I have hiked with my dog (springer spaniel) on occasion, (I don't take him out on most of my trips which are in grizzly country where he would be a liability) In my case I was hammocking, with a big tarp over my hammock, so what I ended up is having an extra piece of blue foam pad, he was very happy to curl up on this underneath my hammock. The only gotcha being I also use my blue foam "butt padd" as my standing pad to get out of my hammock and put my feet on. Mudge ended up snuggled up right where that was, so getting up in the morning I swung my feet out of the hammock onto dog, then had to get him to move before I could get out of the hammock!