Last spring I paid a detailing company $290 to deep clean the inside of my car. They were there for four hours. It smelled like citrus and new plastic and I sat in it afterwards feeling like I had my life back.
Nine days later I opened the back door and it was gone. Hair worked into the weave of the seat. A grey smear of dried mud along the base. That specific damp-dog smell that gets into the headliner and never fully leaves. Nine days.
So I did what everyone does. I bought the $30 hammock cover with the good reviews. And that is where the real problem started, because the hammock did not fix anything. It just moved the mess onto a sheet of polyester and gave my dog a surface he could not stand up on.
Watch a dog on a slippery seat cover for one journey and you stop thinking about upholstery. Moose braced his legs at every set of traffic lights. He panted the whole way to my sister's house, forty minutes, then got out and shook for a full minute. He started refusing the car. A Labrador. Refusing a car ride.
That is when I ordered four more and turned it into a proper test.
How I tested. Five products, six weeks, three cars: a compact hatchback, an estate and my neighbour's SUV. Every product went through every car. Three dogs: Moose (75 lb Labrador), Daisy (22 lb beagle) and Tank (90 lb German shepherd). Every removable cover went through the washing machine five times. And I logged the same thing after every single journey. Did the dog lie down, or did the dog stand up the whole way?
The ranking, worst to best
It does exactly one job, which is keeping hair off the seat itself, and even that only until you take it out to wash it and realise the hair is now in your boot instead. Nothing about it is designed for the dog.
The surface is slick nylon over a sagging middle, so a big dog stands with his legs splayed and a small dog slides into the crease and stays there. Moose never lay down on it once. Not in six weeks. That number alone should end the conversation.
If your only problem is a seat you want to keep clean and your dog already travels happily, buy this and stop reading. Otherwise it is thirty dollars for a sheet.
Well made for the money and Daisy the beagle liked it, which tells you the honest version of this review: this is a small dog product with a name that does not say so.
The walls are low and the base is firm rather than cushioned, so a dog over about thirty pounds sits in it rather than settles into it. And the cover, once it has absorbed a wet dog on a rainy Tuesday, holds the smell. Two washes did not shift it.
The most solidly built thing in the test. Rigid walls, proper structure, it holds its shape when you lift it out with one hand. If you have a dog that likes to see out of the window, this is a reasonable buy.
But it is a box, and a box is a compromise. There is nothing soft to lean against, so our dogs used the walls as something to brace on rather than something to rest on. It also eats an entire seat and a half in a small car. In the hatchback it simply did not fit properly.
This is a good product and I want to be fair to it. The foam is dense, the shape is right, and it was the only other bed in the test that dogs voluntarily lay down in on the first journey. If the number one pick sold out tomorrow I would tell you to buy this.
Two things kept it off the top. The cover is a firmer woven fabric, which cleans well but is not the surface a dog sinks into, and Daisy consistently chose the plusher option when both were in the car. And at around a hundred and eighty dollars for one seat, it is nearly the price of two of the winner. That is a hard sentence to write about a product I like, but it is the sentence the test produced.
I added this one late and I added it sceptically. It is a faux-fur seat with a tall padded back panel that straps over the headrest, bolstered walls on three sides and a short tether that clips to a harness. It photographs like something bought for a dog's Instagram account rather than for an actual journey.
Moose lay down in it on the first trip. Not after a week of coaxing. The first trip. Then he did it again every trip after that, and around week three I noticed I had stopped checking on him in the mirror because there was nothing to check.
Why it won, specifically
The rim does the work. A dog on a flat surface has nothing to brace against, so it stands. A dog with a padded wall behind its spine lies down and stays down. Every dog in this test made that choice within one journey.
The base does not bottom out. Firm CertiPUR-US certified foam rather than loose fill, so it did not develop the dip that the hammock had after four days. After six weeks it still sat level.
The cover actually washes. Five machine washes. No pilling, no shrinking, and it came out of the fifth wash looking like the first. This is the thing that decides whether a product survives a year, and it is the thing most reviews never test.
And the car stopped needing a professional. Hair stays in the bed. The bed goes in the machine. I have not lint rollered a seat since April.
Side by side
| Dog lay down | Held shape at 6 wks | Machine washable | Fits a small car | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $30 hammock cover | Never | No | Yes | Yes | $30 |
| PetSafe Happy Ride | Small dogs only | Yes | Yes, smell stayed | Yes | $45 |
| Kurgo Skybox | Rarely | Yes | Cover only | No | $80 |
| Snoozer Lookout II | Yes | Yes | Yes | Tight | $180 |
| Pelsbarn Cozy Car Bed | First journey | Yes | Yes, 5 washes | Yes, 3 sizes | $102 each on 1+1 |
Pelsbarn Luxurious Cozy Car Bed
- Three sizes, XS through M/L, in beige, gray and latte swirl
- CertiPUR-US certified foam and OEKO-TEX certified textiles
- Removable cover, machine washable, tumble dry on low
- Safety belt included at no cost
- 14 day returns and a one year warranty on factory defects
The questions I got asked most
Will it stop my dog being thrown around in an accident?
No, and do not buy it thinking that. This is a comfort and cleanliness product, not a crash restraint. It comes with a belt that clips to a harness and stops a dog wandering into the front while you drive, which is worth having. If you want genuine crash protection, buy a crash-tested harness or a rated travel crate and check the test data yourself. Those are different products and this review does not cover them.
My dog gets car sick. Does this help?
Honestly, partly. Nausea in dogs is often made worse by an animal standing and constantly rebalancing. All three of our dogs settled faster with a rim to lean against, and Daisy stopped drooling on the motorway. That is three dogs, not a study, and a genuinely car sick dog needs your vet, not a bed.
Ninety pound dog. Is the M/L big enough?
Tank is ninety pounds and used the M/L curled up, which is how he sleeps anyway. If your dog stretches out flat to sleep, measure him nose to tail and accept that no car bed on this list is going to take that. He will curl in the car. They all do.
Is $204 not a lot for a dog bed?
It is, and I said so out loud when I ordered it. Then I worked out that I had spent $290 on one clean, $30 on a hammock I threw away and $45 on a booster that only fit the beagle. That is $365 on not solving the problem. The 1+1 makes it $102 a bed, which is cheaper than the Snoozer at half the quality of sleep.
What I would actually do
If your dog already travels well and you only want to protect the seat, the $30 cover is fine and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
If your dog stands the whole way, pants, drools, or has started hesitating at the car door, the cover is not your problem and a better cover will not fix it. Give the animal something to lie down in. Every dog in this test made that choice within one journey, and none of them went back.
Moose sleeps from my driveway to my sister's house now. Forty minutes. I get out and he is annoyed with me for waking him up.
See the 1+1 deal