Portable misting fan to keep dog cool in the car. Anyone use?

[vxf111]

Only on COTH will you find one person who says you have to put up a car-sized tent and another person who says sling over a tarp you found at Goodwill and call it a day

I don’t mind buying equipment that will actually be USEFUL/practical, I just don’t want to buy something that’s not going to really work.

I saw a lot of people with the shade cloths last weekend and I think that would be very useful. I also have been investigating fans (recommendations very helpful thank you) and hatch barriers (yes, I’d like something all the way across the back so I can put the back seats down in the CRV and give her that whole area to be loose in the car). I don’t mind spending $$$ on a barrier if it’s actually going to fit and be easy to use, but so far no one I know locally HAS one. Pretty much everyone I train with has small dogs, they all so multiple small crates in the back of the car.

I wish my dog could crate inside, don’t I wish. But (1) she’s large, and there is often limited space (2) she’s reactive (3) being crated around strange dogs would make her miserable and (4) some of the venues near me don’t really offer crating (for example I am going to one in PA in July held in a horse barn, they don’t offer any indoor crating).

I can’t really change what the venues near me offer. LOTS of people in this area work out of their cars. LOTS of people. Even in the venues with indoor a/c crating-- you will see MANY people working out of their cars. Of course no one (including me) leaves the dogs in the car for extended periods of time and they have all the windows/hatch open with fans and shading… but sometimes the dogs are in the car. And I want it to be as comfortable as possible when that happens.

Which brings me to a related point…why do they not schedule things back to back when it comes to agility? They put novice FAST first thing in the morning and novice STD last class of the day. So if you have a novice dog, you’re there all day. Why on EARTH do they do that? Wouldn’t it make sense to cluster together classes so people can leave when they’re done? I am basically not entering multiple classes at one trial until the fall because I don’t want to be hanging around all day when it’s hot. Even inside, in the a/c, after a while she gets pretty worn out. If the classes were clustered, I could.

[bdj]

OK, FWIW, I generally always crate inside - I have one dog who is totally zen about it, and one who is usually OK, but fusses when I take the other out to run and doesn’t appreciate when folks let their dogs approach her crate. You know what? It’s no big deal. As annoying as I find her behavior, she’s so far from the worst dog at any given site, I’ve learned to just let her be - I do cover her crate when I take dog no. 1 out (with a blanket or a shade cloth) which helps a bit. Not saying your dog isn’t as bad as you think, OP, but there’s a good chance your dog may not be that bad. (And this totally varies site to site, and is even dependent on where you are in the crating area at any given site.) A couple of things that may help, should you give indoor crating a try are to try to find a quiet (often farther away) space - it probably won’t be as convenient to the rings or entrances, but sometimes, you can find a little quiet(er) zone. If your girl does OK near a friend or trainer’s dog, see if you can crate next to them - I know a few folks who set up an “encampment” (space allowing, of course), so that their dogs are near known quantities. You can also do what a friend does with her reactive girl - she carries a trifold display thing (like this: http://www.target.com/p/elmer-s-36x48-trifold-corrugate-project-display-board/-/A-15058099?sid=2310S&ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=google_pla_df&CPNG=PLA_Seasonal+Shopping_Local&adgroup=SC_Seasonal&LID=700000001170770pgs&network=g&device=c&location=9007964&lsft=gclid:CL-tqZCRt80CFRQjgQodyr4LbA,gclsrc:aw.ds&gclid=CL-tqZCRt80CFRQjgQodyr4LbA&gclsrc=aw.ds ) with her, finds a corner and sets that up in front of her crates - instant privacy for her dogs.

If you have to work from the car - shade cloths (the bigger the better) are great - drape them over as much of the car as possible and open those windows and sun/moon roofs and use a ventlock if you need to secure the car. A friend has a shade cloth that’s big enough to cover her entire Suburban! I borrowed it once for my Matrix - that was pretty comical, but it worked. When using the shade cloth, magnets are your friend - much easier than trying to hold it in place by closing the door on it.

If you can, I’d try to crate her in the back of the car - even if it takes up a lot of space - I know it’s not as much room, but the safety issue, especially if you’re going to be opening that car up as much as possible for ventilation, would be uppermost in my mind. Also, with my own dogs, I think that they rest much better in a crate (and I want them to have plenty of energy for their runs).

For fans, while it seems like everyone I know has the nice Ryobis, I’m still using the $15 O2Cools you can pick up at Walmart. They use a bunch (6 or 8) of D batteries, but the darn things run forever. Seriously - for. ever. (like, days and days and days, running on high.) And (from that link to the facebook group somebody posted upthread) - they just came out with a crate fan for $12 - it only uses 2 D batteries and if it has half the performance of the bigger ones, it’ll be great! http://www.mightymitedoggear.com/dog-supplies/dog-crate-fans
I tried the ones that you can clip the freezer thing to, and those died a quick and annoying death, but the O2Cools just go on and on and on.

OK, about the scheduling - that’s an entire post in and of itself - suffice it to say, there are about a hundred factors that go into scheduling order of runs including the number of rings and judges and availability of workers, and coursebuilding and organizers’ attempts to minimize conflicts and the general preponderance of Master/Excellent dogs, just to name a few. I will say that many are the times that I’ve had to be on site for the first walk-thru of the day and was one of the very last runs of the day - it is what it is, and you can’t possibly make everyone happy, so if you want to keep on in this sport… as much as I hate to say this - you’re going to have to learn to embrace the suck. Some days it’ll be awesome, and you’ll be in and out with 4 runs done by 1pm, and other days you’ll be sitting at the site at 7pm thinking, “dude, I have to be back here at 7am, and I have a 2 hour ride home tonight and again tomorrow morning”.

[Marshfield]

[QUOTE=vxf111;8711602]

Which brings me to a related point…why do they not schedule things back to back when it comes to agility? They put novice FAST first thing in the morning and novice STD last class of the day. So if you have a novice dog, you’re there all day. Why on EARTH do they do that? Wouldn’t it make sense to cluster together classes so people can leave when they’re done? I am basically not entering multiple classes at one trial until the fall because I don’t want to be hanging around all day when it’s hot. Even inside, in the a/c, after a while she gets pretty worn out. If the classes were clustered, I could.[/QUOTE]

It really depends on the club. Mine does Master’s/Excellent first along with any premier classes and then novice/open in the afternoon with directions not to come until after either 1 or 2 pm. Makes for a great trial to start your young dogs at. I’m starting to see that format more often in our area. I’ve got a few months until I am doing the novice thing again with the baby dog.

The aluminet is worth the money. Watch Clean Run, they often have them on sale at some point in the summer.

If you opt to try indoor crating, the Molly Mutt crate covers are nice. Torri isn’t reactive per say, but I put a cover on her crate to give her another layer between her and the world.

The variocage barriers are the ones I am most familiar with. It’s what my friend has with her Elkhound