G'day Everyone,
I only found this forum this morning, and I had to join immediately. So many knowledgeable contributors, it seems fantastic.
I hope you all don't mind me firing out a Q straight away?
We've got a 2.5yo Staffy and he goes crazy in the car.
He bounces off the walls, but the main issue is the excited crying. The woh-woh-woh-woh-woh that most Staffy owners know about.
It is something we've tried to sort out without much success.
We've tried ignoring him, very difficult but seemingly ineffective.
We've tried using "sit" to calm him down, which actually works for about 2-3 secs but then he's back into it.
We've tried rewarding him when he's quiet, loses interest in the food and prioritises his craziness over treats.
We've got a big station wagon and we ended up fixing his lead in the back and giving him just enough slack to wander around the back area without being able to climb over into the back seat. This actually seems to work best, but to reward him we let him off again if he's quiet and he's right back to it.
We think part of our problem (we know it's not his fault) is that we can't figure out (for sure) what's causing it.
It's not surrounding distractions, because he does it at night, we're 80% sure it might be excitement.
Probably 80% of the time he is in the car he ends up going somewhere cool like a puppy friend's house, the park, lake or beach. We've tried taking him everywhere, even non fun places where he doesn't get let out but maybe not often enough.
We went through a period where we would drive down the street and if he cried we'd drive back home, put him in the yard and drive off without him, but that doesn't seem to have worked either.
Are we not being consistent enough, do we need to see these things through a bit further? Has anybody had a similar issue, it's very undesirable?
Any help would be super-fantastic. Cheers.
