Creating a Calm Car Pup
Baby Rory has honestly always been easy in the car but knowing the lifestyle that our dogs get, enjoying the car is a big need. Especially with travelling early days to puppy classes with the lovely Kathy at Leaps and Bounds Dog Training, it’s vital that the little one finds comfort and peace in the car
With the big and new feelings that come with the first few car trips, these can be a lot for a fresh puppy so setting up for success is absolutely vital!
How do we set up for success?
Treats, treats and TREATS!
Spend time just hanging out either near, or in the car with lots of tasty snacks so the puppy learns that the car means good things!
Chews, chews and more CHEWS! Chewing is a good way to help build connections to new things as having a good chow down helps to release those happy hormones into their system, which in turn helps to settle them down essentially.
Snuffles and Lickimats
Anything that creates sniffing and licking, like the chewing - releases happy hormones into the puppies system, giving them feel good emotional connections
Help them in and out!
No jumping in and out of the car to prevent accidents and then potential pain connections. Puppies have minimal coordination for the early months, so we can set them up for success to protect their joints, connections and feelings by simply lifting them in and out! Or utilise the use of ramps, we’re yet to find one that reaches
Find a Friend! If you have another pooch that thoroughly enjoys car rides - use them! Learning through others is a huge component to puppy training and why not use it with building positive connections to the car!
Start Small and Slow - Another way we set up for success was to start small. When we first turned on the car, we didn’t drive anywhere! As I wanted her first solo car trip to be a good one! Only moving the car once we had lots of treats and then as we moved she was given treaties and then directed onto our favourite chews! Who would of ever guessed we’d have a whole collection of body parts on the back seat
If she had of panicked when the car started I would of stopped and came up with another plan, did some more ground work around learning how the car means good things and then if needed, calling in an extra pair of hands!
Comfort Choices!
Give the puppy a choice, do they want a soft round bed, maybe a doggy car seat or are they just happy on the seat itself? Aurora prefers the back seat on its own, she runs hot so having a bed option for her is somewhat pointless as it doesn’t get used! She’d rather sleep beside it
The one big thing we haven’t discussed is car safety. There are so many studies, presentations and blogs around what and where the best place is for a dog in the car, and due to this we don’t have a professional suggestion. But the main thing is some form of restraint, we don’t want them bouncing around or jumping into our laps so what ever form of restraints work for you, work with that! As she grows in size, she will transition into our much loved headrest seatbelts from Pablo and Co.
Also go somewhere fun! Not just to those mean vets.. there’s so many avenues to build a positive connection to the car but a few ways we can accidentally create a negative connection. One way to build a negative is to only go somewhere that sucks for them.. that’s no fun! That would be my equivalent of a Kmart trip, to just park in the car park.. gross!