Mark Schuette makes a new rig for dog-propelled fun. Instead of having the dog PULL you somehow, his rig has the dog PUSH you, from the rear-side area.
It doesn’t seem suitable for snow, but wheeled dog fun is becoming popular these days and that’s what his rig is designed for.
You can run up to 4 dogs on various types of trikes with this set-up.
Here’s what Mark has to say about the general benefits:
“The dog-out-front methods are fun — BUT they take a large commitment in training and you normally have to get out of town to find the room to do it. My rig is designed to be urban oriented and essentially eliminates all the dog training. (The dog has nothing to do with the steering.) It offers precision steering with no commands, shrinks the footprint and can even go on busy sidewalks (right downtown) and bike paths and is safer, so many more people should be able to do it. And most any breed is appropriate. I can even scale it down for Jack Russels or scale it up for mini-horses! And it has some application for wheelchairs and the slightly disabled.”
It seems to make pretty good sense. I had fun training Daisy to obey the commands (gee, haw, hup, easy, whoa, straight-on), but it was serious teaching and she was thankfully very eager to learn. How many have the time, or such tractable dogs? Apparently dogs readily adapt to following alongside their master, so that this set-up is far easier and more reliable to manage.