I have bought three seat covers for one green Subaru, and I'd love to say it was a careful testing plan. It was not. It was one cover that failed, one that worked, and one that came along later and ended up doing a job I never saw coming.
Our car is a 2017 Outback with well over 120,000 miles on it. Hank rides in it most weeks: to the river, to the trail, to Caleb's parents' place near Braham, and lately to a lot of vet appointments. He's a golden mutt who weighs in the high sixties, sheds year-round, swims whenever he's allowed and believes every car ride ends somewhere wonderful. The car has the hair to prove it.
The bench-style cover: $72, slid around
The first one, back in 2023, was a bench-style cover, the kind that drapes over the back seat, tucks into the crease and leaves the footwell open. At $72 it was the priciest of the three, with a quilted top and side flaps.
It never stayed put. Hank turns two full circles before he lies down, and by the second circle the cover had ridden up into a lump behind him. The open footwell was its own problem. He'd step down into it at every stop, put his front feet on the floor and his chin on the center console, and the backs of the front seats collected a lot of mud. Caleb tried tucking it tighter, then tried a couple of bungee hooks. Neither fix lasted a week.
It's folded on a shelf in the garage now. I keep meaning to donate it.
The hammock: $49, kept
The hammock cost less and does more. It clips to the headrests in front and in back, making a sling across the whole back seat that blocks the footwell completely. Three things keep it in place: the headrest straps, two foam tubes that push down into the seat crease, and a rubbery dotted backing that grips the seat. Hank can circle as much as he likes and it barely shifts.
What I like less: it sags in the middle under a big dog, anyone riding in back has to unclip one side to sit down, and the mesh window meant for him to see the front seat is purely decorative, because he prefers to rest his chin on top of the console anyway. It goes in the washer on cold and gentle and hangs to dry in the basement. Three summers in, the seams are fine.
The cargo liner: $58, kept, and the winter workhorse
We bought the cargo liner in spring 2025, mostly for wet-dog lake trips and bags of garden soil. It fits the cargo area with tall side panels and a flap that folds down over the bumper.
Then came January. After Hank's knee surgery he wasn't allowed to jump, and getting into the back seat takes a hop and a twist, which is exactly what his surgeon didn't want. So Caleb built a ramp out of plywood and scrap carpet, and Hank started riding in the cargo area, walking up the ramp straight onto the liner.
The bumper flap turned out to matter more than anything. The foot of the ramp rests on it, so three-plus months of ramp trips haven't put a single scratch in the paint. The liner's raised edges caught every bit of salty slush that came off his feet in January and February, and on a Minnesota road that's a lot of slush. When it got gross, I wiped it down in the garage with a damp towel. Once it finally got above freezing in March, Caleb hosed it off in the driveway, and it looked almost new.
What the keepers had in common
Looking back, the two that stayed put share two things:
- Anchoring in more than one direction. Straps up top, tubes in the crease, walls on the sides. One anchor point is never enough for a dog who circles.
- A grippy backing. The bench cover had a slick underside, and that alone probably doomed it.
The honest tradeoff is that neither keeper is pretty. The hammock makes the back seat look like a camping trip, and the liner adds a couple of pounds of rubbery fabric to the back of the car that I lift out twice a year. I've made peace with both.
If you're shopping, measure your own seat and cargo area before anything else. What fits a wagon with a big dog might be a different story in a small sedan or with a dog half Hank's size.
For now, Hank is still a cargo-area dog. He's walking well, but jumping in and out of the car is off the list for a while longer, so the ramp rides along and the hammock waits in the back seat. He checks on it every time I open the rear door.
Hank's take: the cargo area is fine, but the back seat is where the good window is.
