Car sickness / anxiety

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Written by Jan Hymes

Car sickness is rarely caused by the motion of the car. We must try and understand that a lot of what our dogs learn is by an association to what they are experiencing. Many of us will remember the first day of bringing our new pup’s home, the excitement and adrenalin rush of picking up our new little charges. We double check that the house is ready, the bedding is correct and the food is laid out ready for our return home. Our thoughts are that we are going to do everything to give the best start and make him happy. Now is there anything we have forgotten??? Think, really hard……ah yes, what is the puppy going to think of all of this?? This is the one line of thought that we give little (if any) time to digest. This probably one of the most traumatic times within a young dogs life, being taken away from all that is familiar to him, his mother and siblings.

Unless stated to the breeder the pup will have been fed (usually within 2 hours) prior to our picking them up. They will have been having fun with their siblings, and resting together when necessary. This has been their lives for the past 8 weeks and without warning there is suddenly going to be a very abrupt end!! Their sense of smell has been with them from the day they were born and this has been their base to learn with from day one. The biggest thing their sense of smell has been used for is finding mum’s teat whenever they needed a feed in the first 10-12 days of their lives. So this sense is very acute and finely tuned. If you have been clever and planned things in advance you would probably have been and chosen the puppy you would like thus giving them their first smell of you. You could also ask if nearer to the picking up date you could leave an old piece of clothing there so when you do pick up the pup your smells can be familiar.

But now back to picking up our pup. Our instinct is to hold them close to us, normally within the neck area where we normally have on perfume or after shave that is totally alien to the pup. We remove it from a household where all its familiar smells recede as we walk to the car, and then the dreaded car!! We climb into the car cooing and talking softly to the new pup in the hope that we are relaxing it and that it understands every word we have spoken. But why are they still shaking……well we have just removed it from a secluded world and it is now very unsure, we have (more than lightly) overwhelmed it with our perfume, and then climbed into the big bad box. Then the engine starts up (so very alien to the puppy now) and we start to move on our long (or short) journey!!! With all that the little one has just gone through within the last (normally) 20 minutes the pup by now is shaking and showing signs of anxiety. By cuddling the pup we are automatically reinforcing this anxiety and in most cases once the anxiety reaches a certain level it will turn into stress hence the pup will then vomit, defecate, or urinate. So by this point it has already associated the car (or even the perfume you are wearing) to anxiety, followed by stress, followed up with sickness in the car.

So now we can see from the pup’s point of view how this has come about. Many people think that it is normal for a puppy to be ill or salivate when in the car and many will comment ‘Oh, don’t worry they all grow out of it’ but unfortunately for the few they will never grow out of it. In some cases dogs of 6,7, and even 11 years olds will still salivate or even vomit (on long journeys) and this is mostly due to owners not understanding that many dogs can and need to be desensitised to the car.

So how can we make things easier for the new pup?

1. Maybe go and meet them on a couple of occasions prior to collecting them and interact with them more whilst there.

2. Leave a piece of clothing that you can take with you when you do finally collect them.

3. Ask the breeder not to feed the pup for a couple of hours before collecting them.

4. Make a bed in a nice comfy box (you can also add the piece of clothing from the breeder) and let the puppy go in there in the back of the car.

5. Try to minimise any perfumes etc so that the puppy isn’t overwhelmed with too many different smells.

6. If you are doing a long journey try and make regular stops for the pup to alleviate itself. Even though the pup cannot be placed onto strange outdoor flooring you can take an extra box with old towels that the pup can use to go to the toilet on, just on the journey.

7. Try as much as you can to refrain from too much verbalisation with the pup.

In many cases where car sickness involves an older dog it can be helped with the use of either a DAP (Dog Appeasing Pheromone) collar or a herbal tablet called Scullcap and Valerian (to find out more of S/V go to www.dorwest.com ).

I wish you a long and happy life with you new puppy and if you would like more information please do not hesitate to contact me.

Jan Hyams.
CANINE CODES.

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Last Updated on Monday, 09 February 2009 16:38