My dog is afraid of wheels- what can I do?

Ollie goes nuts if she sees someone riding a bike or on a scooter or anything with wheels. She's always done this but it wasn't much of a problem because we lived in queens and didn't see it too often. Now that we live in LI people are always riding their bike around our neighborhood. I'm nervous that she'll a) get hurt because she runs directly towards the wheels or; b) scare people, I think she's already scared off the little girl across the street.

What can I do to train her to be calm in these situations? Is it possible?

TIA

Re: My dog is afraid of wheels- what can I do?

Cesar Millan corrected this same problem with a dog on the Dog Whisperer. I don't remember what he did, but it was definitely correctable..

Re: My dog is afraid of wheels- what can I do?

I would work on attention. Work on teaching your dog to "look" at you. Get something really yummy to eat...meatballs, hotdogs, something really good. Once she has the "look" really down, and I mean after practicing a few minutes each day for at least a week, move the activity outside in the yard...away from wheels. Once she is really really good at it, start doing it around the wheels. Eventually once she is concentrating so hard on you, she should forget all about the wheels. 5 minutes at a time. The key is to not let her get fixated on the wheels. As soon as she looks at the wheel, tell her to look at you before she focuses on the wheel. Don't try to have her look at you until she knows what it means and is really good at it in less anxious settings. I believe you can break her of it. Good luck. (Remember, really yummy treats!)

Re: My dog is afraid of wheels- what can I do?

Excellent suggestions. That's exactly how I've seen it done. The british chick who has the show It's Me or the Dog uses that and the command "watch me". The goal is to break the dog's concentration on the thing it's focusing on and turn it into a positive experience. It's really desensitizing them. You could also use the Cesar Milan "chhhht!" sound to let your dog know you don't want her to do it anymore.

Message edited 5/27/2010 9:42:13 AM.