Hello and welcome to this Talking Dogs. I'm Graham Hall, all I often go by the Dogfather.

For over 10 years I've been working with dogs and people alike and more recently I've been helping train dogs on televisions, dogs behaving very badly. And now I'm here on

this podcast too, giving as much advice and telling as many tales as I can. This is an opportunity

for me to share the answers to your questions. And if we're lucky, we might even have a laugh

along the way too.

I think for a lot of people one of the joys of getting a dog is the idea of being able to discover new parts of the coastline or woodland going on adventures with the family, that sort of thing. And that can quickly become an impossibility if you realise your dog's not a fan of the car. In fact, just

pop into the next village to do a quick shop can be incredibly hard work if you have to

spend more time getting your dog in the car than you actually do driving. This

exact scenario has become a real problem for Rashine and her dog Charlie.

Hi Graham, I'm just hoping you can help me get my dog over his dislike of my car.

Charlie was always in my car since he was a puppy to go for nice walks and a good runaround at the beach,

but he was often in and out of the vets as a puppy, so there's always been a kind of a love-hate relationship. He had to go to the vet shortly after lockdown was imposed and because of the measurements they had in place,

I couldn't go in with him.

So ever since he went in to the vets without me, he's just refused to go into my car.

He would tuck his tail in behind his legs and even tremble as soon as I opened the car door. So I've done a bit of re-association training with him and I've got him to the point now where he is relaxed outside the car.

He doesn't mind the car door opening and he will go in the car but only if I go in first,

if I go into the back seat and push the front seats forward as I have a hatchback, he'll come in then when I hand out a treat.

I've spent the last couple of weeks just sitting in the car with him and feeding him his favourite treats.

I even managed one day to get the car doors closed and I took him just a quick driver in the estate.

But since that day he has just been a bit more hesitant.

If I can get him in the car and then if I make a move to close the doors, he just backs out

immediately and he looks a wee bit panicked. It's just a bit sort of one step forward, two steps

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