My 8 month old Border collie is still car lunging we have tried most things without luck. As soon as he sees a car he becomes absolutely focused on it nothing will distract him food. ball , toys will take his eyes from the target. At times we can walk around a car park and he's ok .Was thinking of trying a spray any thoughts would be appreciated, many thanks in advance

I had a very high prey drive collie. It didn't happen over night, but took patience & time. Sitting inside her "safe" zone, she learnt to focus solely on me every time a vehicle approached & if she reacted she was ignored.

rather than focusing on a low values treat, I rewarded with food she only ever got for this training-also trained her when she was hungry

Don't use a spray. I have a rescue collie who is a car/jogger/bike/anything that moves chaser and would never use a spray. It has taken me a year to get to the point where I can now walk beside a quietish road that has some distance between himself and the traffic - a very wide grass verge or the footpath is not directly beside the road.

You have to start training him to ignore traffic at a distance from it - within his comfort zone so he is not totally fixated on the traffic. For my dog this was a good 100  yards away from traffic and I would sit on a bench in a playing field with him beside me. If a car came past I would reward any small sign that he was loooking away from it and at me instead - at first was just a small twitch of his head towards me that was rewarded and we worked up to him seeing a car and instantly looking at me instead. We then moved a little closer but still within his comfort zone - if he showed any signs of fixating on the traffic we moved further away from it again until he was ignoring it again. Over the course of a year or more we have got as far as mentioned above and he is so much happier. I also walk him around a local business/industrial park some evenings - not too much traffic and it isn't travelling fast and he is fine with this too.  I also walk him so he is facing oncoming traffic so that he doesn't get the impression that he is chasing the car away - otherwise in his eyes a car came up behind him, he lunged and hey presto he scared it away - so self rewarding the undesired behaviour. If it's not possible to walk somewhere where he can be on the same side as oncoming traffic or there isn't sufficient room between him and the traffic (so outside his comfort zone) then I don't walk him there as I do not want to set him up to fail.

It is a long. slow process but we are getting there and he is so much happier. Interestingly he doesn't take any notice at all of trains that may whizz past - not a flicker in their direction at all.

Be patient, work at your dog's own pace and things will improve :-) It can take a very long time :-)

There is no quick fix - you have to go at the pace that suits your dog. My dog spent the beginnings of his life on a chain on a farm and met virtually no traffic at all.

Excellent post Harley!

When we go to the park he only wants his aqua kong totally focused on it. We live near Manchester airport and the planes don't bother him , we try to walk where there is a grass verge between us and cars , but as soon as he hears a go down he goes focused on the car it gets so bad at times. My wife is scared that she get pulled onto the road. We use 2 leads one on collar the other on a harness. 

Can you take him out in the car to walk somewhere traffic free? I do this every day with my dogs so my collie doesn't have to walk on roads where he is outside his comfort zone. I do any road walks on quieter roads and drive to those too. Every time your dog reacts to a car it is reinforcing the wrong behaviour and making it an entrenched behaviour that is so much harder to stop. I know it's difficult - I live just 5 minutes walk from the beach but have to cross a busy main road to get there which would set his training way back if I walked him from my house to the beach. Instead I pop the dogs in the car and drive there - unless it is late evening when the traffic has eased - and it is a pain but it's not worth risking undoing all the good work so far.

Prior to my collie coming to live with me I would do a road walk with the dogs every other day but now road walks have to be planned with him in mind so a lot of our walks are in the countryside where I don't have to think about traffic - on the hills and in woods - and he gets to run around stress free.

Was thinking of trying a spray any thoughts would be appreciated

My thoughts are to watch the official video which came with the Dynavet masterplus spray collar & make your mind up from that, see Youtube link below.They no longer issue any instruction video was the last I heard of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sTBXriek5E
.

> When we go to the park he only wants his aqua kong totally focused on it.

This may well be part of the problem.  Toy chasing is a very high-drive, adrenalin-triggering activity and for some dogs - collie types particularly - it can cause behaviours such as car chasing because the adrenalin doesn't get enough time to drop between play sessions, so the dog remains wired to a degree.  It's something you can only really identify by stopping chasing games altogether for a decent period of time (e.g. minimum of a month).

My first crazy dog (collie/lab, 100% colliebrain) was a serious car chaser, in her previous home she'd escaped numerous times to go after cars down the middle of the road and I wasn't having any success stopping her when I took her on.  At that time I happened to read a blog about the potential effects of too much ball play, and she was utterly focused on hers like yours is.  So I stopped it.  At home, on walks, anywhere, no ball play allowed at all for a couple of months.  The car chasing stopped all by itself and hasn't shown itself again - I just had to gradually reintroduce ball play at a much reduced rate, and reward her for doing other things such as sniffing around, exploring undergrowth etc.  When I started to reintroduce the ball I also introduced a 'no more ball' cue (pop it in pocket, tap pocket twice and say 'safe' - took her a while and a lot of patience on my part but she then understood that she would not be getting it any more and it wasn't lost, so she didn't need to search for it).

I had to do the same process for my mali cross on a much larger scale - she got no toys for many months before I could reintroduce them as she was so utterly wired after the tiniest bit of play!  She's never been a car chaser but the adrenalin showed itself in other ways - bullying, generally manic behaviour, unable to settle etc.