URPOWER Dog Car Seat Cover: An Honest Review of the Hammock

I bought the URPOWER back seat hammock in the second week of January, ten months ago, and it has not come out of the Subaru since. That is not a compliment on its own. It mostly says something about how much I dislike scrubbing mud out of cloth seats. Before the hammock I used two old bath towels. Every time Scout climbed in, the towels bunched up under her, she spent the whole ride trying to get comfortable on a wad of terrycloth, and I spent the whole ride reaching back to flatten them out again. The hammock ended that in one afternoon.

I am not going to tell you it is perfect, because it is not, and I am not going to tell you it is the only thing you need, because it is not that either. It is a piece of fabric that hangs across the back seat and catches what a dog brings in with her. It does that job well. There are two things the listing never mentions that you should know before you order, and those two things are the reason I am writing this down instead of just leaving five stars and moving on with my week.

Here is the short version for anybody who wants it and will not read the rest. The hammock is a waterproof cover that hangs across the back seat, made of 600D Oxford fabric, and the listing says it fits a back seat about 54 inches wide. It kept my cloth seats clean through five rescue transport legs, one Wisconsin winter, and a dog who cannot sit still for ninety miles. The tradeoffs are nails and straps. I will get to both of them.

How I've Used It

Scout is a six year old terrier mix, eighteen pounds, adopted from a small Wisconsin rescue. She is not a bad traveler. She is a busy one. She stands up, sits down, turns around twice, leans against the door panel, and by the time we reach the highway she has rearranged the entire back seat to her liking. She rides on the rear driver side, on the hammock, wearing her harness with the tether clipped. She is never loose back there, and the hammock is not what holds her. The harness is.

I also drive one transport leg a month. Five years now, the second Saturday, about ninety miles down I-94 from Eau Claire to a truck stop in Tomah, where I hand the dog off to the next driver and get a cup of coffee for the ride home. Some months it is a puppy. Some months it is a twelve year old beagle who sleeps the entire way and does not so much as lift his head. Scout usually rides along in the back, and the transport dog rides in a crate that lives folded flat in the cargo area until I need it out. The hammock is what sits under all of it.

Set-up took one afternoon in January. I laid the URPOWER across the back seat, ran the straps where they belong, and snugged them down. That is the whole job, and it took less time than finding the tape measure did. I have snugged those straps again every few weeks since, because they work loose, and that is not a defect so much as it is what straps do. Everything else about the cover has stayed where I put it, including on the mornings when Scout gets in wet and shakes before I can stop her.

The Fit Question You Need to Answer Before You Order

The listing tells you to confirm that your backseat length is close to 54 inches before you order, which is exactly the kind of instruction people scroll past on the way to the buy button. Do not scroll past it. The cover is a universal fit, and that phrase means it was not cut for your particular car. My back seat measured close to that number, and the cover sits with a little slack at the edges, which is fine and honestly useful when a dog is turning around on it.

If your back seat runs a good deal longer than 54 inches, you will have gaps at the ends and fabric hanging over the seat edge. If your back seat is much shorter, you will spend your life tucking. Neither one is a disaster. Both are the kind of thing that makes a person leave a one star review complaining about fit when the real problem was that nobody ever measured. I measured mine on a cold afternoon with a tape measure and felt slightly foolish doing it. That ten minutes is the reason the thing fits.

One more note on fit, and this one catches people. The cover is built for a bench. If your second row is two captain's chairs with a gap down the middle, this is not the product for that, no matter what the width number says.

What the Listing Says, and What It Leaves Out

The listing says the cover is waterproof and made of six layers of fabric with a 600D Oxford top. In practice, waterproof has meant waterproof for me. Wet dog, a tipped water jug, a transport dog who lost his breakfast on the way to Tomah back in April, none of it reached the cloth underneath. I wiped the surface down with a rag and that was the end of the story. The material does not have a strong smell out of the package, which the listing makes a point of, and I will confirm it, because I have opened enough things that smelled like a tire fire to appreciate a product that does not.

The listing also mentions four levels of protection to keep a dog from slipping when you hit the brake. In the real world that means a textured back surface with some grip to it. Scout does not slide into the footwell when I stop, and she used to, and that alone was worth the purchase. But it is not glue. A hard stop will still move a dog, which is one more reason the harness matters more than the cover does.

What the listing leaves out is the small print: a six month manufacturer warranty, and folded dimensions of 16 by 15 by 1.5 inches at 2.58 pounds. Read those with a shrug. It is a folded piece of fabric. The number that actually matters is the 54 inches across the seat.

It is not glue. A hard stop will still move a dog, which is why the harness matters more than the cover does.

The Nail Marks. We Should Talk About Them.

Ten months in, the surface has marks on it. Not tears. Marks. Scout gets her nails done at the groomer and they are still nails, and where she plants her front feet when she climbs in, there is a dull scuffed patch about the size of my hand. I have seen the same thing on covers in other volunteers' cars, so I do not think this is a URPOWER problem specifically. It is a fabric plus claws problem. If a spotless surface matters more to you than a clean seat does, buy a hard sided kennel and save yourself the disappointment.

Here is what has not happened in ten months. No seam has split. No strap has torn off. The waterproof layer has not peeled or gone sticky. The cover has not slid off the seat or bunched up underneath a turning dog. That is a busy terrier and a monthly transport leg and one very long winter, and the fabric is holding up better than I expected it to when I opened the box.

The Winter Test

I want to say a word about February, because February in Eau Claire is not a fair test of anything. Road salt, sand, slush that refreezes overnight, and a dog who wants to stand in all of it before she gets in the car. For six weeks the back seat of that Outback was a wet, gritty mess and none of it got through. I shook the cover out in the driveway, wiped it down, and put it back. The cloth seats underneath are the same cloth seats I bought the car with.

That is the whole reason I keep it installed year round. Taking it out in April and putting it back in November sounds like a sensible plan until you remember that a dog gets wet in July too, and that the mess does not keep a calendar.

The Straps, and Why You Check Them

Straps work loose. Mine needed snugging in February, again in April, and every few weeks since. If you never touch them, the cover sags down into the footwell and the entire point of a hammock goes away, which is a thing I learned the week I got lazy about it. The fix is thirty seconds of pulling. I put it in the same mental bucket as checking the oil, meaning I do it when I think of it and then wish I had thought of it sooner.

I also want to be plain about what this thing is, because I hear the wrong version of it at the rescue all the time. A hammock is a cover. It hangs across the seat and it holds a dog up off the cushion. It is not a restraint, it is not a cage, and nothing about the way it hangs is designed to hold a dog in place in a crash. I have a harness for that job and I use it on every single trip, including the four minute drive to the vet, because the four minute drives are the ones people skip.

What It Will Not Do

It will not restrain your dog. A dog can walk from one side of a hammock to the other, and mine does, about nine times per trip. If you want the dog held in one spot, that is a harness and a tether, and it is a separate purchase that costs more than this cover does.

It will not survive a chewer. Scout is not one, so this has never come up for me, but I have seen what a bored dog does to fabric in a parked car and this cover is not the answer to that. A determined dog will get through it and then you have two problems.

It will not protect the cargo area, the door panels, or the front seat. It covers the back seat cushion and the backrest, and that is all it ever claimed to do. The door panels in my Outback are a scratched up mess from ten months of a terrier leaning on them, and no hammock was ever going to prevent that.

And it will not make the hair disappear. It collects it, which is a different thing. Every couple of months I take the whole cover out, shake it hard in the driveway, and run the vacuum over it. That is easier than vacuuming seats, but it is still a job, and I would rather tell you that now than have you find out on a hot afternoon in July.

What I'd Say to a Friend at the Feed Store

If you asked me across the feed aisle whether to buy it, I would ask you two questions first. Is your back seat a bench, and is it close to 54 inches across? If the answer to either one is no, I would tell you to keep looking, and I would not feel bad about it.

If the answers are yes, I would tell you to buy it and to buy the harness in the same order, because they do different jobs and you need both. I would tell you the URPOWER cover will keep your seats out of the mud business, and that your seats are still cloth underneath, so do not expect it to turn your car into something it is not. It is a cover. It covers.

And I would tell you to snug the straps. Nobody does. Everybody should.

Who This Is For

Dog owners with a bench back seat and upholstery they would like to keep. People who drive rescue legs and end up with somebody else's dog in the back of their car once a month, which is exactly how I ended up with one. People with a dog who sheds, drools, or gets wet at the park, and who would rather shake out a cover in the driveway than pay somebody to detail the interior.

It is also a reasonable fit for anyone who still wants the back seat usable for passengers. The cover comes out in under a minute, folds flat, and the seats underneath are dry and clean when you need them for people instead of dogs.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your second row is captain's chairs. Skip it if your back seat is well outside that 54 inch figure in either direction. Skip it if what you actually want is something that holds a dog in one place, because a cover will not do that and it was never supposed to.

Skip it if a blemish free surface matters to you, because the nail marks show up early and they do not come out. Skip it if you have a chewer. And skip it if you were hoping this would replace the harness, because it does not, and I would rather you heard that from a retired bus dispatcher in Wisconsin than from a review somebody got paid for.