Lol... the dog doesn't go between the bars and the seat silly, she goes between the bars and the back door. Hope that's what you meant.
Agreed that this would be too small for many dogs, even ones smaller or the same size as mine. As I said in the original thread, she just happens to be really comfortable with small spaces. Still, I'm hoping that by cutting the lower third of the center section out of the barrier I can give her more room to turn around while making it easier to reach the seat latch.
The barrier consists of two sections, the cage wall you see above the box and the two threaded rods you see below the box. The rods slide into tubes in the cage wall, and have wing nuts and crush washers that you use to achieve tension between the floor and ceiling. The cage wall tubes are about 3" longer than the distance between the box top and the ceiling, so I had to cut the holes to get the wall to fit between the box top and the ceiling. You're right, if the tubes weren't so long I wouldn't have needed to cut the box, but I still would probably have had to cut the threaded rods by about 3-4".