I had a very scary thing happen this winter, I just arrived home in snow storm with very high winds from doing an overnight shift at work. I parked my van in the driveway and went into the house. No more then 10 minutes of being in the house, I heard a loud snapping noise then the house shook and then a very large thud!!
My heart sank when I looked out the window. yes a very large healthy maple tree was blown over by its roots from the powerful wind and heavy snow. It hit the van with such force on the back end of my van that it took the front wheels right off the ground, ripped through the back post and buckled the under frame of the van.
The van was a goner for sure. But inside the van right where the tree hit was a Double xl Variocage!
We travel a lot with our dog to competitions and we wanted them to be as safe as possible so they were chauffeured around in a Variocage. My first words were oh no the dog’s cage! I thought to myself that nothing could ever survive a hit like that in any type of crate! The van is practically cut in half from the tree, the cage must look like a pancake!
Well I could not be more wrong! The Variocage took a direct hit to the far left hand corner of the cage, the ceiling of the van was driven right into that corner. The Variocage did take a hard hit and did have some visible damage from the far left corner of the vehicle’s roof. The roof of the van simply collapsed under the tremendous weight directly on to the Variocage.
Surprisingly, while the whole bottom on the outside of the cage was rippled and the whole crate was kinda twisted, none of the doors popped open. The roof of the crate never buckled, you could tell that the side of the cage did its job took all the shock, dispersing the energy through the cage. The front doors and the emergency hatch were secure and the Variocage would have contained my dogs securely and safely in the Variocage until I could remove them under my control.
I was just amazed! if my dogs were in the cage at the time of the accident, I could clearly see they may have been a little scared, but totally safe and unharmed.
The Variocage held up just like I was told and it made me feel so much better knowing me and my dogs are safe when traveling.
Toby Boyce
