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Car sick/nervousness??

4225 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  Dandys Girl, 
R
Does anyone else's vizsla get very car sick? Ritz will vomit as soon as i put her in the car before i even start it up and will drool horribly until we get to wherever we are going and she is fine as soon as we get there. I take her somewhere almost every day to try to shake her from it, but it doesn't seem to let up.

I have purchased a "dog hammock" from petsmart that is waterproof and is keeping my seats cleaner from the drool and have found that as long as the windows are down she is pretty good and she does better with highway/interstate driving than the stop and go around the city.

Is this something from her being a rescue or particular to the breed???
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T
I have nearly the same issue. Gunner doesn't get sick every time we get in the car, but he has gotten sick 1-2 times. Not only does he pull hard on the leash when we approach the car, but if he has time to realize we're going in the car he starts to drool like crazy.

Unfortunately when I picked him up in Illinois he spent 18-20 hours with me in the car home to CT. Ironically they wouldn't put him on a plane because they're worried about the stress on the dog... yeah, well he ended up getting sick in the crate and freaking out. (I don't blame him since he had no idea who I was or where we were going)

Anyway, that pretty much screwed any chance I had of getting him to enjoy the car. Since then I've managed to get him to warm up to getting in the car on his own (I actually used to have to carry him in and out) but I haven't been able to shake the general nausea in/around the car.

When I'm able to put his doggy bed and favorite blanket down he seems to do much better so you might want to give that a try. I've also tried giving him something, like a KONG with peanut butter in it, to take his mind off of being in the car and hopefully build positive association with it.

Any other brilliant ideas are more than welcome...
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T
It's definitely easier to start them off right with things like other dogs, the car, swimming, etc. But when you have a rescue you obviously don't have that luxury. In your case although the rescue org may not have had her in the car a bunch, it's totally possible that she had a traumatic experience in the car with her original owner.

If I were you I'd devote some time to it. Maybe spend 1-2 hours each weekend getting her in and out of the car multiple times and rewarding her for it. You could even get her in, give her a treat, walk once around the block and repeat.

I would also stress that a good way to build credibility and relieve stress is to get in and out of the car with her. That's how we got G to get in and out on his own... I would get in first and he would follow. He still doesn't love it, but baby steps.
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