Pico has been riding in my 2019 Subaru Forester since he was a year old, and for most of that time he hated it. Nine pounds of Chihuahua mix, ears flat, whole body vibrating before I even backed out of the driveway in Tucson. I tried the obvious things first. A towel folded on the seat. The seat belt tether clipped to his harness with nothing under him. A carrier he could not see out of. None of it touched the actual complaint, which was that he was down low, in the dim light, with no idea where we were going.
Ten months ago I put a JOEJOY booster seat on the rear passenger side and buckled it in with its own straps. I am not going to tell you it fixed him, because it did not. He is still a dog who would rather be home on the couch. What changed is how long the misery lasts. Thirty minutes of shaking became about ten, and then he settles and watches the desert go by. Here is what did the work, in the order I noticed it.
The seat that turned a thirty-minute panic into a ten-minute adjustment
The JOEJOY booster seat has been buckled to the rear passenger seat of my Forester for ten months and it has not come out yet. If your small dog spends the first half hour of every drive vibrating, this is the piece of gear that changed the math for us.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →He can see out, and that ended most of the shaking
On the first drive with the seat in, Pico did his usual thing for the first few minutes at the end of our street. Then he stood up, put his paws on the front edge, and looked out the window. He stayed up. The shaking stopped somewhere around the ten-minute mark instead of the thirty-minute mark. I do not have a clinical explanation for it. I just know that a dog who can see where he is going is a different passenger than a dog staring at the back of a seat.
The metal frame means he is standing on something solid
The seat has an internal collapsible metal frame, which sounds like a line off a spec sheet until you watch a dog try to balance on a soft bed while the car turns. A cushion alone lets him sink and slide. The frame keeps the floor of the seat flat, so when he shifts his weight in a curve, the whole thing does not fold under him. He stands, he sits, he lies down, and the seat is still the shape it was when I put it in.
Nine inches of lift puts the window at his eye level
Height is the entire point of a booster, and the JOEJOY is nine inches tall at the sides. In the Forester that puts a nine-pound dog's head roughly level with the bottom of the rear window, which is exactly where he wants it. Before this, he was low enough that he could mostly see upholstery and sky. Now he can see the road, the other cars, and whatever is happening at a rest stop, and that is the entertainment he was missing.
The safety leash holds him in without going around his neck
The seat comes with a safety leash that attaches to his harness. Not his collar, his harness. That distinction matters more to me than anything else on this list. He can stand, turn around and lie down, but he cannot climb out over the side while I am merging. When he is in the booster, the leash is what holds him. The COOYOO tether stays in the door pocket, because using both at once is redundant and I do not want to be fiddling with hardware at a gas station.
Thirty minutes of shaking became about ten, and then he settles and watches the desert go by.
Two adjustable straps hold the seat itself still
A booster that slides is worse than no booster. The JOEJOY has two adjustable straps that run around the seat back and anchor it, and once I had them snug, the seat stopped walking toward the door every time I took a turn. The first week I had them loose and spent every drive pushing it back into place with my elbow at red lights. Tighten them the day you install it and then leave them alone.
Sixteen by thirteen by nine is an honest size for a dog up to twenty pounds
The listed dimensions are 16 inches long, 13 inches wide and 9 inches tall, with a 20-pound maximum. Pico is nine pounds and can turn around in it, lie down with his chin on the edge, and still leave room for a folded blanket. A friend's twelve-pound dog fit fine when we tested it in a parking lot. I would not push past fifteen or sixteen pounds and expect a dog to be comfortable for a five-hour drive. Buy for the dog you have.
The storage pockets ended the loose-gear problem
There are storage pockets on the outside of this thing, and I did not expect to care about them. They now hold a roll of bags, three treats, and the leash when we stop. Before, all of that lived in the door pocket and ended up on the floor mat by the second rest stop. Small thing, I know. But every time I reach for a treat at a gas station outside of Lordsburg, I am glad it is in the pocket on the seat instead of sliding around under my feet.
Oxford cloth wipes clean, which is the whole ballgame on a road trip
The material is Oxford cloth and the care instruction is wipe clean. That is accurate. Pico got carsick once on the way to a state park, and I cleaned the seat with a wet wipe and a paper towel at the next gas station in about four minutes. It did not soak through and it did not hold a smell. I would not call it waterproof, because nobody told me it was, but it takes a spill better than the cushion on my sofa does.
It lifts out in one piece, so vacuuming under it actually happens
The whole seat comes out with the two straps and the leash, maybe fifteen seconds, and goes back in the same way. That matters more than it sounds, because the alternative is a seat you never vacuum under. Once a month I pull it, vacuum the bench, and put it back. No tools, no re-reading instructions, no wrestling a frame through a door. If a piece of gear is annoying to remove, you stop removing it, and then you are driving around with crumbs and dog hair from three states.
Just over three pounds means it does not take over the back seat
At 3.11 pounds this is not a piece of furniture. The rear bench in the Forester still seats two adults with the booster in place on the passenger side, which means my sister Dolores can ride back there with Pico when we drive to dinner in Sacramento. A hard-sided crate would not allow that. Light also means it stays where I put it and does not shift the balance of the seat when I brake hard on the interstate.
What I'd Skip
Skip the front seat, always. Skip the tether-alone setup with nothing under the dog, because it stops them from launching forward and does nothing about the shaking. I did that for a year and it was not the same job. Skip the hard plastic console inserts I looked at before this, the ones with no cushion and no sides, because a nine-pound dog slides in them on the first curve. And skip anything that advertises itself as crash tested unless the maker can actually show you the test. I have never called this seat crash tested and I am not going to start.
One more thing I would skip: buying this for a dog over twenty pounds. The maximum is twenty pounds and the dimensions are 16 by 13 by 9, so a bigger dog is going to be folded into it like laundry in a suitcase. If you have a thirty-pound dog, this is not the product, no matter how good the reviews are. Buy the thing that fits your dog and you will use it every single day.
Ten months in, it is still the first thing I buckle in
Pico still does not love the car. He loves being able to see out of it, and that turned out to be most of the problem. If you have a dog under twenty pounds who spends the first half hour of every trip vibrating, start here and give it a week.
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