gingersmom Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 UPDATE: I got her a dog harness and after several comical tries got her into it. It took some adjusting and 3 car rides but she did great. The last car ride was for 15 minutes and I was actively seeking out bike riders and dogs being walked (her nemesis) to see how the harness worked. It was perfect! My dog (now 2) has been going in the car on a regular basis (several times per week) since she was 8 weeks old. Over the past year she has become the dog from hell when we get in the car. She barks like a lunatic at anything that is moving outside the window. She leaps from the backseat to the front seat. My son used to sit in back with her but her behavior is so bad he now sits in front. We hold the leash tight (from the front) and try to control her that way (usually not successfully). We just attempted to go to the dog park (about 10 minute drive). I gave up and turned around after she leaped in the front seat twice (managing to undo both seat belts). A dog seat belt is not an option (she will eat it and more importantly just won't let me wrestle it around her). She's now happily lying at my feet as I type this. Help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dandelion Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 Can you put her in a crate while she's in the car? Maybe that would make her feel more secure during the drive, and help her calm down. Even if she still barks at least you wouldn't have the safety issue of her jumping around the seats while you're driving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gingersmom Posted May 12, 2013 Author Share Posted May 12, 2013 There is zero chance of her getting in a crate. She was crated her first year and hated every second of it. I'm thinking of valium for her and me. :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegasus Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 I would work on crate training, slowly, at home, before trying to mix the crate with car trips. Use rewards and don't use the crate as punishment. It may take some time but your dog can learn to associate the crate with good times. My dog happily runs to his crate when I say "crate" and he seeks it out on his own for naps or when he feels uncertain (like a stranger visiting). Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom in High Heels Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 Urgh, I'm so sorry. I'd try the crate training as mentioned above, slowly. When we had our 3 small dogs (3, 14 and 16 pounds-only one is left), they all went crazy making noise in the car. If you didn't know it, you'd think I was carrying around 27 dolphins and 10 hyenas. It made me nuts. The only thing that shut them up was time. The longer they were in the car, the quieter they became. When we did out 4 day moving road trip a few years back, I thought I was going to lose my mind the first hour or so of every day. The one we still have makes all kinds of crying noises in the car and nothing stops it, but time. Unfortunately, most of our trips are under 30 minutes, so we get to spend the entire trip listening to him whine. Yay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Incognito Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 One of our dogs was like this. It was a hard few years. It all started when we took her up this one mountain for a hike (she was in the back of a pick up on a bumpy road...). Anyways, I have a question - is it super happy excitement or fear? Then, I have a suggestion - slow de-sensitization. We did and do crate this dog in the car, and she does tend to hate being crated, but she is okay with it in the car because she knows it means she is going somewhere exciting. For us, using a peanut-butter and crunchie filled kong to keep her busy at the beginning of the trip helped get her out of the cycle. Also, lucky us, we do 5+ hour trips often enough that after 2 or 3 hours of whining and howling she'd eventually stop. Sigh. Oh, and covering the crate with a blanket so she can't see anything and we hear less helped some. She was probably 3 when it started, and she's 9 now and hasn't done it for a while, but we had a few hard years there. You have my sympathy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pawz4me Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 Ummm . . . . I feel compelled to state the obvious here. I'm sure you already know this, but for the benefit of anyone clueless who may be reading -- You should NOT take her anywhere in the car unrestrained until you get her behavior under control. I'm sure you realize how dangerous it is to be driving with a dog like that in the car. In a perfect world no one would ever allow an unrestrained dog in a vehicle. It's just a bad idea all around. Slam on the brakes and you've got a living projectile flying around, and perhaps flying through a window. Or flying into the driver, making a bad situation even worse. But we all know that this isn't a perfect world, and lots of dogs ride unrestrained. But with your dog's behavior so out of control, you really need to not do it. For safety reasons and because allowing her to continue the behavior just reinforces it. I think you've got two choices. First is crate train her. I think that's the ideal solution because in my perfect world all dogs are crate trained. It's a really handy "skill" for them to have, because sooner or later almost every well-loved family dog is going to encounter a situation where he/she needs to be crated. And there is no dog who has "zero" chance of being crated. Any dog can be taught to tolerate it, especially if they understand that getting into a crate gets them what they want (in this case, a ride to the dog park). As others have said, you'll have to work on it slowly. There are lots of good articles on crate training. I can post some if you want. The second choice is to teach her to tolerate a dog seat belt. Again, it's a matter of training. Truly, what I'm "hearing" in your post is that you and your dog are in desperate need of some basic training. It can be done. Find a good obedience class (not at Petsmart), follow through with what the trainer tells you and you'll be on the road (pun intended) to having a much better behaved dog. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you Google "Nothing In Life Is Free" and start implementing that. It's a very easy and gentle thing to do, but can work wonders in making a dog understand who's in charge. Believe me, yours is very confused about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK_Mom4 Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 "Nothing In Life Is Free" really is good. And dogs generally enjoy it. I would also start instituting the daily Trip to No-Where for your dog. Leash on, load into the car on command. Snub the leash tight to the door handle or arm rest so the dog can't jump over the seat. Get one of those dog seat belt harnesses and fasten her in. Shush her if she barks, praise her when she is quiet. Get in the drivers seat and go ... no where .... After about 10 minutes or so, release her with the unload command. After a while, you can take her on short trips again. This is a behavior that can be taught and needs to be enforced. But you need to break the "excitement" cycle that you currently have going on with the dog where she keeps escalating behavior. And it's best to do this while you are not driving. Personally, I like dog crates, but they won't fit in my car right, so I actually use a metal barricade across the back behind the back seat for my dogs. We still use the same commands - load, lie down, unload. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gingersmom Posted May 13, 2013 Author Share Posted May 13, 2013 Believe it or not she has been to over a years worth of obedience classes. She's quite good when she is not in the car. No room for a crate in my car though. I just ordered her a seat belt and if she eats it I will just have to order another and another. She needs to go to the vet in two weeks (25 minutes away) so I need a solution (short of my son sitting on top of her). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 I second the barricade. Ours is metal and cannot be eaten. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pawz4me Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 I just ordered her a seat belt and if she eats it I will just have to order another and another. Well, you can take that approach. Or you can decide that you're not going to allow her to eat it. Period. There are all sorts of ways to go about that. Incremental training as AK_Mom4 suggested. Spray it with Bitter Apple. Put a basket muzzle on her. Give her something better to eat (a kong stuffed with something yummy and frozen). Have your son ride in the backseat and distract her from chewing on it. A combination of some of the above. Since you say she's well behaved outside of the car, I'd try something really simple -- take her out to the car several times a day and run through some obedience commands. Make her do doggy push ups (sit/down/sit/down/sit/down). Have her hold a down stay while you sit in the driver's seat. Just a few minutes at a time several times a day should do it. It will reinforce to her that commands have to be obeyed in the car just like they have to be in the house. Dogs don't generalize well. They often don't understand that sit means sit and down means down regardless of location. It should also help alleviate some of her excitement about the car. Instead of a wonderfully exciting thing that takes her to the fabulous dog park, it becomes a place where she has to work (doggy push ups) and be bored (down stays). Or if you really just want an easy fix for this specific problem, I think investing in a sturdy barrier is a good solution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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