[cookieface]

For those who have dogs who have outgrown their car sickness, what age were they when they were incident-free? Katie just turned 9 months and I'm wondering when / if we should start to see improvement.

Thanks!

 

[lyphzgud]

my boy Jax ( jack russell terrier / pug mix ) was very bad as a pup. like 5 min in the car he would get sick. he is now 5 years old and if we are on super long rides like 1.5 hours or longer without any breaks ( which never happens ) he would probably be sick again. We are still getting him use to the car and its a slow process but just like humans sometimes its something that will never be completely gone.

Frequent stops is the key for us. and not letting him eat or drink anything prior if we going on a fairly long drive. so his stomach isn't full.

 

[hanksimon]

My dog wasn't incident free until he was about a year. Now he loves it.... more than I do.

 

[Greater Swiss]

I'm not going to claim Caeda is completely vomit-free just yet, but that's because we haven't gone on a long enough trip to test her "intestinal fortitude" lately.
She did however used to throw up if we didn't stop on the way into town (15-30 minutes depending on where we were going), and it was worse if we were driving around slow areas with lots of corners. She has however gotten MUCH better since she hit about 7 months or so (almost a year old now). She will now make it all the way to town, to somewhere we get out, let her out for 5-10 minutes and then go back home. That's about 40 mins to an hour or more with a short break. That used to GUARANTEE we'd be cleaning up at some point, now no problem. Not sure what would happen if we went over an hour though
One thing that I've noticed helped is more trips. Short ones at least, try around the block a few times (if you live somewhere that has "blocks", I don't ), increase, maybe go somewhere fun, increase the distance/time. Also we started "leaving" her in the truck....run into the convenience store or whatever, grab what we need, but can still see her through the window, etc. Even though it wasn't moving I think having a better comfort level in the vehicle helped a lot. I also spent some time sitting in the vehicle with her, not moving, just teaching her to be calm in there.

 

[cookieface]

Thanks so much. Seems that there is still some hope that Katie will outgrow this. She's odd, sometimes she can ride for a few hours and be fine, but other times, she gets sick after just 30 minutes or so. The only thing we've noticed is that she seems to get sick when we head north. Perhaps she has some sort of weird internal compass.

She gets a short ride to the park almost daily and slightly longer rides to class weekly and those go fine. Yesterday we gave her half a dramamine and we were out for about 3 hours (driving and stopping). Thankfully, the dramamine seemed to help, but I'd love to get to a point where she's fine without it.

Thanks!

 

[KodiBarracuda]

Well, Kodi hasn't completely outgrown his car sickness yet, and frankly, I'm not sure he ever will.

He is fine on the trip to somewhere, it's the coming back that makes him sick, its the moving, stopping then moving again.

Last time I went to town Roonie needed a grooming and it was a chance for Kodi to be around people. It was a 20 minute drive, pretty calm, a 3 hour stay in town, very calm, a good walk on a loose (not heel, but loose) leash with dogs barking at him and children running around, a few hours sitting in front of the grocery store (in a town of 500 where most of the people live 20+ miles away on ranches its the most action we get in town and its still not very busy.)

After this 3 hour break from riding in the truck with no side affects at all, he pukes on the way home.

 

[Greater Swiss]

Something that just occurred to me that might be of help to you as well, I've been meaning to try it but haven't yet.

Ginger dog treats. They supposedly help with motion sickness. Just a thought, might help so long as there are no allergies involved.

There are TONS of recipes out there to make them yourself if you can't find/don't want to buy them. I make my own pb dog treats all of the time, super simple, and the ginger ones look pretty quick and easy too (and I'm a moron in the kitchen lol).

 

[Willowy]

I think Penny was about 18 months old when she stopped getting carsick. She never barfed in the car, thankfully--she would always barf about 5-10 minutes AFTER we got where we were going (usually between my house and my mom's house). So she would have to stay in the yard until after she was done being sick.

 

[luv mi pets]

Apache 2 years old took her to the park today. Did not even get out of the driveway and I had a mess to pick up. She gets so worked up about a car ride. The park is 5 miles away. Once at the park just fine and on the ride home no problems. I keep hoping and taking her places. I just keep the seats covered and carry paper towels. Along with baby wipes, plastic bags and air freshener, Also, invested in a spot cleaner machine for the car. What we do so we can spend time with our dogs.

 

[cookieface]

Something that just occurred to me that might be of help to you as well, I've been meaning to try it but haven't yet.

Ginger dog treats. They supposedly help with motion sickness. Just a thought, might help so long as there are no allergies involved.

There are TONS of recipes out there to make them yourself if you can't find/don't want to buy them. I make my own pb dog treats all of the time, super simple, and the ginger ones look pretty quick and easy too (and I'm a moron in the kitchen lol).

Thanks for the idea. I've seen ginger treats recommended, but the recipes have such little ginger that I wonder if they can possibly be effective. It's worth a shot. I may try to make some with oat or barley flour instead of wheat... Worst case, my husband gets cookies. Maybe that will make up for my feeding Katie the chicken he thought was for him.

By the way, Caeda is just lovely. From your posts, she seems like a handful, but a sweet one.