At a Pat Hastings seminar I attended, she mentioned that three car rides for newborns under 10 days old contributed greatly to them 'imprinting' the ride as a positive experience. This typically prevented pups/dogs from developing car anxiety or motion sickness in the future.
Well, I did this experiment with Olive's litter as she DOES have car anxiety (although much, much better). I am very happy to report that everyone told me that their trip home was uneventful - this was huge! Two went to Massachusetts, one to Maine and two to NY. Some trips were over 4 hours!
Today, I took Pearl's pups for their third newborn ride and I am hoping for equally impressive reports when it is departure time.
It is a chilly day here and I just started to see a snowflake or two!!
That is great news! Occasionally Felix would hide under the vehicle when it was time to go for a ride as he used to get carsick. He does much better now and actually gets in the vehicle by himself now and hasn't gotten carsick in a long time. The bach flower essences helped with it as well. You are so up on everything. I already miss seeing those cute puppies of Olive's. At least Piper Moon will still make an occaisional appearance and we get to look forward to watching this current litter and all of the other litters you will have this winter. So much fun for us and so much work for you. You get to snuggle with them though, so I guess you have the better deal. Haha. Loved the mug picture as well. So creative!
ReplyDeleteYes, I have had a few dogs that are not 'happy car riders' and really wanted to do something about it besides medicines. I hope this theory of Pat Hastings is a 'cure' so that I can initiate a plan before the anxiety develops. :+)
ReplyDeleteTeddy (Theo) had an amazingly successful car ride from Boston to NYC! No carsickness whatsoever, and very few complaints from the crate. So glad you piloted this on Olive's pups :)
ReplyDeleteI have been wondering how this worked out. Fascinating, but it makes sense. I'm really looking forward to hearing how Pearl's pups do.
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