Building a Dog Box for my Harley

Obviously you have seen the pictures of Ryland, my service dog, riding in the pair of sidecar motorcycles that I have. We ride a 1998 Harley Electra Glide with a Champion Escort sidecar. She absolutely loves that thing. And — we have a 2007 Russian URAL with a sidecar and 2WD. We use it for winter riding in the snow.

However, I have a 3rd motorcycle that has only two wheels. It started out as a 2002 Night Train, but it’s had a lot of modifications over the years. It’s been converted to a Springer type front end and had some floorboards put on and other modifications to the engine.

This is my “hot rod”. But unfortunately it’s been sitting on my carport collecting dust and getting no love because I can’t take my dog on it. I checked into getting a commercially made dog seat for the bike, but I can’t justify a couple thousand dollars for one.

So I decided to brainstorm and create something for my girl to ride with me. Now this ain’t going to be a thing of beauty but it’s going to be functional. I started off with a heavy gauge flat of sheet metal and made brackets to bolt it to my luggage rack.

Next, I welded more sheet metal to the flat piece to make short sidewalls for strength.

Each piece was carefully tacked, then MIG welded together.

I chose a dog kennel from PETCO that was just big enough for Ryland to fit, and I placed a thick pad in the bottom.

I put a layer of Bondo body filler on the welded sides to cover the seams to keep water out of the box in case we ever get caught in the rain, plus I drilled drain holes in the bottom of the platform.

Once I bolted the bottom kennel half onto the steel platform, I decided to test fit the dog inside. Nope. The walls are way to short and I don’t want her rolling out of the box in the curves.

So what I did was cut the top off the upper kennel half bolt it to the bottom half. Now she has a convertible to ride in. She has just enough room to lay down if she wants to, but she can still sit up with her face in the breeze.

Of course this thing is as ugly as a mud fence, but I don’t care. I can now take my girl on my two wheeler Harley on occasion. Naturally I’ll make more modifications in the future to maybe “pretty it up” a bit more. I might even switch out to a different dog box that looks nicer. But for the time being it gets the job done without putting her in danger. That’s the most important thing….being able to haul my 70 pound service dog safely on the back of my Harley.