The Nissan Rogue Dogue has made the rounds in America for a year or so. There are videos of happy dogs jumping in and out of it in California and New York and everywhere in between. It looks great. It's a concept just for dog owners based on Nissan's popular compact SUV and those dog owners love it.
I drove the Rogue Dogue down to my local dog park with my dog, Elvis, in the back. My neighbour Jan saw us and said she'd trade in her Honda CR-V for it; my friend Richard said he wishes his Jeep came fitted with a ramp, for those older dogs that can no longer make the jump up.
The idea came from somebody at Nissan in Europe who fitted out an X-Trail SUV there for dogs; that person had surely seen how Honda converted its Element into a dog owner's vehicle after it accepted those people were a large market for the now-discontinued boxy crossover.
Dog owners highlighted safety as a top concern in a Nissan survey.
Nissan North America saw the X-Trail 4Dogs and polled 400 dog owners in the United States to ask what was important to them for their dog's safety in a vehicle. "We found that 83 per cent of all dog owners on our survey wanted to have safety for their pooch, just as much as for their human passengers," says Robin Moreo, Nissan's regional product manager for the Rogue in Tennessee.
Pet safety is easily taken care of, though, by clipping your dog in a harness to the seat belt, or restraining him or her behind a pet grille across the rear seats – both items that are easily, and fairly cheaply, bought at any pet-supply store. But Nissan went further and asked Dennis McCarthy, a dog lover and the car co-ordinator for the Fast and the Furious movie franchise, to add whatever he wanted to make it a canine limo.
This is how Elvis came to be sitting high up in the back of the Rogue. Underneath the rear floor, which is padded and wipeable, there's a drawer for grooming supplies to one side and a ramp on the other. The ramp, however, folds open and could easily pinch a finger if you're not careful. It's also not as wide as the ramp I bought for Elvis at PetSmart for $160, which slides open more safely.
The folding ramp could pinch your fingers if you’re not careful.
And that's how much the Rogue Dogue is like McCarthy's movies: The idea is great and it looks good on video, but in real life, it's not so practical. There's a pair of bowls for food and water hidden in the side, but I already keep a bowl from the dollar store on the back seat. There are some poop bags in another holder, but I have those already in a door cubby.
Bowls are hidden in a side compartment.
The clever stuff is with the washer and dryer: a circular shower unit that connects to a heated-water supply, which surrounds the dog to wash him or her clean. It had a sticker on it that said " BulbHead.com," although it's no longer listed at that website. And there's a dryer hose connected to an air pump, for after the shower.
The really clever attachment, which all the dog owners at the park wanted, was the pair of fixed blower vents that will dry your dog on the way home. Moreo acknowledged that is one of the Rogue Dogue's less practical concepts.
"It would require a secondary blower in the rear of the car for that to successfully work," she said, "and when the cargo area there is already very precious, I can't see something like that being feasible, with a mass market appeal."
The Rogue Dogue has a dryer hose connected to an air pump in the back.
Finally, there's her favourite feature: "In the rear-view mirrors, there are these little cameras that will record your dog sticking his head out, interacting with other dogs while you're driving down the road. That can be recorded on an internal hard drive and you can put it on YouTube if you wish. Because what dog doesn't like to stick his head out, right?"
I pointed out that no veterinarian will approve of this: Dogs aren't usually smart enough to close their eyes against the wind and they're very vulnerable to grit and bugs hitting their eyeballs. Elvis is a Clumber Spaniel, with droopy eyes, and there's no way he's allowed to put his head out the window while the vehicle is moving.
The writer’s dog, Elvis, is not allowed to put his head out the window while a vehicle is moving, rendering useless the little cameras in the rear-view mirrors that can be used to record a dog sticking its head out.
"Oh," said Moreo, who has two cats but doesn't actually own a dog. "That's not fun."
The Rogue Dogue will stay a concept and Nissan has no plans to produce it. "It was just a one-off project car. We were trying to emphasize that not only is Rogue family-adventure-ready – and obviously, the dog is part of our family – but also its utility as a vehicle," Moreo said.
"But there's always a potential. You never know when it comes to Nissan – we always have some aces up our sleeve."
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