My mom (and sister, although she is studying in Padova now, so she is not living at home anymore) has a tiny little dog: Erica. She is a wire haired Dachshund Kaninchen, very tender and loving. She always snuggles on your lap and just wants to be cuddled. She is very little and very good-behaving, so my mom wanted to be able to take her around, also on her bicycle.
There are very cool and modern dog baskets on the market, but they are actually very expensive. So for her birthday last year Matteo and I decided to try a little diy. We found a really nice wicker basket at a secondhand shop: not really a basket, more of a “briefcase”. We just neaded a way to make it stay open enough for Erica to sit in it and at the same time closed to prevent her from jumping out. And we wanted something easily removable, for when she doesn’t take the dog with her.
The solution was shaping some wire net (this kind is usually used for chickens, it’s flexible but very resistant and the holes are of about 1 cm), closing the front and sides of the open basket. We also added some aluminium L-shaped profiles to the side of the net: this enabled us to keep the shape we wanted (adding one profile at the bottom rear side) and also to hide the spiky ends of the cutted edges. The final touch was attaching to fake-leather strips to keep the basket closed.
Once at my mom’s, we removed her front basket and replaced it with the wicker one, attaching it to the parcel carrier with two metal strips and screws and bolts. Now my mom can use the basket simply to put her bag when she is alone, or adding the metal wire when she wants to take Erica with her. She loved the present!
P.s: Erica was a bit scared at the beginning, but we added her pink blanket to make it more confortable and after a bit she got used to it: look at her cute face in the first picture.