DIY Center-Console Dog Carseat

My dog, Lucille, is an absolute brat. One of the biggest issues I have with her is the dreaded "car ride". She loves sitting in the car, if it's not moving, but the second it's going she has a full drawn puppy panic attack and lord knows I can't afford that much puppy Prozac. Well, anyway, she's okay if she can see out the window but obviously my 9.8 pound chihuahua isn't going to stand on her hine legs for 8 hours in order to see where we're going - so for our upcoming trip, my wife an I wanted to buy her a puppy car seat - only to find out they're $60+ unless I go online but then I'm paying just as much to expedite it before the trip - so, for $19.66 and 15 minutes of our time - we've created our own puppy car seat!

This one only holds our 10lb chihuahua and was made to fit in between the driver and passenger in a Hyundai Sonata - you could also make these a little differently and put them in the back or on headrests! 

So here's what you'll need:

1 M sized patterned basket (5.47)
2 6-foot leash straps (1.97x2)
1 twisted clip (4.82)
1 package of foam (3.97)

The basket was found in home decor, all straps and clips in camping, and foam in crafts!
You will also need a blanket that smells like home, unless you'd like to sew fabric around the foam to make a doggy bed - which we considered, but given Lucy's anxiety, home-smells seemed better - which it definitely did in our case!

So let's begin!

To start off with, take your bin and cut four slits big enough for your leash straps - for this to work with our console, it had to look basically like a cross.

Second, go ahead and push your straps through these slits 

 Continuing with that your straps should come out to look like this! Super easy!

Next, use the twist clip to attach to the side or back of the bin - we did side to make sure she had enough room to turn around if she needed to because the clip isn't that big - but this will be what attaches to your pup's harness!

Now, cut down the foam to the appropriate length to fit properly into your bin (This would be the part you either sew or leave empty for the blanket - the foam just adds padding for the pup! 

Now to put it in the car! You'll need to remove one of the straps to get it through the consoles rear

All you do is strap the clips under the part of your console that opens - we did ours horizontally and vertically for optimal support! 

I'm not sure what this piece is called, but this is the part you'll
probably want to remove!

I unfortunately don't have a great picture of how the underneath of the console looks but you probably get the idea by now to just clip the straps in - hopefully you didn't forget where the clip that you had to remove is like my wife did (LOL) but your bin should not be able to move at all after tightening it! After you install it, just put the blanket in and clip your dogs harness to the "seat belt" that we made! 

My dog's never been this happy to be in the car before, so I hope this tutorial helps someone else with the same problem out as well! We'll let you know how our trip to Florida goes, LOL!  Also I apologize about everything on this blog being in random places with random captions - my computer sucks & I have no idea how to work this website! LOL

With love,

Aspen, Angel, & Lucy