Wednesday 20 November 2013

Never despair about car travel

The first thing we learnt about Mawson, when we brought him home, was that he was pretty badly car sick... It lasted for quite a while throughout puppyhood and every car trip was a fairly complicated planning operation, with timing of the last food intake, and division into small distances. Even a five minute trip could be dangerous...
We used to get him to travel on the back seat, and for a long time it has been a bit of a challenge to get him in the car, as the travel sickness was making any fun experience negative. On top of that he was exercising his best opera in whine major.... Martin was saying that Mawson knew we were travelling to the puppy crusher...

We did try a lot of things: treats (a lot), training at breaky and dinner (one of the best trick we have learnt for hard things as he will do, literally, anything for his food!), changing place in the car, etc.
We decided not to always pick him up to put him in the car, it would have been way easier but we know how the Mawsonator brain works by now. One, he would have expected it forever, and by the way he is 33kg and I like my back in one functioning articulated piece. And two, I learnt to never ever ever back down on a behaviour I want him to change (did I mention ever?), he is way too intelligent and would shame the memory of an elephant....
That does mean, however, that we have been know to stay in a face off for up to 10 minutes, when it's at home it's ok but when it is at the park, well we did look a tad silly. When I say a tad, I am being kind... Mostly when all along we ask him to get in the car with a happy voice....

I am happy to say that after a combination of growing up and a lot of "fun" training, mister monster now jumps by himself in the car with minimal request. The fact he is not car sick anymore does help a lot. And we have found out that he prefers to ride in the boot and quietly look at the world go by. Unless we go to training on saturday, and the whole excitement of it all makes him give small whines when we approach the grounds. 
The going to trials has helped immensely as well. He has so much fun there that the car has now taken the identity of "going somewhere fun" instead of its previous "going to throw up". So yay for trials!

So where are we going now?
We'll see how it goes after we do a bit of travel to have fun at trials. He might end up rushing to the car after all! He's already pretty happy about the new furnishing in the car boot...

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