Your Dog’s Magical Mystery Rides

Teaching your dog to be a good car rider is important. You don’t want your dog to associate rides only with trips to the vet. On the other hand they shouldn’t be only play adventures.

It’s fun to speculate about what your dog is thinking. Dogs that only travel to the vet can have extreme reactions to climbing aboard a car. But, if trips are always fun adventures, what goes through your dogs mind when you take off and leave it at home? It can create extra stress on top of separation anxiety. Your dog is probably thinking – “OMG! they are going off to have fun! I want to go, too! Why are they denying me!”

It’s probably a good idea to take your dog on some boring trips, too. A trip to run errands where your dog is temporarily left in the car is all it takes. Although, even then your dog can feel it’s being deprived of an adventure. When I go shopping and come back to the car with a cart full of delicious smelling groceries, I wonder what my dog is thinking. Maybe it’s something like this: “Wow! What great hunters! They go in that building and capture and kill all sorts of wild stuff. I wish I could go in and help fight.”