The Crate That Folds Flat and Rides in My Cargo Area

The second Saturday of every month, I drive one leg of a rescue transport. Ninety miles down I-94 from Eau Claire to a truck stop in Tomah, where I hand the dog off to the next driver. I have done it for five years. My husband Dale does not take a leg and has never offered to, so that Saturday is mine.

The part nobody warns you about is not the driving. It is the twenty minutes in the parking lot before the next driver pulls in. You are standing there with a dog you met two hours ago, and it is looking at you like you are the reason its whole day went sideways.

For years I did that with one hand on a leash, crouched at the open hatch of my Outback. It works, and it is the least restful twenty minutes of my month.

In the second week of May I bought a DONORO pop up crate. It was the last of five pieces of gear I have picked up for this routine, one at a time, in order, over about five months. It rides folded flat in the cargo area of the Outback and takes up less room than the jug of water sitting next to it.

The listing gives 28 by 18 by 22 inches and about 3.3 pounds. Wire frame, zipper closure, three mesh windows, and a pad that comes with it. It pops open and the frame holds. No tools, no second person, no instructions spread across the tailgate.

Here is the part I want to be straight about. The title on the listing says medium dogs. The listing itself warns that it just fits small dogs, and the manufacturer is right about that. Scout is six, a terrier mix, eighteen pounds, and she fills the better part of it when she curls up. If your dog is thirty pounds and leggy, this is not the answer, and no amount of wishing will make it one.

It is not a crate I drive with a dog inside. It is a room I set up at a stop, with me standing right there.

What the crate actually does is give a dog a boundary. At Tomah I park, leave the hatch up, open the DONORO crate in the cargo area, drop the pad in, and set a bowl beside it. One dog at a time goes in. The other stays out on a leash with me. That is the entire system and it has not let me down yet.

I have used it with Scout when she is restless at a rest stop and I want both hands free for water and a leash and a bag of paperwork. I have used it with a calm transport dog that needed ten minutes lying down out of the sun. At the Tomah hand-off there are usually two dogs on the ground at once, mine and the one changing hands, and having one of them settled in the crate makes the swap a lot less like juggling. I have not used it with a dog that was climbing the walls, because that dog does not belong in a soft-sided crate and I would not ask it to pretend otherwise.

The three mesh windows do what mesh windows do. Air moves, the dog can see out, and the inside stays ventilated. What mesh does not do is stop a dog that has decided to leave. The zippers are zipper strength. If you have a chewer, or a dog that panics in an enclosed space, this will not hold it, and I would rather tell you that now than have you find out in a parking lot.

It is also not a thing I leave set up while we are moving. When the car is rolling, the crate is flat in the cargo area and Scout is on the back seat in her hammock, wearing her harness, clipped in. She is never in the harness and a carrier at the same time. The crate comes out at parked stops, with me there. Never a dog alone in a parked car, not for five minutes, not in April.

Two details from the listing worth knowing, plus one from me. It is a soft-sided crate with a wire frame, so it holds its shape once it is up, with protected seams and reinforced corners. It is rated for indoor and outdoor use and carries a one-year manufacturer warranty. Mine lives in a car, which is neither indoors nor outdoors, and six months of Wisconsin weather coming and going has not hurt it. Folding it back down took practice. I did not get it on the first try in a truck stop lot with a dog watching me and a driver waiting. Watch it open once, then reverse what you saw.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy it for the parked stop, not the ride. Measure your dog and believe the small-dog warning, because the medium-dog wording in the title is doing more work than it should. I would tell you the DONORO crate is a place to set a dog down, not a safety device, and that if you want restraint while the car is moving, that is a different purchase and a different conversation. And I would tell you the folding gets easier, the pad is worth keeping in it, and having the thing live flat in the back of the car means you will actually have it with you when the twenty minutes in the parking lot shows up.