Hi there - Tent for 2 People and 2 Dogs

[JJ87]

Hi all,

We're a 30 year old couple that's done some camping and a share of day hikes but we never combined both. We're interested in doing some 2-3 day hikes with a tent just to get the hang of it, and see if it's something for us. We've got most stuff figured out, or so we think, the only thing we are absolutely clueless about is the tent we want / need. We'll be hiking spring to fall and avoid worst conditions. Worst we'll get terrain wise are probably Austrian Alps but we'd be starting off on short trips in Belgium, Luxembourg, Scotland and France. I guess the pretty standard time and environment.

The reason we're absolutely not sure which tent to get is that we want it to be suitable for 2 people and 2 labrador sized dogs. Our camping tent of 3+2 with some real room between inner tent and door (not sure what to call it in English?) would be perfect, but it weighs about a ton. To get an impression of how much room we want in it... if we were to get a tent without the dogs, we'd get a 3 person tent for the 2 of us...

All suggestions and advise regarding multi day hiking with dogs would be much appriciated!

Cheers,

J

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

Hi JJ87,

From what you are describing here - plenty of extra space but without weighing you down too much sounds like the Tarptent Hogback might be an option worth considering. You can take a look our Hogback review here, and check out our blog post on Tarptent inner tent choices as well if it's of interest. Also regarding backpacking with dogs, we had an article with tips here in Issue 1. Hope this helps and good luck! 

[JJ87]

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the info!

While you are correct that I'd love the extra space, I'm not sure I need minimum weight. I think I'd prefer a tougher tent, floor that can handle paws, inner tent that can handle a dog running into it. My current tent is about 10kg (it's great for everything except for backpacking with it) and thus too heavy and too large for a backpack.

I can imagine 5kg for 2 people and 2 dogs is acceptable, but I've never really added it to my backpack while hiking!

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

5kg = 11lbs is really heavy for a backpacking tent. For car camping it would not be an issue. The Hogback is pretty tough, the floor will handle dogs without any problems in my experience, although you would have to exercise some caution with the mesh walls, but that's pretty much par for the course with tent mesh and dogs.