car lunging and spousal disagreement!

[pjaynen]

Our male pup, 4 months old lunges at cars, if he is near the road. At first he cowered, now he lunges at them. We really need to get this one taken care of as our boys often walk them, they are getting bigger and stronger,(all ready over 30lbs at 4 months) and clearly this is dangerous. My original thought was to lay him down and have him remain calm while the cars pass. Then reward his calm behavior. This worked great with his sister and she has no issues now. He however just can't seem to handle it. I even tried to lay him down and stand on the leash so he had no way to even get up. Tried backing him up from road, facing street, facing away from street, Still no luck. My husband feels that sitting him down is causing him to focus more on the car. so, now he just keeps walking when walking along the street(still lunges) but this won't solve the problem of crossing the road. What do you think? I just want to be consistent. Also, we normally walk him on our property and only have contact with cars when crossing the road to get to our fields. But we have started walking him on the road to try and encounter cars more often. Is this too much for him right now? We are just using a standard nylon collar and leash.

[Mike D'Abruzzo]

Two things you can try here.

The possible easy way would be to try a gentle leader or halti collar. Don't really give him a chance to focus on the vehicle with a stationary stay. Instead keep moving - even if at a corner do a back track circle if a car is coming and reward with a treat as soon as he is aware of the vehicle and before he is lunging. Act extra happy as if this is a good thing. The gentle leader is good at turning the head so circle at the point before you think he will lunge and REWARD. If this seems to work check back with me. If there is a place you can practice where he sees more cars at a distance it is better. Than move him slowly to higher difficulty levels. Avoid the situations where he will fail.

If this doesn't seem to work than it is best to keep him out of the situation until the formal training moves further along. When it comes to doing obedience around a problem area I like to teach the dogs like teaching a kid football. You don't just throw the kid in the middle of a football game and teach him the rules on the fly. He will get destroyed. Instead we teach him the rules first, then do the pass paterns, scrimage, etc.
So we do the same thing with dog training when it comes to the problem areas. If not an easy fix lets start on teaching him exactly what we expect when we use the word "heel". I am going to put some more vids on this soon. But the idea is to teach the pups in easy areas first exactly what it is before we practice around distractions. The only videos up on this now are the vids with Elu where I walk around the owner in the phase 2 obedience section. You do not want to do this unless your pups understand the phase 1 stuff first and the concept of "free". It can be done with a gentle leader, but so far i only have videos using the martingale and the pinch collar, but it is used very similar with the same rules.

If you get your pups a martingale type collar and a gentle leader that would be the best way to get started and I'll do what i can to guide you as the new videos trickle in.

Hope this helps for now! keep us posted. You can also start a blog here for us to follow along or put your own blog link in your signature with you can create in your forums options.

[pjaynen]

So, we have seen some improvements. We no longer stop for cars. He is still reacting and lunging but not as aggressively if that makes sense. We have decided not to walk him on the street if we can help it. Plenty of land to walk on, we mostly just encounter cars when crossing. The halti should arrive this week. I'll let you know how its goes. I started a blog here about their progress. Thanks again for all of your help and your awesome site.