Pet car crate

Does your puppy get use to being in a car pet crate quickly? We are going on a long road trip in a week and a half and we got our puppy a car crate and we have been doing small drives with him in it and he seems to whine a lot. Is there anything we can do to help alleviate this? Our trip will be for 4 hours and 4 hours of whining seems miserable for us and him. Should we put toys in there?

 

Toys won’t make any difference. How about breaking it up by having him in a car harness on the back seat with you for some of the journey?

I’ve had two pups which whined - and barked and cried - in the car. They grew out of it by 14 weeks. I think this was the time they realised that the car takes them to exciting places.

 

Well we did that for a few times but it was too much in the car to keep him from chewing on the seat, seat belt, buckle.

 

Take some nice chewy thing for you to hold in your hand for him to chew.

 

Does your puppy sleep in a crate indoors? In the first few months we used the car crate as her indoor crate as well, so she was very accustomed to sleeping in it during the daytime and overnight and didn’t mind being in it for car journeys. I always put a small training treat in the crate as she entered - so she associated it with pleasure.
Perhaps make a few journeys that are very short - reversing up and down the drive, but do this several times in the day and gradually do longer?

 

I remember the whining. And barking. And the people in the cars next to me looking over at me wondering what evil I was doing.

I ignored it, when there was a break in the raucous I’d reach back with a treat. It was hard. I also had things to gnaw on in there that couldn’t splinter like antlers and Himalayan chews.

 

Our Labs are fine, and never complain about being in the wayback behind the Pet Barrier, but our neighbor has had two Sammies, that bark almost constantly when they are riding the wayback with our dogs (or without our dogs) Our neighbor sometimes puts a muzzle on her Sammie to get him to be quiet, because nothing else seems to work. There is nothing like a two hr car ride with a barking Sammie. It may explain why Tilly is mostly deaf.