DogCars.com: I wanna be a cowgirl, revisited
By Gina Spadafori
July 18, 2007
This weekend, I’ll catch up on all my reviews for DogCars.com. I’ve fallen a bit behind — gee, go figure — and have at least a half-dozen to write up, including reviews of the newKia Rondo crossover, which I really, really liked. The Chevy HHR was another hit, and I’ll enjoy writing that up. The most head-turning car of the last few weeks was the Mini Cooper S, which isn’t as bad a DogCar as you might imagine, if you have small dogs. (And woof! is it fun to drive!)
But the vehicle they dropped off yesterday for a week’s test drive makes my heart flutter. And love doesn’t make sense sometime, which is why I love me my pick-em-up trucks. Especially this one: The King Ranch special edition of the Ford F150.
I live in Sacramento, not more than six-seven miles from the golden dome of the California State Capitol. I have little ranch house on a quarter-acre suburban lot. I’ve ridden horses off and on (mostly off) my whole life, but the closest I came to owning a horse was a brief partial lease on a nice Quarter Horse mare and a couple years on the waiting list for a stall at the Sacramento Horsemen’s Association. (When my name finally came up in 2001, I was unemployed and dead broke.)
And yet … I’m a cowgirl. I just know it.
Which is why I get all weirdly swoony hopping up into the cab of a citified ranch trunk like this one, with its interior that looks like a handcrafted Western saddle. Oh my.
Is it any surprise that although I’m hardly much of a country music fan (at least the new stuff, all pretty boys and girls, no heart) one of my favorite songs is Garth Brooks’ “Cowboy Cadillac“? (Although I suspect Garth is a Chevy Truck man, and I’m a Ford Truck woman.):
She loves to haul them cattle
All my ropes and saddle
And it doesn’t matter work or play
If it’s a mountain
She can crawl it
If it’s hay
Then she can haul it
She’s the last one to call it a day
Every cowboy loves her
Lord, they all dream of her
Oh and brother, don’t they all react
At the end of the evening
When they see my leaving
With my cowboy Cadillac
This weekend I’ll do what I always do when I have a truck to test drive: I’ll get hay. Just one bale, though, because rabbits, unlike horses, just don’t eat that much.
Most of the dogs here aren’t that impressed with trucks. But my boy Woody, who just happens to have the same name as the cowboy in “Toy Story,” will jump in with delight and ride shotgun over to the feed mill. And that’s the way it should be. (Note: Woody was just posing in a Nissan Titan I had for a week to review. My dogs do not ride in the back!)
Special horse-related note: As a favor to a writer friend with a family emergency, Pet Connection Director of Photography Morgan Ong and I are scrambling to get an assignment done for a horse publication. I am in such a horsey mood thanks to this truck there’s no better week to be doing it.
beautiful pic of Woody!
Comment by straybaby — July 18, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
Yup, gotta have my truck. (An F-150 utility vehicle — no uber-plush interiors for us and lots of hualing and towing capacity with HD shocks, battery and brakes to go with the large engine). When I’m not towing a horse trailer and sleeping under the bed topper (on an inflatible mattress, thank you very much), hubby is hauling demolition debris (we are forever working on our house) or the two retrievers to field training. Hubby once hauled a port-a-loo for a pro field trainer who had a majority of female clients at a retriever training seminar.
And as a dog-mobile, it’s the bomb. With the topper on it and some modifications. We changed out the window in the back to the kind that opens (so we could get A/C to the topper compartment), we put dog crates on a platform made of PVC tubing and plywood (bungied to the truck bed). Two under-bed Sterilite containers fit perfectly under the platform. Storage for folding chairs and muck boots is alongside the crates. Additional crates, tables, ex-pens, etc. go on top. Coolers, bumper-filled buckets, dog water and misc. items go in front of the crates. And we yanked out the seats in the crew cab to make room for crates for our smaller dogs. Two humans and four dogs were able to travel comfortably for a day’s drive to a week of field, obedience and conformation events. The dogs are comfortable and shaded with flip-up side windows and the flip-up back door (it’s like a van door with a vertical door inside of it as well — I gave my tailgate to a friend who had hers stolen at a mall). The flip-up back even provides a bit of shade for the humans.
Yup, real women drive trucks.
Comment by Deanna — July 19, 2007 @ 7:04 am
My friend drove me in her Mini the other day, and it looked plenty big enough to get Bailey in the back. She puts her two samoyeds back there, though not in a crate.
Comment by KathyF — July 20, 2007 @ 3:47 am
Gina & Christie,
Since you review ‘dog friendly’ vehicles, please see the email I just sent you with a link to an online interview with my sister, Paula Lawlor, discussing the proposed Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 216 - Roof Crush Resistance found here:
http://www.thepatientsvoice.co.....ntshow.htm
Comment by Barb — August 16, 2007 @ 9:41 am