Pets in the TM

I sure some of you own pets and I have a question. How sturdy are the velcro seals? I can see our 15 pound rat terrier standing on the edge of the seal and falling through. I know they are probably stronger than that but I am a "little" bit concerned.

I guess it's a little late in the game to be worrying since we bought a 2720 Saturday.

We camp regularly with a cat (siamese) that is strictly an "indoor" animal.  We have never felt the velcro'ed pads to be an escape concern.  It would take a smarter animal than ours to do this.  

A dog which likes to chew or dig might be a concern though because daylight can be seen where the bed seal meet the shell seal.

[Denny_A]

My 80 lb. Airedale, who likes to look out the side windows next to the slide out couch, hasn't caused us a bit of concern.

On our first trip, this March (10 days, 2600+ miles), he settled in nicely, and stayed alone in the trailer for 1 and 3 hrs on two occasions. No problem. He loves the trailer and already seems confident that we will return soon.

He puts his front feet on the side flap to look out. That does not seem to have had any effect. OTH, he's 10 yrs old, a bit laid back and not into unsociable antics.

If he were a young, big, active dog --  :P.  YRMV


Denny_A

[MawCraig]

One of our reasons for buying our TM2720 was to have a hard-sided camper so we could take our cat with us!  LeRoy weighs in at around 12 pounds.  He routinely walks and sits on the velcro flaps .. no problem.  He has turned out to be quite a little camper.

[2swans]

hi. welcome to the site-i see you are a new member. so were we only a short while ago(this summer) and now we are junior members. you'll be there before you know it.
we have not carried a pet in our TM, and this may be a dumb remedy, but if you found your dog did have trouble falling through the flaps, could you put some large objects on them where the most danger exists--not heavy objects, but enough to discourage pet from getting on flaps?i place a long barnwood planter behind our couch with rustic large baskets of pine cones on ea. side of it. probably wouldn't work, knowing active dogs. but maybe you'll come up with a peace of mind solution. i'll bet your dog will do fine.
2swans

[Happytrails]

Welp, I've got a 50lb boxer that's under a year old and believe me, he's gonna go EVERYWHERE with us...........He's still in the "complete spaz" stage, but I'm not concerned in the least little bit, I really don't see how a 15lb dog would be something you would have to worry about, those flaps are pretty strong............oh, and mine's a 1986, and all that stuff is stiffened up......to the point of almost falling through anyways by itself..........But even in mine, I truely think even my old stuff would be strong enough to hold a 15lb dog.............no prob.....

[arknoah]

We only had our two cats in the trailer for one evening last August, and I am sure it would take more than weight to have them fall through the flaps.  Since I have been assuming that you're talking about the flaps that attach at the end of the front beds and on the back of the sofas, you would really have to pull up a lot of the velcro on those flaps in order for any kind of weight to collapse them.  I set up our TM yesterday to look things over for the weekend of April 19, and pulling up the velcro them you want the flaps up takes a lot of energy.  

Maybe if you were talking about a chimpanzee with opposable thumbs....

Well, we have two ~30lb toddlers ;D who are pretty smart and like to jump on things.   So far they haven't figured out how to get through the velcro flaps.   The flaps concerned the wife early on but we've found them to be quite secure.

We took the TM on a run to Charleston and the flaps did fine.  The only problem was Dip found where the cable came thru the flap (we had run it thru the lower corner of the front bed.  She insisited on "digging"  the cable.  I took the "extension" for the kitchen table and placed it at the foot of the bed.  Problem solved.  The board was too heavy to move so she soon lost interest.  Of course maybe the new rawhide bone I gave her helped out.  Thanks for the input.  With any new adventure, you always have to think of the childred (2 or 4 legs).  ;)