiking. Missy has never gotten away from me but I don’t want to take any chances with losing another great dog.

Hi, my name is Dawn and I am the primary owner of PetAutoSafety.com and the sole owner of Sephi and Maya. Sephi is a lab/shepherd/chow mix. She is over 7 years old now and a great dog. Maya is a yellow lab. She is almost a year old and growing fast. You can read more about Sephi and Maya at http://www.mydogspace.com/me/naturebydawn and http://www.petautosafety.com/page/1460887.

I started the PetAutoSafety.com site in 2006 with Sephi in mind. Sephi always had a dog seat belt but I didn’t always use it like I should have. I mostly used it for when we traveled on the highway and tended to use it less when on city roads. Why? Because Sephi hated her seat belt and she would always get tangled up in it. The seat belt she used was the kind that had a loop attached to the pet car harness where the car seat belt would pass through. It was very inconvenient because whenever Sephi would turn around in her seat, the loop of the dog seat belt harness and the seat belt of the car would get twisted and sometimes Sephi would get her foot caught in it.

A few years ago, when Sephi wasn’t wearing her seat belt, I had to swerve out of the way of a car coming into my lane. Sephi fell onto the floor and hurt herself. Thankfully, she wasn’t seriously hurt but I was bound and determined to not only make her wear her seat belt every time, but to find a better seat belt for her. And I found the perfect dog seat belt made by Guardian Gear. Instead of a loop that the car seat belt has to pass through, the dog seat belt made by Guardian Gear has a strap that buckles directly into the seat belt receptacle. With this strap, Sephi can turn around all she wants and she won’t get tangled up in it because it is a single strap. Not only that, Sephi doesn’t mind this seat belt at all. Because she can move around a bit more and not get tangled, she actually gets excited now when I put the dog car harness on her.

In 2006, I built a web site for my artwork called NatureByDawn.com. I had so much fun selling online that I partnered with others and expand my market to sell pet auto safety stuff, including the Guardian Gear dog seat belt that my own dogs use.