Time to let go of my 2001 Civic coupe and get a family car.

If reliability is important for you I would recommend a Honda Odyssey or Honda Pilot

I agree that the two you list are your best options. The very impressive new VW (arriving in March?) for on-road handling, the Subaru if you really want some off-road ability.

I liked some things about the Rogue, but handling isn't a strength. It is definitely a crossover rather than a wagon. I'd prefer the Mazda CX-5 or Subaru Forester among crossovers.

Sounds like the photo is misleading--we don't have the Golf and GTI as separate models in the database. I was agreeing with your suggestion of the Golf SportWagen, not suggesting the GTI.

I don't know about your specific situation, but would it make sense to just get two vehicles? To me it sounds like a $17k new Honda Fit would do all of your non-off-road stuff with enough money to spare to get a nice $6k classic Jeep (25 years old+low miles a year = cheap insurance) to do whatever offroad tooling around you want to do. The Fit has 20 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seat; maybe that would work for your dog? For more space a Mazda 5 would let you seat 4 with about 40 cubic feet behind the 2nd row seating if you take out the 3rd row.

Also, you may be improving your future peace of mind to not take a $28k vehicle off-roading. Either you end up babying your vehicle (in which case you didn't need the off road capabilities in the first place) or you run the risk of scraping or denting (or worse) a very expensive piece of machinery. To me, beating a cheap vehicle like a rented mule and pushing it to its limits is fun; being liable for taking care of an expensive vehicle is not.