Bike Trailers - Dog trailer

In the last two weeks I've covered our other two bicycle trailers, the BOB Yak and the Carry Freedom City. Now it's the turn of our largest trailer.

Commercial bike trailers for dogs are available, but our dog trailer was constructed out of an old child trailer that we were given five years or so ago. The plastic "tent" part was well past its prime, and in any case not particularly pleasant for our dog to sit in. Instead of using this, I stripped it back to its frame and...

...made a basket on a plywood base to go on top.

So it stayed until very recently, despite the constant aggravation caused by the inadequately designed hitch mechanism, which tried to clamp onto one of the chain tubes, but would often become loose.

Luckily, such clamp type hitches can be replaced. I used the Chariot hitch.

It's very easy to replace most hitches.

In this case I needed an allen key and a spanner to remove the old hitch.

The same allen key, spanner, nut and bolt now hold the new hitch.

Note that as the "lollipop" was a bit thinner than what came off the trailer, I also needed a bit of shimming here. I found that a slide of narrow inner tube exactly filled the gap in the case of my trailer and hitch, and as the lollipop itself is flexible this is probably rigid enough.

You connect the trailer by sliding the ball into the cast hitch which is attached permanently to the bike by the wheel nut or quick release.

Then you push through the pin and it's held securely by a rubber part.

The customer inspects my work... We then went for a test ride, and another walk in the woods.

The trailer is much more usable with a decent hitch mechanism.

We sell some solutions for carrying dogs by bicycle.

There's also a video of a previous adventure with Harry by bike.