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We have 2 Cocker Spaniels. One male is 14 months old and one is a 12 months old female. The younger one gets very bad car sickness or motion sickness. She constantly drools in the car and vomits if there are too many turns. Both dogs are harnessed and sit in a dog car seat cover on the back seat. We can travel a few miles to the freeway and once on the freeway travel in a fairly straight direction for an hour or so. Then once we are off the freeway and going through turns and corners she will vomit, just a few miles from our destination. This is repeated on the way home, as soon as we are off the freeway and into the suburb she vomits. This has happened every weekend when we go to our beach house since we got her. We have tried a number of things like not feeding her the morning we travel, spraying light peppermint sent on her, giving her calming pills from the vet. Some make her very groggy so we have stopped those. We have tried to de-sensitize her to the car by playing with her in the car as well as feeding her in the car so she is not afraid but so far nothing has worked. Does anyone have any other ideas that may work please?
Peter -
I don’t know what the answer is or even if there is a solution, but my beloved Abbie had the same problem. It was so bad that her “sick response” became instant as soon as she was in the car (meaning she started drooling and vomiting before I even got in my side to start the engine). I was told that some dogs’ ears are less developed when they are young. Dogs usually grow out of this but in the case of my Abbie, it became a learned response to the car and she did not “grow out of it” until she was middle age. She never did like the car, even when she stopped getting sick but she tolerated it and usually just fell asleep. Your dog’s reaction is physical/biological. Training won’t help, increasing exposure to the car won’t help. She will grow out of it, hopefully before the response becomes ingrained like it did with my little girl. (fyi – I myself was prone to car sickness as a child and still sensitive to it as an adult…no prodding, playing, distraction, increased exposure helps. It’s the inner ear telling me (and your dog) one thing, while her vision tells her another. Motion sick – plain and simple and the feeling is just horrendous. I suggest giving your dog something even though it makes her groggy (that’s how it works). Her misery is real.
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Toledo, United States.
