FREE RIDE... MIND YOUR MANNERS!
The car door is a threshold that often gets overlooked when folks are in a rush or on the go! But like every other valuable threshold, checking in on your dog’s mindset and correcting over excitement, impulsive choice, rude and reactive behaviour there will set you up for success at your destination. Dogs love to tag along on outings but if we allow them to be impulsive and reactive by leaping around excitedly rather then making them wait calmly and politely for an invitation to enter and exit (plus holding command calmly in the car) then we are also setting them up to slip back into reactive behaviour.
Everything we allow and don’t allow with a dog in every moment is connected, if we allow over excitement and impulsive choices at home then the dog is going to make over excited impulsive choices in public. To consistently get calm and polite behaviour from the dog (in public, on walks, etc.) then we need to make sure that the dog is consistently practicing calm and polite behaviour EVERYWHERE in day to day life.
Being aware of what mindsets, what choices, and what attitudes we’re allowing with our dogs in the small moments can make all the difference in what happens during the big moments. A dog jumping in or out of the car excitedly as soon as the door opens can seem pretty harmless, but for a pushy dog, it tells him that he’s in control and reinforces his pushiness. Allowing a dog to take impulsive control and become over excited in any small moment means that he’s definitely going to assume it’s ok for him to be over excited and take control in the bigger moments too. As owners and handlers, the responsibility is squarely on our shoulders to direct our dogs into good choices (in all the moments big or small!) by proactively telling them what to do and what not to do by correcting poor choices rather than letting the dog take over and then reacting to his inevitably poor choices.
If our dogs are mentally aroused (reactive, overexcited), impulsive, naughty, or doing anything we don’t like it’s because we as owners and handlers (inadvertently... no one does this on purpose) ALLOWED it through a lack of proactive direction, a lack of communication, a lack of structure, a lack of rules, a lack of boundaries, and a lack of accountability. But here’s the good news... we handler’s can change all that by choosing not to allow naughty impulsive behaviour anymore! One of the small ways that I like to influence the dogs in training is by having them hold command in the car for the entire ride and also wait for an invitation to enter or exit the car. There is a big difference in the amount of leadership provided between putting the dog in command in the car verses letting him get in or out and settle into the car as he pleases.