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My puppy howls and cries every time we get in the car
He is 10 weeks old, and he's been going in the car since we got him at 8 weeks. He seems very happy to get into the car, and only starts crying once the engine is actually turned on. It seems to be excitement, as his tail is wagging and he crawls around like crazy, but he sits there and howls from the minute the car starts until the minute it is turned off! I have tried giving him treats, toys to play with, and nothing helps. It doesn't make a difference whether the car ride is for 3 minutes or for 30, he screams the entire time! Any advice would be much appreciated, as we frequently travel to the cottage which is about a two hour drive (the most he's been in the car for so far is 15-20 minutes) and would love it if he weren't howling the whole way there!
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Member 1034863
on May 24th 2011
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in Behavior & Training
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When we got Sadie she whined every time we took her in the car. We took her to ride in the car as much as we could. We first tried to give attention to calm her down. Then we just ignored her, took her blanket, and/or her favorite "baby". When she would whine we would give her the blanket or baby and ignore it. She finally realized that she didn't get attention so she just quit. The last time she whined we took her on a 7 hour drive out of town. When she didn't get what she wanted after the first hour she never whined again. Now she loves to go on rides and just lays down in the back and you hardly know she is there. I can have all three dogs in the car and you would never know it, unless of course we pass a UPS truck then they bark!
Zoey
answered on 5/24/11.
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My NINE year old German Shepherd had never been in the car much until I divorced her abusive ex daddy and took her into a new and loving home with me. It took a while to get her used to the car, she was nervous, wouldn't lay down and just relax. She would cry and carry on, but then we figured out that WE were actually the problem because we avoided car trips due to her behavior. She only got in the car to go to the groomer or the vet. I started taking her with me everywhere I went and some of the times I would stop at the drive-thru and get a small french fries which we would share! Suddenly she realized that the car wasn't a bad place and that sometimes even really good things happened in the car (french fries!) Now I don't advocate giving your dog fast food and we've even scaled back on the frequency of that, but I agree with the other answer that ignoring bad behavior is correct, but I would add to make the car trips as positive as possible - especially during the training part!
Member 962706
answered on 7/13/11.
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