buffy and dawnie

Sunday Beaker and I were in a car accident. I was waiting to talk about it as I wanted to turn our accident into a reminder. Before anyone panics, we are both ok. I'm dinged up and pretty stiff and Beaker is totally ok. It could have been so much worse. From this incident, I felt it necessary to write a PSA about dog safety in cars. On Sundays I go into my school to prep for the week and mark assignments handed in on Thursday/Friday. For the last three years Beaker has always come with me, and I look forward to working in my room with her sleeping at my feet. Sunday was father's day and I needed a hair cut badly so instead of going into my school, I went and visited my dad with Beaker, then was going to take Beaker to Kris at her school (where she was working) so I could go for a haircut. On the way to her, as I had slowed for traffic that was just picking up after a red light I got slammed into from behind by a driver that didn't slow at all and was probably speeding. The jolt was shocking, and Beaker who had been resting in the back seat was thrown into the front of the car, flying up and over the seats into the dash. The air bags didn't go off and I had a couple bleeding cuts somehow, a bruised cheek (maybe I punched myself?) and my wrists hurt. In the end, the car sustained almost no damage despite the impact shooting us forward a few meters. It's a sturdy machine and police/EMS who arrived after I called it in were shocked at the minimal damage. I didn't care about any of that. I cared about Beaker. She was terrified and stunned about what happened. I also cursed myself moments after about how I was "in a rush" and didn't click her into her harness and seatbelt system I have in the back of the Yaris. We were both lucky - and here is the PSA. Please secure your dogs when you travel with them. I got hit at probably roughly 65km/hour or 40 m/h and Beaker became a projectile. Normally all our dogs are secured, lately I had been getting lazy. How best should you keep your dog safe? It involves physics. You must keep the impulse on the dog as low as possible. Impulse is calculated by F x t. That's Force x Time. You want the FORCE on the dog to be LOW and the time of slowing on the dog's body to be high. Here are the THREE best ways to protect your dog in a vehicle: 1. Have a "boot" or partition that separates the dog from you when you are driving. This protects the humans in the vehicle from a dog flying around in a crash, specifically a roll-over. A large dog is large enough to serious hurt people or kill them inside the car. Now the bad part. These partitions do little for the safety of the dog. The dog will fling about in the back - you are perhaps keeping the force from flying FAR lower, but it isn't something that is tops for protecting your dog and in bad accidents the research doesn't bode well for the survival of the dog. 2. Crating your dog in your vehicle. Again, this protects your dog from flying around the car, and the smaller size decreases the force of the dog as it wont fly far in a collision, just slam around in their crate. Some negatives - obviously if you have a dog the size of Beaker or Bunsen - fitting a crate in anything but a van or SUV is either impossible or almost impossible. Poorly made cheap crates made of soft materials will just shatter from a dog's body. The crate should either be part of the car frame or bolted to the floor AND be made of sturdy material - almost like a second frame for your dog in your car. 3. Proper harness with a seat belt like system for the dog. Clicking a dog's leash around its neck to a seat, in simulations, will 100% injure or kill your dog. A wide, tight fitting harness is like a seatbelt for your dog, it spreads out the force and increase the time of deceleration on the dog's body. Having a deceleration - built for dogs- seat belt attachment is also important. Think of your seat belt, you can move forward in it slightly, but if there is a HUGE change in speed, it locks. This is what we have for our dogs as the crate system doesn't work in my smaller car and our dogs don't mind wearing a harness. It's expensive, but get a harness built for just the car like what RUFFWEAR has. These tools are only as good as the people who remember to ALWAYS put them on their dogs. I felt ashamed and awful that I was lazy and didn't put it on Beaker. I just had her hop into the car and we were off for a fun drive. I have never been in an accident in my life before this. It was scary, and totally unavoidable - I couldn't have done anything different. Someone else made a mistake. This is a reminder for us all to plan for those mistakes. You don't want your mistake to be the one that loses your pet, and I have been thinking about this nonstop since Sunday. We just love our dogs too much - they are literally precious cargo.