Waylon is eleven, sixty-eight pounds, and he has been riding in the back of my 2017 Honda CR-V since he was a puppy. Last October he walked out to the open hatch, sat down, and looked at me. That was the whole conversation. He was not going to jump in, and I was not going to lift him.
I asked Dr. Reyes about it before I bought anything, and she told me to keep him moving and use my judgment on the car. In May I ordered the PetSafe Happy Ride folding ramp, the 62 inch one, and spent two weeks teaching him to walk it with cheese. Six months later it still rides folded in the cargo area. Here is what it actually did for us, in the order I noticed it.
He stopped at the hatch. The ramp is what got him back in.
The PetSafe Happy Ride is a 62 inch bi-fold plastic ramp with high-traction tread, side rails, four rubber feet and a 150 pound load capacity per the listing. It weighs 10 pounds and folds in half to ride in the car.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →It gets a 68-pound dog into the car without anyone lifting him
I am 59 and Gary has a bad back, so lifting Waylon was never really an option. He is not a small dog. Before the ramp, getting him into the CR-V meant a running start on a good day and a long pause on a bad one. With the ramp set at the hatch he walks up under his own power and I keep my hands off him. That is the entire point of the thing.
Your own back stops being part of the routine
For two weeks before the ramp arrived I used an old bath towel as a sling, and even that had me bending and hauling twice a day. The ramp took that job away. Now I hold the hatch, he walks, and neither of us is sore afterward. If there is somebody in your house with a bad back, this is the reason that matters most and the one nobody puts on the box.
He sets the pace, and that seems to matter to him
A stiff dog does not like being hurried. On the ramp Waylon stops when he wants, resets a back foot, and keeps going. Nobody is boosting him from behind and nobody is counting. He goes up the same way he walks the block: slow at the bottom, steadier by the top. I think that is why he took to it, though I cannot prove a thing about what is in his head.
The tread gives his back feet something to hold
The walking surface is a high-traction tread, not smooth plastic. That is the detail I care about most, because his back feet are the ones that slide. On the three wooden steps out to the yard I have watched his rear paws skid out from under him. On the ramp I have not seen that, wet mornings included, as long as I wipe it first.
The side rails give him an edge to feel
There is a low rail down each side of the PetSafe ramp, and Waylon drifts toward one when he is unsure, the same way he hugs the outside of the sidewalk on our block. It is not a cage and it is not a guard rail. It is just enough of an edge that he knows where the ramp ends before his foot finds out the hard way.
You can teach it flat on the ground before you ever raise it
Nobody has to start at hatch height. Mine is a bi-fold with a safety release latch, so I opened it flat on the driveway and let him walk the length of it with cheese in my hand. Two weeks of that, then we set one end up on the hatch. By the end of the second week he was doing it himself and I was mostly standing there.
It folds and stays in the car, so it is always there
Folded, it sits in the back of the CR-V. That means I am not hauling it up from the garage or remembering it on the way out the door. If a vet visit lands on a Tuesday, the ramp is already behind the back seat. Open it is 62 inches long and 16 inches wide, and it folds in half to roughly half that length.
At 10 pounds it is light to carry and awkward to swing
Ten pounds is nothing to lift. Ten pounds of folding ramp that is 62 inches long is a different story when you are pulling it out of a hatch one-handed in a parking lot. I have learned to set my feet before I swing it. It is the one part of using this thing that I would call clumsy, and it is worth knowing before you order.
The rubber feet keep it from walking off the bumper
Four rubber feet sit under the end of the PetSafe ramp that rests on the ground. On my driveway they hold, and they have held on the asphalt at Frontier Park. What I do not do is use it on ice, or set it down wet without wiping the tread first. That is not the ramp being unsafe. That is me being careful with an old dog who does not need a surprise.
It gives back the trips you had quietly stopped making
For a while there I was skipping the Saturday drive to Frontier Park, because the loading part had gotten harder than the walking part. Now the ramp is already in the car and the drive is not a decision anymore. Waylon gets his slow walk by the river and I get my Saturday. That is what six months of this has actually bought me, and I cannot credit a single other thing with it.
What I'd Skip
I would skip dog stairs for a dog Waylon's size. Stairs ask a stiff dog to pick a foot up and place it on a narrow target, and that is the exact motion he is worst at now. I would also skip buying any ramp and expecting the dog to use it the first afternoon. Two weeks of cheese on the driveway is the price of admission, and a dog who is hurting will not learn anything while he is hurting. Most of all I would skip guessing about what is going on in your dog's joints. I am not a veterinarian. Call yours, tell them what you are seeing at the car, and let them weigh in before you decide it is purely mechanical. If your dog takes medication or has a diagnosed condition, that call comes first, not after.
Two weeks of cheese on the driveway, and then one Saturday he walked up the ramp on his own and sat down in the cargo area like he had been doing it all along.
Six months in, it is still the thing I reach for every Saturday
Folds in half, rides in the cargo area, and holds up to 150 pounds per the listing. The two things I would tell a friend: it is awkward to swing out of the hatch at 10 pounds and 62 inches, and it feels steep at the height of a CR-V. I use it anyway, about twice a week.
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