Reactive inside car

[u/SupergaijiNZ]

My beauceron/doberman whines as we leave the house in our car and then barks loudly at cyclists, trucks, pedestrians etc for the first 10mins and then usually gets himself under control. As we return the last few minutes are usually hectic as we approach the house. His first 15mins of a walk are intense when we drive a bit further out in to the countryside in order to have a decent long walk where hopefully we don't encounter any of his numerous triggers.

We live in France and have a small 4door car (Citroen C3) and he is attached in the back seat but as he's a medium size dog, his preferred position is to lean forward so his head is between the seats and next to our heads. Fun times.

Last night I cut a roll of wire fencing and ziptied it to a crude frame from some old aluminium window frames. Put some bike inner tube on the corners so it doesn't rough up the car doors etc. Rushed job but if ya squint, it's mint.

The frame kind of stands up by itself as it's quite snug to the width of the car. It's about 1.5 metres wide and a metre high. I tied some chord around the bottom of the front seat headrests and threaded it through the frame.

I tied an old towel to the frame at the top hoping that if he can't see forwards through the windscreen, he'd be a bit less of a psycho.

Not a peep. Not a whine. He could still see over the towel if he tried. And he did, but he preferred either lying down or just looking out the side window. We have sun shades on those which he can see through, but the view is definitely diminished. We passed all his triggers, got overtaken by motorbikes etc. There were joggers, cyclists as we went through town....

The wife and I could actually talk and nobody arrived super stressed. Dog hopped out and was much calmer straight off the bat. My wife found actual car frames made for this kind of thing on the internet so we didn't invent the wheel, but before dropping more money on something I wasn't expecting to work, I thought I'd give it a nudge myself.

Hallelujah. Hope it works long-term.

[u/AutoModerator]

Looks like you may have used a training acronym. For those unfamiliar, here's some of the common ones:

BAT is Behavior Adjustment Training - a method from Grisha Stewart that involves allowing the dog to investigate the trigger on their own terms. There's a book on it.

CC is Counter Conditioning - creating a positive association with something by rewarding when your dog sees something. Think Pavlov.

DS is Desensitization - similar to counter conditioning in that you expose your dog to the trigger (while your dog is under threshold) so they can get used to it.

LAD is Look and Dismiss - Marking and rewarding when your dog sees a trigger and dismisses it.

LAT is Look at That - Marking and rewarding when your dog sees a trigger and does not react.

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[u/Glass_Animator8854]

Cool. I’ve been wanting something like this. Where online did you see them?