RELEASE THE HOUNDS

THIS SUBIE’S GONE TO THE DOGS, AND EVERYONE’S HAPPY ABOUT IT

SUBARU FORESTER 2.5i-s Price as tested: $41,490 This month: 532km @ 9.8L/100km

PLEASE go ahead and award yourself one Rockwiz bonus point if you’ve even heard of the Fauves, an Aussie fourpiece formed in Victoria in the late ’80s. The Fauves are still together, but yet to top the modest success of their minor radio hit of 1996; a track I still believe to be something of a definitive social commentary regarding the messed-up realities of the modern world. Its title? ‘Dogs are the Best People’.

Okay, it’s not a song of huge lyrical depth; it’s really more of a catchy rock

ditty set to crunching guitars and a propulsive bass hook, but certain lines really resonate with me: “His love comes free and unconditionally / … he never lied to me once / he never flaunted my trust…”

Dogs have been a big part of my life since childhood, but these days, apartment living and work travel don’t make dog ownership possible, so there tends to be a canine-sized void in my existence. To help fill it, I often spend time with dogs belonging to other people, but mostly with dogs who belong to no-one.

Each Saturday, my partner and I drive to our local dog rescue shelter (doggierescue.com, if you’d like to make a donation) and walk a couple of the 70 or so hopeful souls there. This is mostly satisfying and enjoyable, although occasionally heart-wrenching when one decides he ain’t going back, so locks the parking brake on the hind legs and fixes you with those “adopt me NOW!” eyes.

Anyway, dogs at the shelter often need transporting to various events, so no long-termer can truly be considered to have fully slotted into our family unless it passes the doggo-uber test.

Now, we all know dogs tend not to be too picky about these things – I’m pretty sure I could turn up in a Panzer tank and I’d still be swamped by panting, wagging mutts pirouetting hot laps of excitement at the prospect of an outing – but the Forester does ace two important criteria.

Firstly, the chassis tune delivers real ride comfort. Whether the doggos want to do a bit of open-window surfing, or just take a nap in the footwell, I reckon all of them appreciate an SUV that breathes with the road and blots up the bumps. The Subie is the master of this; a fact brought into even sharper focus recently in our five-suv comparo ( Wheels, June.) The new Toyota RAV4 may have gotten the nod overall, but the Forester is even better when it comes to easy-riding, unstressed passage over bumpy bitumen.

Second criterion – and stay with me on this one – is a quality sound system. Occasionally we’ll have a dog on board who’s over-excited, or stressed, so one sure-fire way to chill them out is to crank up a bit of late-’90s deep house, with some soothing female vocals and a rich, velvety rhythm section.

The Forester’s Harman/kardon system, with its 10-inch subwoofer mounted in the cargo compartment, fills the cabin with the aural equivalent of canine Valium. The Fauves may consider me an Oz-rock sell-out, but it does give peace a chance.