The most common and popular way we’ve seen dogs and motorcycles together has been in a sidecar. Back in May of 2011 we rescued our first American Bulldog Logan. He was an 80 lb. wonderful young boy that loved to go everywhere with me. He rode the tractor with me in the way of the pedals and shift lever. He was always first into my truck. He was the first dog that I ever took flying with me in my experimental airplane and the Cessna. He loved riding the 4 wheeler ATV and barking at our pigs. No matter what I was doing, if it was in motion, he was all into it. So when I wanted to ride my motorcycle he was not happy being left at home. So, of course, I needed to get a sidecar rig. I looked around for a few months and even considered buying a Ural sidecar setup. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
So I decided to just create my own. The 1998 Honda Shadow VT1100 I was riding didn’t fee like it had enough power to pull a sidecar and I always liked the 1985 Honda V65 Magna for it’s appearance and performance So that was going to be the bike. I saw a photo of a California Sidecar Freedom II model sidecar with the incorporated fender flair, chrome bumpers, windshield, front raising entry hood and taillights. It had the same ‘80s styling and stance so that was the sidecar for that bike in my opinion.
It took six months to find the bike in Atlanta and another six months to locate the exact sidecar for sale in Houston. I called all around Nashville and surrounding area trying to locate my local sidecar expert. After a few weeks with no luck, I realized that I was on my own. And since I found nothing on the internet about how to rig a sidecar, much less how to rig one to what was the fastest muscle bike in production from 1985, again it was entirely up to me to figure it out for myself. About the time that I got started in 2016, Logan was diagnosed with lymphoma. It was devastating. So I stopped every thing that I was doing and focused on his sidecar. I worked 40+ hours straight only stopping to sleep doing nothing but the bodywork, painting, designing and fabricating the necessary parts to attach the sidecar to the motorcycle to include a disk brake because what goes fast must slow down. (I had no knowledge whatsoever if sidecars even had brakes or not. I just knew that I wanted it. So I got a 67 Chevy pickup truck master cylinder and, voila, mine has a brake) I was just making it up as I went. I even got a Volkswagen steering dampener from J.C. Whitney to keep the handlebars from fighting me.
When testing the rig without the buggy attached, using four 50 lb. bags of sand to simulate the weight of the buggy and passenger, Logan just decided that I was building something for him and he would just lay on the sand bags and refuse to get off. So we rode around the property dodging pigs and chickens having a good ole time. Probably looking silly for our neighbors. But that’s kinda normal. Eventually I worked out the details of the geometry and we had our dedicated ride to take him to his chemotherapy treatments. We rode as often as we could. Every day and all weekend we were riding. Unfortunately lymphoma is fatal and after a few months and thousands of dollars worth of treatments we had to say goodbye to Logan. But before he passed, we got Darwin. Logan went with us to Knoxville to help us pick him out.
We brought little Darwin home at 5 weeks young. Logan even introduced Darwin with how to bark constantly while riding the 4 wheeler atv. Darwin really helped me get through losing Logan so naturally he would follow along in Logan’s paw prints. And Darwin loved going everywhere. At 6 weeks I had a strap connected to his harness, around my back and connected to his harness on the other side, with a seat cushion bungee strapped to my Honda Shadow gas tank for something that he could grip. He was a motorcycle dog before he thought to hike his leg to pee. But it was going to be a while before he could even stand in the sidecar and see anything. So soon enough I mad a padded “booster seat” for him. I still would ride the Shadow solo and Darwin wasn’t happy about that one bit. If you’ve ever driven a sidecar you know that it’s very different than how it is riding a normal motorcycle. You steer it kind of like a car. You don’t bank in the curves or counter steer. As a pilot I like banking into and out of turns so I needed to figure something out.
The internet again was as little help as anyone else so I just had to figure something out. Darwin was way too big to ride on the gas tank anymore so I started thinking about how I could keep him secure on the passenger seat. So I had him sit on a piece of plywood and I drew a pencil line around his butt and his front paws. There’s the first part “designed” and now how to keep him there. I grabbed a piece of wire and bent it to the shape of the curve of his back up to his shoulder. I was imagining a race car roll cage idea. Something that would be form fitting so that he would not be bounced around and get banged up and would hold him securely if I had to hit the brakes hard so he wouldn’t become a projectile. I have always just cringed at the sight of seeing people with their Blue Heelers standing on the toolbox in the bed of a pickup truck going down the highway and what would happen if they nailed the brakes or were in an accident. Not to mention that it’s illegal. It’s unsecured “cargo” and certain death free flying away into traffic.
So that was my first priority. I had some 3/4” EMT conduit laying around so I used my pipe fitting knowledge and welding skill to bend up and fabricate a simple little roll cage for Darwin. Now how to secure it to the bike. I accomplished this by just bolting it onto the small “luggage rack” (aka six pack rack) on the Honda Shadow. And that was that. Darwin and I rode everywhere together. On weekends we still took the sidecar out but we rode the Shadow more. I decided to make one for my wife’s Honda Shadow VT750 so Darwin’s girlfriend could come along too. For 3 years we rode around together. Everyone waved and took pictures. When we stopped for gas people would say “that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen” and “you should get a patent and sell those things”. It’s been my experience that when I do things for money it becomes a job thus becoming no fun. Plus there are too many different types of motorcycles and they all would require a different way to make mounting hardware. I also didn’t think that I wanted people to have to drop their motorcycles off at my shop for me to design it for them.
But, I realized how much I enjoyed riding with Darwin and how happy people were when they saw him on the motorcycle. So it took a few years to figure out how I could make it so that with some simple brackets and a piece of very expensive special steel, just about anyone could locate points, attach the proper length bracket and without any special knowledge or power tools attach robust hardware and securely mount the dog carrier on their own motorcycle.
Now what do I call this thing? “K9 cage”? Nope. “Back seat cage”? That’s worse. Well it is mounted to a six pack rack. So….Ruff Rack. I decided that was good enough. And soon enough someone in Nashville saw a picture of us and was able to track me down. By that time I had a Honda Valkyrie and luckily enough that’s what he rode. I had found my first customer. By this time I had long since abandoned the one made of galvanized EMT conduit and make a much better version out of 3/4” carbon steel tubing very much like what handlebars and engine guards are made of. I see photos of him and his black 40 lb. pit bull mix named “Carbon” all of the time to this day. With zero advertising I sold one to a guy in Texas and a lady in Canada. I had perfected my design, my method of how to make semi custom mounting hardware and was about to get a website started when disaster happened. On July 27th 2021 another pilot that was interested in buying one of my experimental airplanes was on our 5th “familiarization for fun” flight he decided to just panic after an off field landing and crashed us at approximately 60 mph into the woods. Totally destroying my plane and almost killing me. Due to his negligence/incompetence I received a broken wrist and a shattered femur.
(He broke his arm and a toe, I think. We aren’t friends anymore so I don’t know exactly.) I got a helicopter ride out of the deal and haven’t heard much from him since.
So everything in my life came to a proverbial abrupt stop. Now, as I write this, nearly 2 years later I’m able to sorta walk again but most importantly I’m able to ride my 900 lb. motorcycles again with my boy, Darwin. And thanks to the unwavering support of my wife, Deb and my best friend, and web designer, Martin. Here I am. Just a few weeks ago I sold a Ruff Rack to my first Harley Davidson client (Jake and Rocky) and will be utilizing the Harley Davidson Tour Pack quick connect/release system for the Ruff Rack installations. Possibly incorporating that system to be useful for more than just Harley Davidsons. So the future of the safest and strongest motorcycle dog carrier available anywhere is just getting started.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and we look forward to bringing happiness and great memories to dogs and motorcyclists everywhere.