What do you do....

[lukabear]

Mine don't lunge, lol. They hate cars. But they DO tend to freak out around them, which has lead to actually backing up into the road (SCARY, I scooped them up!).

I use the "wait" command, which they know means to sit, not move, and wait for me to say it's okay. We're still working on it, but they've gotten to where they pretty much don't react at all to the cars.

"Wait" is pretty much my favourite command in the world. It's also calmed down the random barking with Toulouse. When he hears something outside (that is normal, and not a threat) he'll usually run to the door and bark.

But by saying "wait" when I start to hear him moving, he comes right to me and waits to react.

 

[SheltieChe]

what worked for me and Che was to put his early breakfast kibble in the pocket and go out to the busy street, put him into sit and keep watching cars, every time he looks at me and not cars, he get treats.... then we started walking, every time he turns to me or pays attention to me he got kibble...
one- do not let the behavior to escalate into full lunging... turn around and lead him away if he gets anxious... even if you have to walk in circles ...
second- offer treat every time for looking at you initially, do not demand it or give command, does not take long for them to understand that his kibble is much better than cars...
do it consistently for couple of weeks and you will notice that your dog wants to pay attention to you and not cars

 

[Raya]

We've been lucky with cars and Zoey because we live in a relatively car-busy neighbourhood. Zoey saw a lot of cars at a very early age, so she doesn't react to most of them - however, a abnormally noisy car (old cars, or cars with very loud music and booming around), will set her off and she will lunge at them. She also lunges at motorcycles (because they're loud and they look like bicycles).

The way I addressed the problem with the noisy cars and motos is to get Zoey to sit and wait, if I have enough time to react. If I don't have enough time to react and she lunges, I still wait until she's sitting down before I carry on.

At first, I had mitigated success with it. She'd sit, then lunge, or not sit, do whatever. Now, I'd say that my success rate is around 75%. Sometimes, she'll sit preemptively even before I asked for it. She doesn't react at noisy cars any more, but still does with motos. I've had a couple of time when she did not react at all at bicycles too. Next step : screaming kids on bicycles (hehe).