Training & Behavior

My puppy screamed in the car like we were being murdered. Full volume, no breaks, the kind of noise that makes other drivers stare and wonder what crime you are committing in the back seat. She was eight weeks old and the world, it turned out, was a terrifying place that moved.

The first trip home from the breeder was a horror. I sat in the back with her, heart breaking, saying shh in a voice I didn't recognise, and she screamed all the way, a sound of pure panic that has no off switch. I thought she would grow out of it. Puppies are supposed to adapt. She adapted by getting louder and more certain that the car meant the end of everything she loved.

I tried the usual. A toy, a blanket that smelled of home, a calm voice, a hand on her, none of it touched the screaming. The car moved, the engine roared in her small ears, the world blurred past the window, and every one of those things confirmed her worst belief, which was that she was being taken somewhere to die. A puppy's imagination is not reassured by logic.

The fix came from a trainer who asked a simple thing. Have you ever fed her in the car while it was parked. I had not. The car had only ever meant movement and terror. She had no calm association with it at all, because I had only ever started the engine when we were leaving. So we stopped leaving. We started sitting.

I parked on the drive, opened the back door, sat her in the seat, and gave her chicken, just sitting there, engine off, world still. She ate, confused but willing. Next day, engine on, chicken raining, car not moving. The engine, which had meant doom, started to mean the good food appeared. After a week of this, the engine note no longer launched the scream. It launched her stare at the treat pocket.

Then we moved the car. Ten metres, treat. Back. Twenty, treat. Back. The first real trip was to the end of the street and she whined once, looked at me, took the chicken, and settled, not silent, but not screaming, which felt like a miracle after the noise that had defined every journey.

It took a month to get to a calm passenger. She still whines a little on long trips, a low worried sound rather than the old siren, and she always gets a treat for getting in, because the association is the whole medicine and I am not about to wean her off the reason the car is safe. The engine is the treat now, in her head, and that is the trade I wanted.

What I learned is that the panic was built, not born. I built it by only ever moving the car, so movement equalled fear, and I unbuilt it by separating the car from the movement and filling the stillness with something she loved. Puppies aren't brave or scared by nature in a car. They are whatever the car has meant so far. Make it mean chicken, and the screaming stops being the only language they have for it.

If your puppy screams in the car, don't just suffer through the trips and hope. Park it, feed her, start the engine, feed her, move ten metres, feed her. Let the engine become the promise of the treat before it becomes the start of the terror. She will learn the car is where good things happen, and the murder noises will fade into the occasional small whine of a dog who trusts the seat she's in.

She now hops into the car on her own, which she never did in those screaming months, and waits, expecting the chicken before the engine even turns. The engine note, once the signal of doom, is now the signal of the good thing, and watching a puppy flip her entire emotional response to a sound in a month is the clearest proof I have that fear is built and can be unbuilt, carefully, with food.

We go places now, the park, the vet for nice visits, the river, and she rides with a chew and a settled sort of watchfulness instead of the siren. The first long trip after the training, an hour to my sister's, she whined twice and slept the rest, and I laughed with relief in the front seat, because the car had gone from the worst part of dog ownership to just a car, which is what it should have been all along.

If your puppy screams in the car, don't white-knuckle it and hope she grows out of it, because some do and some build a lifelong terror of the seat. Park it, feed her, start the engine, feed her, move ten metres, feed her, and let the car mean the treat long before it means movement. She will learn the seat is safe because you made it so, one chicken piece at a time, and the murder noises will become the small whine of a dog who simply trusts where she's sitting.