Dogs and Trucks

So while in Texas, my coworker and I noticed a dog in the back of the truck:

VIDEO

the dog didn’t stop. He just kept running back and forth along the back of the bed Over and Over and Over.

That dog is one very happy dog.

34 thoughts on “Dogs and Trucks

  • 10/4/2006 at 10:31 am
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    <when-i-lived-in-alaska-story>In Alaska, you cannot be a real Alaskan unless you have a dog in the back of your truck. Or even better, sitting on top of the cab in your truck. It’s hilarious.</when-i-lived-in-alaska-story>

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  • 10/4/2006 at 10:13 pm
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    I hate it when I see dogs in the back of trucks like that.

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  • 10/5/2006 at 8:12 am
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    I don’t like it either, Caitlin. It is so tremendously dangerous.

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  • 10/5/2006 at 9:49 am
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    The basics of your disagreement, as I see it, is whether or not safety is more important than freedom and whether or not a guardian has the right to make decisions on behalf of those in their protection.

    Start with a some helmet/seatbelt laws in a bowl and add a little some Terry Shaivo. Throw in a hefty dash of Animal rights laws and a pinch of public opinion. Put it in the oven for 2-4 hours and I think you’ll come out with a perfect emotional/political nightmare.

    A bit too political for mikedidonato.com. Dogs in trucks doesn’t bother me too much but I encourage the anti-dogtruck folks to try and sway my beliefs the other way via e-mail.

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  • 10/5/2006 at 10:55 am
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    I don’t think it’s political at all, just common sense. I have a dog, and there is nothing freeing about sticking a dog in the back of a truck where he could jump out and be injured or, far more likely, killed. Pets must trust that their owners will not put them in harms way. We must make decisions that are in the best interest of our pets, because, quite frankly, they are not capable of understanding the inherent danger in any given situation. Apparently though, neither are some people. My dog rides IN the truck, sits on the seat and sticks his head out the window with his ears flapping and occassionally sneezing from too much air going up his nose. He loves it and is far more safe at the same time. If a dog likes to run around…let him do it when he is on solid ground, not in the back of a pickup truck. If it were up to me, I would stick a person in the back of a truck before a dog.

    I also remember hearing a story about how two pickup trucks pulled up next to each other at a stoplight, both with an untethered dog in the back, just before the light turned green each dog jumped into the other truck and then the two trucks drove away in opposite directions.

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  • 10/5/2006 at 12:02 pm
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    I believe there’s a level of tolerance for everything. I don’t see a dog in a bed being all that bad. Some people might say that you are putting your dog at risk because you let it ride in the cab without a dog restraint belt. We all have our personal levels of comfort and our own personal beliefs. I don’t like to look down on anyone’s decision. I don’t see a right or wrong here. It’s a boat-load of gray.

    feel free to e-mail me if you’d like to disagree.

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  • 10/5/2006 at 1:13 pm
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    i can see the argument that the dog will jump out but some dogs will jump and some won’t. its a matter of impulse control and training…

    if you’re concerned, you can tie the dog up in the back anyways. i’ve seen that done plenty of times

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  • 10/5/2006 at 2:08 pm
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    I think the Eskimos used to have a similar cultural dilemma about the restraint of their dogs in the back of trucks. Their solution? Get rid of the trucks have the dogs pull you around! Safe for everyone!

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  • 10/6/2006 at 7:34 am
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    The best way to transport a dog is in a travel cage, but in the absence of a cage, it is safer for the driver and everyone else on the road, to have the dog in the bed of the truck, rather than in the cab. Animals in the cab can distract the driver, or if frightened, attack the driver. They are animals, after all. Good, smart, well-trained dogs do not jump out of moving trucks and I have yet to see one fall out.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 9:47 am
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    A good driver will not let the dog be a distraction. And good, smart, well-trained dogs will not attack their owners.

    I agree with the travel cage though, and bigger, untrained animals should always be transported in such a way, regardless of their location in a vehicle.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 11:31 am
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    The driver has no control over what the dog is doing and no matter how well-trained the dog, it can inexplicably freak out and attack, or try to jump through the windshield, or any such crazy thing. YOu can’t train all of the wild out of an animal. Of course, it’s likely more dangerous to have a person in the cab with you, considering people are harder to train and more likely to do stupid thoughtless things.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 11:46 am
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    Jes Saint is right. Too many people forget that animals are animals. Heck if people who are capable (for the most part) of forseeing danger can freak out you can bet Fido can be frightened into a prehistoric predator state. If you want to anthropomorphise your pet, go right ahead.

    Jes Saint is also right about people being far more dangerous. Just last week I saw a guy with a little lap-dog IN HIS LAP with no restraints and his window ALL THE WAY DOWN. Now THAT was dangerous. The thing could have hopped up and to the left and been sucked out by the air rushing past, thus becoming puppy pate when the driver behind had no time to brake.

    I think the obvious solution here is to put the people in the bed and let the dogs drive the trucks.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 12:31 pm
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    I was with you up to the part where the dog was going to be sucked out by the air rushing past the open window.

    Can the dog jump out the window?
    Yes.
    Can the dog be sucked out by the air pressure differential?
    Not at any highway speeds.

    Now that I think about it, I don’t think that it could happen at any speed as I don’t think the air pressure inside the car changes very much as the car gets faster… I also don’t expect the outside air pressure to drop as the speed increases… quite the opposite, there’s a pressure wave as the car moves through the air and it wraps around the car. Sure, there are bursts of wind even with one open window that will blow around papers and what not, but no dogs!

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  • 10/6/2006 at 12:42 pm
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    I believe Anita is making reference to Bernoulli’s principle which basically says that an increase in velocity occurs with a decrease in pressure. This is why if you crack a window just slightly in a car, smoke from a cigarette will be pulled out the window. The car moving through the air is creating a slight vacuum within the passenger compartment.

    The problem is that this only really occurs with laminar flow where the flow of the liquid, in this case air, can reform its flow pattern post disturbance. When you open the window enough so that a small animal could be pulled out, the flow pattern becomes turbulent and you lose the vacuum action.

    Please feel free to contribute to my logic here if you think it’s horribly wrong.

    Bernoulli’s equation does vary with v^2… so perhaps there IS a speed such that would cause catostophic vacuum-like pull out of a barely open window. I pledge to work on this and return an answer to the masses.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 12:59 pm
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    The dog that participates in this study will be the first dog to contribute as much to science since Laika.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 1:01 pm
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    Ok, that was not what I was thinking as I am not familiar with Bernoulli unless he makes pizza. But when you stick your hand out the completely open window of a vehicle moving at 55-65 mph you can feel definite suck power pushing it backward. Though sucking is different from pushing I grant.

    The theory is that the dog is already jumping and that it will have enough mass in and of itself to be helped out the window by the force of said rushing air. Like in “Twister” when the little sensors couldn’t be picked up but the truck could. Or like how Semis get blown off the highway on windy days, but little cars don’t.

    So I’d say a chihuahua would not be in as much danger as say a Bichon Frise, because the chihuahua doesn’t have enough mass. However at some point the larger the dog the less suceptible to the rushing air suckage. A Doberman for instance would not be in danger of getting sucked out. But then I don’t think anyone should drive with a Doberman in their lap either.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 1:04 pm
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    I believe she was making reference to her sense of humor and how much she hates little dogs – her subconcious wish that toy dogs would be sucked out moving vehicles.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 1:13 pm
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    This… kind of makes sense. As the animal stuck its appendage out the window, the arm would be subject to the force of the air blowing by. That force (velocity of the car times some constant (k) of air resistance?) would create a moment which, if strong enough, could whip the dog out of the car…

    http://www.mikedidonato.com/wp-content/Dogcar.PNG

    Makes sense. I’m still going to try and solve the Bernoulli equation though.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 2:16 pm
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    Amanda, a doctorate student in aerospace sciences stated the following when I asked her the question:

    “even with a laminar stream leaving your window, outside from the lips of the window to the open air there is going to more than likely be a turbulent jet with secondary effects due to the forward velocity of the car…

    you will have a stronger pressure gradient with a slightly open window because delta area is in the full equation (with viscosity, etc). With a high enough Reynolds # (due to speed), you will reach turbulence effects, but they’re not going to change the basic principles, so at a fast enough speed the little animal could get sucked up to the window. You will also start worrying about other factors at that point (vehicle structural effects, thermo, lift, shocks, etc).”

    Did you catch that?

    “at a fast enough speed the little animal could get sucked up to the window.”

    AWESOME. WE NEED TO TRY THIS!
    Anyone have a jet powered perfectly aerodynamic car and a guinea pig?

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  • 10/7/2006 at 12:38 pm
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    Do guinea pigs jump? Perhaps it would be better (safer, more ethical) to use one of those robotic pets for the experiment. You can learn a lot from a dummy.

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  • 10/9/2006 at 11:08 am
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    So a slightly open window may create such a pressure differential that the dog gets sucked up to it?
    I’ll give that a Plausible but without the large opening, the dog isn’t going out that window as now you have to have enough force to either break the dog and make it fit in the small window or break the window so the dog escapes whole.

    So dog getting sucked out the window of a moving car = BUSTED!

    Although we should make a writeup and submit it for mythbuster approval.

    Hm… this give me an idea…

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  • 10/9/2006 at 12:12 pm
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    I think the limiting factor here isn’t the size of the window opening… in order for this all to happen the car would have to be going WAY faster than your normal four door. My guess is that the speed required might also trump the land speed record (763mph).

    Really… to test this we’ll need a supersonic jet, an industrial window, and a small mammal.

    let’s get Mythbusters involved.

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  • 10/9/2006 at 8:44 pm
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    If its not the size of the window, then its totally busted.

    This is assuming that the myth is that the dog can be sucked out the window of a normal car travelling at normal highway speeds.

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  • 10/10/2006 at 5:45 am
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    Anyone have a jet powered perfectly aerodynamic car and a guinea pig?

    Not a phrase you hear every day.
    Unfortunately.

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  • 10/10/2006 at 9:26 pm
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    v^2 is also a good thing to remember when selecting a kitesurfing kite of appropriate size on a thermonuclear day.

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  • 10/10/2006 at 9:42 pm
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    FUN BERNOULLI EXPERIMENT: Cut a strip of paper about 2″ wide and 6″ long. Hold the paper such that the short edge is horizontal, and pressing against the area of your face between your lower lip and chin. The paper should be curling down due to the force of gravity. Now pucker those lips and blow hard, straight out. The paper moves upward, against the pull of gravity!!! WHY?! the air moving across the top of the paper creates an area of low pressure, and the area of relatively high pressure below the paper pushes it upwards against the force of gravity!!

    Diagram

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  • 10/11/2006 at 9:48 am
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    Once again Jon Abad, you have missed the point that the dog is not expected to be sitting passively on the driver’s lap, but bouncing merrily with no regard for the forces of rushing air that sucks. My theory is that it is a combination of the dog jumping and the sucking factor that contributes to Fluffy’s flight.

    But the whole point of my theory is to demonstrate the dangers of having an unrestrainted animal in the vehicle with you. Though this experiment is starting to sound fun.

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  • 10/11/2006 at 11:17 am
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    if the dog jumps out, then the dog jumps out and is not being sucked out.

    i just want to be clear.

    and yes, dogs in the driver seat are dangerous.

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  • 10/12/2006 at 9:22 pm
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    new olympic sport….racquetball in trucks with dogs….

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