i have a 10 month old black lab, Teddy, who is a nightmare to walk on roads on a lead. We have done 4 training courses where he has done well apart from the bits at each end where he has to get from the car to the village hall or field for the class. We live in a rural location but still there is traffic and Teddy was introduced to the noise and experience early in his life. He has no fear of vehicles coming on to our property and will sit and watch the post van arrive quite calmly, he has no fear of travelling in cars and happily gets in. However walk him towards the road to coss it and go into the woods is awful. He sets himself to refuse to move and generally there is an undignified drag to the road edge despite the use of high value treated to lure him along. One on the road edge ( there is no pavement) he will move but sits or lies down whenever a vehicle passes. Once we get to the woods he is happy and we are able to control him. We have the same issues when we try to return home at the end of our walk where he shows fear of the traffic and generally makes a mad dash for home with me flying behind him. We have tried not going on to the road at all for several weeks and then gradually reintroducing the activity. We have used noise recordings played in the house as conditioning, we have done the he drags we stop and the go the opposite way. None has worked. Ideas please to overcome this issue.
Hello and welcome to the forum from me and my two Labs, Willow and Shadow. I sympathise, because Shadow was very scared of traffic - especially large vehicles like buses and lorries - when we first had him. I just did loads of desensitisation with him, where we'd sit a long way from the road and I'd feed him treats whenever a vehicle went by. If he showed any fear, we were too close, so I moved back and tried again. Sometimes, this was quite inconvenient to try to find places, and sometimes it meant following trucks around in the car, with H driving and me feeding treats. Forcing him to cross the road while he's scared is a bad idea, as it will just compound his sense of fear, so you really need to stop doing that, even if it means driving him a very short distance to get to his walking spots for now. Just set up lots of training scenarios where you're working around the road with loads of treats, but without asking him to cross it. It can be slow progress, but it will be worth it in the end. With my two, I had great success using the "Look at That!" game from the book Control Unleashed. It can be played without a clicker (using a verbal event marker), but my two certainly respond far more quickly to overcome their fears when I use the clicker and things they are afraid of become cues that a game is about to start. It's magical
As for the sound recordings, they don't work for all dogs. Willow is scared of certain noises, such as gunshot, even when it's very quiet, but doesn't respond to most recordings of guns played over a speaker. With traffic, it's probably more than just the noise - it's the size of the vehicles, how fast they are moving and the smells they make.
Try going to a place where you can see traffic, but it's a distance away. Just stand there and take no notice of the dog till he gets bored and lies down/sighs/looks at you/ tries to move on in a relaxed or interested way. As soon as he does that treats and praise in abundance. Keep doing this and get closer and closer to the traffic as the days go by. I had to do this with the lovely Twiglet. She's 1000% fine with all traffic now. ...
Our own proprty allows us to do this and we spend lots of time playing and training where Teddy can hear traffic and catch glimpses of it bu he is still afraid on the road itself
Hi there Then you need to walk to the place where he can see that road, and stop a little way from the point at which he gets upset, then follow the steps that Fiona has outlined above. It's really important to stop dragging him across the road he is scared of - this will just make it worse and worse, not better. Best of luck with it, these things do take a lot of time and baby steps to sort out, but I'm sure you'll get there.
