How do people transport their dogs in vehicles?

I have a Jeep Cherokee, and am wondering if it is better for me to haul a crate into the back of my Jeep whenever the dog needs a ride, or if I should buy one of those barriers to put between the cargo area and passenger area with the dog in the cargo area.

Moving a large crate into the Jeep whenever the dog rides seems like a big hassle....unless I have a car crate and a house crate...which obviously doubles my crate costs.

Any suggestions?

Keeping your dog crated in your vehicle is primarily a safety issue. If you happen to be involved in an accident, the dog is contained to a small, enclosed area and is less likely to be tossed around and injured. Also, if you are involved in any training, keeping them in a crate allows for you to leave windows and doors open for ventilation while your vehicle is parked. Plastic crates are fairly inexpensive, especially if you shop around, and they also are not very heavy for loading and unloading. But you have to decide how much the safety and security of your dog are worth in terms of convenience.

I leave a crate in my van. Because I do woodworking and home maintainence (bad areas of the city) and my van has many tools in it, my dog usually rides shotgun. Keeps curious fingers outa my stuff.

I have a jeep cherokee, I use a barrier, I rubber matted the floor and put his blanket in there. the back area of a Jeep is only slight larger than his crate. I used a crate when he was a puppy. but using a crate in a Jeep Cher would meen lifting 80Lbs+crate and spinning it 90 degrees. My back aint what it use to be. the other option is fold down the rear seats and tie down a crate. I'm not a pro, but most the rednecks around here throw them in back of the pick up and hope they don't trip on the beer cans.

Only if I would 'safely' go for a ride with human children loose in the car, would I do the same with me dogs. So I decided a LONG time ago my dogs would either be crated or dog-belted in the back seat when they go with me in the car. Heard too many horror stories of car accidents where the people were fine and dogs initially were fine, but escaped out the broken windows/doors/etc. to be killed or lost on the highway. Let alone the ones that are flung loose thru the car to be seriously injured.

I personally prefer using the dog seatbelts and placing the dogs on the rear seat behind me. I had a platform built to raise up the floor to the seat level (heck a 10" board with 4 cut legs out of boards didn't take fine carpentry!) and my 2 GSD's and 1 Lab have plenty of room.

Many of the dog belts I bought in the past, and see in the pet stores are crap. Either too thin of straps, or using the plastic clips as safety (no way), or the dogs get tangled up. Here is a site that compares some of the better belts:

http://www.agilepooch.com/dogbelts.html

And this is the one that works best for us:

http://www.champk-9.com/autosafetygear.htm

I use a crate anchored to the anchor points in my SUV -- in a serious crash it would probably collapse but is better than a dog flying around the car.

The safety barriers are ok (and in the past I have and have seen other people rig up a secondary barrier for opening the back for training sessions...............HOWEVER unless it is a REAL safety barrier, like the milford or police barriers I think it is very false security

Of course there were also recent posts abotu latch failures and recalls in Ford Escapes ( did it make this board?) which also adds to the crate argument.

I believe the seat belts do well too if you get the right one but I don't want to be untangling two dogs and don't think it would be good for long training sessions.