Edgy01

Here's an alternative...a Cayenne

simsgw

Obedience training. No kidding. The best of our big dogs was a sled dog/shepherd mix and I could put him on a drop/stay and come back in an hour to find him there, guarding whatever he was sitting next to and allowing no one else to come near. It's as if they develop a confidence that as long as they're doing the right thing, "as long as I stay where 'daddy' put me", they are safe and the world is not such a frightening place. We used to fly with that dog, Sasquatch, and in a small aircraft it's even more important that the dog stay still than it is in a car.

The lovely Aussie in my avatar was another instinctive obedience dog who could be controlled with hand signals from fifty feet away, but any big dog really needs the fundamental training to be acceptable in civil company. We had a couple of hundred-pound Malamutes and Malamutes have a stubborn streak a mile wide, as is true of most animals bred for draft work. But both of them traveled in a motor home with us, and they could be handled by my wife in a busy crowd of strangers despite outweighing her. They never had the feel for obedience work that a herding dog will, but both of them knew what was expected and were solid on the basics of living with humans. Come, heel, down, stay and so forth.

Once they are willing to stay when you give the command, any of the harnesses sold for the dog's own protection will be tolerated. In fact, they come to recognize it as a sign they're going places and most of them love that. Without the training, I don't know that I'd allow a big dog with me in a small car, with or without the harness. It sounds like a recipe for an accident.

Gary