For the most part, this thing generally does what it's supposed to do: keep our dog's white hair from forming its own blanket on our car's black seats. If you're super handy at crafts or DIY, then this is probably the perfect base product for you to begin improvements. We, however, have neither the time nor the talent to really do much to this hammock cover.
Regarding its use by our 3-year-old, 60-pound lab/hound mix dog in our 1-year-old Toyota RAV4, here are our pros and cons:
PROS
- Effective: keeps majority of dog hair off seats
- Cheap: didn't cost as much as others we saw
- Simple: not challenging to figure out
- Clean: easy to wipe off, vacuum, and remove hair
- Safe: there are Velcro spaces in the cover to accommodate seatbelt use.
CONS:
- Nylon: this thing is insanely slippery. Our dog likes to sit and look out the windows as we drive (instead of lying down like a normal, sane dog) so she slides around like crazy and gets anxious. FIX: to mitigate the slip n slide factor, we have spread a fleece blanket across the hammock. It's not a great solution but it's better than nothing.
- Straps: We get that the straps are adjustable for easy in/out and to accommodate vehicles of various sizes, but that also means that they loosen when our dog is particularly mobile in the backseat. (We know her harness should probably be buckled into the seatbelt, but we tried half a dozen variations and all of them made for a miserable (and time-intensive) first couple hours of a 20-hour trip.) Doggie gets to roam free in the backseat for her happiness and our sanity, but the hammock straps don't stay put well when she frequently circles.
- Containment: we had hoped this cover would help keep her in the backseat so she wouldn't interfere with our driving, but if she got particularly restless or curious or excited, she could get her whole head and chest over the 'wall', and eventually begin climbing over the cover like orcs at Moria.
There are more pros than cons listed, but for us the cons almost outweigh the pros. We thought about retuning it but didn't want to pay for or deal with the hassle of shipping it back, so we've kept it. This isn't a terrible cover hammock thing, but it's not great either. It pretty much does its job, though it could use some improvements.