Top 5 Reasons Why A Dog Sticks His Head Out The Car Window

This post may contain affiliate links. We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Yesterday I was driving home from work when I saw a dog stick his head out the car window.В It was a beautiful Golden Retriever wearing a gentle leader, sniffing the air, and in general just enjoying the car ride.В I pulled out my handy dandy new DROID Phone and snapped a few pictures while waiting at the stop light.

This got me to thinking why do dogs like to stick their head out the car window?В As usual I began my search on the web and also asked a few dog loving friends the question: Why do dogs stick their head out the car window?

Dogs, Cars, Windows, And Safety First

I wanted to start off by saying it can be very dangerous to let your dog hang his head out the car window.В There’s all kinds of debris scattered on the road and it often kicks up from the cars in front.В Just take a look at my windshield (several nicks) or the front of my car (chipped paint and minor dents).

Now just think about your dog hanging his head out the car window getting pelted in the eye by a tiny rock at 50 mph.В I don’t even want to think about the vet bill let alone the pain and suffering your dog would endure if he caught a pebble in the eye.В I’ve never used them before, but I’ve heard that some people have their dogs wear Doggles when they hang their head out the window of a moving car.

A friend of mine used to let his dog hang her head out the window until one day his collie mix jumped out the car window at 30 mph.В Lucky for him there was no oncoming traffic and his dog didn’t get injured on her fall to the ground.

Also, if your dog has allergies like mine then all the pollen and dust flying into your dog’s face could cause an allergic reaction.

I just wanted to let you know about some of the dangers of letting your dog stick his head out the car window.В After all you wouldn’t let your own child stick his head out the window of a moving car so why would it be appropriate for your dog to hang his head out the car window?

As a child my parents never let me stick my head out the window.В The few times I tried I seem to recall receiving a quick smack to the butt.В I’ll crack the window for my dogs and they’ll put their nose about against the window, but I never let my dogs put their entire heads out the car window.

Top 5 Reasons Why A Dog Sticks His Head Out The Car Window

Now that I got my safety speech out of the way we can get to our list of Top 5 Reasons Why A Dog Sticks His Head Out The Car Window. Lets do it David Letterman style and begin with a countdown.В Drum roll please……….

NUMBER 5 – It helps them to cool off faster inside a hot car.

NUMBER 4 – So they can pretend like they’re running at an incredible rate (see the movie Dumb and Dumber).

NUMBER 3 – To make sure you’re driving safely on the road.

NUMBER 2 – This is a sure sign that you stink!В Your dog is obviously trying to avoid your stench.

NUMBER 1 – They love to sniff the air…

Of course just like the David Letterman list the Number 1 answer is always anti-climatic although in today’s case it’s probably the closest to the truth.В It’s my understanding from what I’ve heard from friends and family, read in books and on the internet, and observed, dogs have such a keen sense of smell that being able to put their noses entire heads out the car window is like a natural high.В They get to catch many different smells passing through the air and because the car is moving so fast these smells are constantly changing.В I guess it might be similar to watching some beautiful scenery pass by.

Anyhow that’s my take on why a dog sticks his head out the car window.В Just remember, if you do let your dog hang his head out the car window then please be careful and protect your dogs eyes with a product like Doggles, get him a safety restraint so he can’t jump out of the car, and maybe just try cracking the window so he can catch the scents with his nose, but not put his entire head out the window.В As I mentioned earlier, you don’t want to end up with a huge vet bill just because your dog was hanging his head out the window of your car.

How about you?В What kind of experiences have you had with dogs sticking their head out the car window?В Do you allow your dog to ride with his head out the window?В Do you take any safety precautions?В I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

Top Picks For Our Puppies

1. BEST PUPPY TOY
   We Like:Snuggle Puppy w/ Heart Beat & Heat Pack — Perfect for new puppies. We get all of our Service Dog pups a Snuggle Puppy.
2. BEST DOG CHEW
   We Like:Best Bully Sticks — All of our puppies love to bite, nip, and chew. We love using Bully Sticks to help divert these unwanted behaviors.
3. BEST DOG TREATS
   We Like:Wellness Soft Puppy Bites — One of our favorite treats for training our service dog puppies.

Check out more of our favorites on our New Puppy Checklist.

About Colby

Colby Morita has been raising and training guide and service dog puppies for over 13 years. He has puppy graduates from Guide Dogs of America, Tender Loving Canine Assistance Dogs, Cascade Service Dogs, and Canine Support Teams. Colby has been writing to the PuppyInTraining.com blog and sharing his puppy training tips from his experiences since 2007. Follow his puppy adventures at Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest

Comments

I took my dog to my brothers house we ate dinner and when I went outside to check on my dog he was gone. We searched for him for hours no dog. I went home and there he was wagging his tail I wonder how he knew his way back home (3 miles​ hummm)

I’m glad you found your dog. One of our guide dog puppies, Dublin moved to AZ years ago. When he and his partner visited we had them start at the front of our track to see if he remembered where our house was in the neighborhood. He took his partner straight to our house. Dogs have great memories and tracking abilities. Thanks for sharing your story.

Laurie Whaley says

I would like to share a true story:
My brother in law had just cleaned his car interior & used armor all. He then took his german sheppard “King” for a ride & had the windows rolled down. Unfortunately, he had to stop quickly which made King go flying out the window. The accident injured his hip/hind quarter. He had pain everyday for the rest of his life after that. I fortunately got to become King’s new human Mommy. Not sure exactly why they didn’t want King but, I was more than happy to become his Mommy. King walked the Rainbow Bridge some time ago & I miss my baby/best friend.
So, I cannot stress enough to please keep your furbabies safe in your car by using safety belts/seat belts/harnesses, etc… and if you must let your furbabies hang their heads out the window please use safety belts/harnesses in case you have to stop suddenly. Also, doggles would be a great way to keep debris from flying into your furbabies eyes. They do not know what is safe so we must keep them safe.
Hope this helps…
God Bless,
Laurie

Well said Laurie! It’s more important to keep your dog safe from injury. Our guide dog pups ride on the passenger side floor boards and my dogs wear a harness and seat belt when we go for car rides and are never allowed to hang their heads out the window.

Today,my baby or 4 yr od silky-terrier Jackie decided after leaving his grooming apt.to Leap out the window as i was driving atleast 30 to 40 mph.He was momentarily hurt .But i was stabbed too the heart….thought i lost my baby as my other baby Yuri,cried in the passenger seat.HE WASNT MOVING,HE WAS DROOLING,HE URINATED AND POOPED as he layed there in shock on the road as I creid out, his eye– rolled and i quickley wrapped him in the towel and drove back too the vet -office.JACKIE IS 4YR OLD 9.2LB I DIDNT KNOW I LOVED MY DOGS ASMUCH AS I DO..PLEASE ALL DOG OWNERS DON’T..LET YOUR BABYS HANG OUT THE WINDOW….PERIOD.TODAY IS AUG 3,2012 I HAVE LEARNED A LESSON.Jackie has a medium scratch over the eye,and is a-okay(smile) THE VET OFFICE I PAYED THERE XCEL ENERGY BILL TODAY GASED UP THERE CAR AND PERHAPS BOUGHT LUNCH FOR THE OFFICE+ TIP.BUT HEY Ive got my bestest greatest baby JACKIEEE.close call learn from others mistake.BE WISE

How scary! I’m glad your pup came away okay. I don’t let my pups stick their heads out the window. I’m just to afraid that something might come flying up into their face.

Thanks for sharing your story!
Colby

Fred Dibnah says

Sorry I forgot to add link! Whoops!

@Fred that would be a good site to promote Doggles . We always worry about dogs holding their heads out the window because we’ve heard many horror stories about the dogs getting hit by debris or losing eyes.

Fred Dibnah says

Hey you guys should check this blog site out it’s awesome!

Basically it’s all picture of dogs hanging out of car windows!

So cute and……and funny!

I have a 5 pound Maltese, she loves to stand on my lap and hang her little head on the base of the open window…. my left arm is under her and I hold on to her leash…. she loves it…. I let he do it on back roads up to about 25 mph…. her had sits behind the rear view mirror and it sort of acts like a windshield…plus I can see her face reflected in the mirror, she is happy as can be.. when I get to a point that I need to speed up I tell her so and she comes on in……. she loves it….

@Pat, I think the best thing to do is to contact a local dog trainer and see what they can do to help you train your dog.

I’ve been working for the past several months on sit-stay with my dogs to try and prevent them from chasing squirrels and running out into the street. They still are not perfect with these commands so I always have them on a leash when I take them on walks or have them in areas that are not safe or enclosed. Eventually I hope anytime I tell my dogs to “Sit” they will immediately sit-stay no matter where or what they are doing.

Pat D. Mertz says

I need help. I have a choc lab pup, age; 1 year 1 month. He has no fear of cars. He stays with me, usually, when I’m in the driveway or in the court yard… until something steals all of his attention all of a sudden. He darts out in the street to go across the street to say hello to our neighbor or to make friends with a chipmunk. I live on a relitively busy street. Then when he is bored, he come lumbering back to his yard. The cars are all over the place trying to avoid killing him. I can not seem to make an impression on him about the seriousness of THE STREET. I think I have tried everything. Since all streets look different and he goes with me almost everywhere, he doesn’t get it. He sometimes makes me think he has no desire to learn this important lesson. Please offer suggestions…. I am desperate. thanx, pat

Laurie Whaley says

Hi Pat,
First of all I cannot urge this enough, Please for your fur baby’s sake don’t let him go into the streets if he’s not trained correctly. I would like to suggest you watch Cesar Millan, “Dog Whisperer.” He has some excellent training techniques. He also has Training DVD’s. I’m not any way affiliated with him or his training materials. I watch his shows, “Dog Whisperer & Leader of the Pack.” Excellent shows! I have incorporated a lot of his techniques into my life & the life of my precious fur babies & I do have to tell you they do work. Your fur baby is still young & can learn pretty quick. Cesar Millan is on National Geographic Channel, NatGeoWild. He truly is the “Dog Whisperer.” He connects with owners & animals like no one I’ve seen. I think it is a gift from God. He is truly blessed & loves to pass on his connection with God creatures. Cesar uses Calm assertive techniques. Our fur babies unfortunately feed off our energy. They kind of act like us. It’s hard for me to explain it, Cesar does an excellent job at training owners & rehabiltating dogs. You’ll be amazed at what one can accomplish with the correct training techniques. Cesar has his own website: http://www.cesarsway.com/
Hope this helps…
Laurie

How about trying that thing called a leash? Do they not have leash laws where you live. That would save all those innocent people from risking THEIR lives trying to avoid hitting your dog. Sheesh.

I have a yellow lab. I have walks him since he was a pup as I live in the city.
I trained him with the simple word “stop” as I walked him on his leash I would stop suddenly and say stop , over and over. Just the gentle pull back of the leash he started stopping immediately.
Now she I’m out with him. I have no leash any more and he behaves as I he was on one. Squirrels is his passion. But if he goes to chasing on and comes to the edge of his boundary I just say stop! In a firm voice and he stops.
That’s how I how I trained my lab whom is now 7yrs old and we still have to use stop and it still works.

WARNING: Dogs Can Fall Out Of Car Windows… Even When They’re Rolled Up!

It happened to me. With a 60 lb. Black Lab at 7 months of age.

And the car was moving!

Lately, I’ve been seeing so many people riding around with their dogs in the car.

Some have the windows completely down. Others have the windows partially rolled up, hoping to keep their dog from jumping out.

I’m here to tell you: a dog can fall out of a window that is half-way or even most of the way rolled up!

Initial Thoughts

I would guess that the risk of this happening is probably directly proportionate to a dog’s overall weight and size.

As I said, ours was a relatively large dog with a lot of body mass.

He had been on several car rides before. He was always well-mannered in the car, and sat still most of the time — with his nose out the window and ears flapping in the wind.

This is an example of how far the windows were rolled down on this particular day:

Every Dog Has His Day

On this day, I had both Destin (the unfortunate victim) and Jersey (the white dog) in the back seat of our Jeep Grand Cherokee. Both rear windows were one-third of the way rolled down. It was a sunny Autumn afternoon.

I was stopped at a light, about to make a lefthand turn onto a 4-lane highway. (I was in the leftmost of 2 left turn lanes.) Dogs were fine.

When the light turned green, I accelerated slightly and began to pick up speed on the highway when I heard a light “click clunk”. (My stomach turns every time I relive this in my mind.)

I looked back, and noticed I only had one dog in the back seat. Not two. A quick glance at the road behind me in my rearview mirror showed nothing unusual. (Since I was in the midst of a turn, things were disproportionate.)

Completely flabbergasted as to how one of my dogs could’ve vanished out of thin air, I immediately veered to the right-hand shoulder of the road. I was so panic-stricken and not thinking clearly, I’m very lucky that I didn’t hit another driver (…there had been several drivers behind me also turning left from 2 turn lanes onto this 4-lane highway).

When I jumped out of the car and looked back to the intersection where I turned (about 40 feet back), I noticed my Black Lab just sitting there in the road looking confused as to why I’d left him in such strange surroundings, and why all these cars were honking at him. Thankfully, another driver behind me must’ve seen him fall out. She stopped and stood beside him while holding onto his collar — which is probably the only thing that kept other cars from hitting him.

What they say about a person gaining incredible strength in times of emergency is so true. I thanked the lady for stopping, then scooped up my 60 lb dog with shaking arms and tons of adrenaline rushing through my body. Somehow I carried him across 2 lanes of traffic, walked 40 feet back to my car with the dog in my arms, and placed him on the ground next to the car — fully expecting him to be whimpering and hurt.

Nope. He was wagging his tail and nosing the car door, as if to say, “Can I just get back in the car please?!”

I quickly examined him in the backseat of the car, and found all of his limbs working normally. He didn’t flinch when I poked, prodded, and bent every joint in his legs. And there was no blood to be found anywhere.

He immediately propped his nose back out the window and was ready to continue his car ride. The only strange thing I noticed at this point was the wind guard above his window had been broken by the weight of his body falling out the window.

I, of course, was still shaking in my skin and could not believe what had just happened! It still baffled me as to how he got out of the car… I didn’t think a dog (especially one this big) could get out of a window that was rolled up so high.

For the return trip home, the dogs didn’t have the joy of sticking their noses out the car window. Until I could think clearly and rationalize the situation thoroughly, there were no more car rides with the windows partially down at all.

How Can A Dog Fall Out Of A Car Window?

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand how such a large dog could have squeezed through such a small opening. And I’d never heard of other dogs falling out of car windows — not when they were mostly rolled up!

The fact of the matter is… I probably didn’t have the window rolled up high enough for such a large sized dog. And, when a dog is accustomed to leaning on the car door & window all the time whenever he’s in the vehicle, then he’s going to keep doing it — even when you’re going around curves.

So I guess it was just this strange series of events (the degree of the turn, the acceleration of the speed, and the weight of his body) which sent our dog tumbling out the car window. And who knows?… Maybe something caught his attention, causing him to lean extra hard or stick his head out farther than usual this time.

It doesn’t really matter, because what happened happened.

The Safety Precautions We Now Take

The only thing that eases my mind about what happened on this day is this: I learned a very valuable lesson. The end result could have been much different, had it happened on another day and with the vehicle moving much faster or with other cars closer behind me.

Without a doubt, I was acting irresponsibly and putting my dog’s life at risk each time we took him for a ride in the car. I simply didn’t know better at the time.

A few days later, I went out and purchased dog seat belts for both dogs, and now we always make sure that they are tethered to the seatbelts in our vehicles at all times. (What I’m calling a dog seatbelt is actually a seatbelt extender of sorts — it clicks into your vehicle’s seatbelt, and then clips onto your dog’s collar.)

A few weeks later, I took it a step farther, and purchased a dog harness for each dog, because I felt that with the right dynamics in place (a sudden stop or a sharp turn), a dog could still be thrown from the vehicle under certain circumstances. The chances are probably slim, but it could happen — especially with larger dogs — and I didn’t want to take any chances.

So now we connect the dog seat belt to each dog’s harness, instead of to their collars. (We use 2 dog seatbelts and 2 dog harnesses.)

And we even bought them a doggie chin rest to rest their heads on while we’re driving. The best part: With the dog harness and dog tether in place, we are now able to roll the window down to a level that is more enjoyable for the dogs. Now, they can remain seated, with their noses out the window!

Here are the 10 things we take along every time our dog goes on a car ride.

An unrestrained 10-pound dog in a crash at 50 mph will exert roughly 500 pounds of pressure, while an unrestrained 80-pound dog in a crash at only 30 mph will exert 2,400 pounds of pressure. Imagine the devastation that could cause to your pet and anyone in the vehicle! Source

Happily Ever After

Destin appeared to be happy and healthy after this whole unfortunate incident. But I figured giving him a bath would enable me to find any smaller nicks, cuts, or scratches. The only one thing I found was this small scrape near on his belly/groin area:

After his bath, I added some Neosporin and the scratch was gone in a matter of days.

Destin showed no lasting effects from this traumatic event. I, on the other hand, have been impacted for life. I cringe whenever I see people driving around with their dogs in the car and the windows rolled down. And even worse: when I see a dog roaming around in the back of a truck bed!

I’m a huge advocate of dog seatbelts now. And our new dog, Tenor, has never once been in the car without being buckled in using a dog harness. Tenor is actually our Jeep dog!

Do not overlook the fact that your dog could possibly fall out, or jump out, or be catapulted like a missile during a sudden stop or car accident. Here’s the story of another dog owner who advocates the use of dog seat belts and a list of the most dog-friendly vehicles.

UPDATE: Our story appeared in the New York Times on 10/30/08. (That’s Tenor on the right, riding in the back of my Jeep.)

I like to help Dog Parents find unique ways to do things that will save time & money — so I write about “outside the box” Dog Tips and Dog Hacks that most wouldn’t think of. I’m a lifelong dog owner — currently have 2 mixed breed Golden Aussies that we found abandoned on the side of the road as puppies. I’ve always trained my own dogs and help friends train theirs, as well. Professionally, I worked at a vet and have several friends who are veterinarians — whom I consult with regularly. (And just because I love animals so much, I also worked at a Zoo for awhile!) I’ve been sharing my best ideas with others by blogging full-time since 1998 (the same year that Google started… and before the days of Facebook and YouTube). My daily motivation is to help first-time dog owners be better prepared from the first day your new puppy enters your home. I like to help dog owners understand what’s ‘normal’ and what you can expect in terms of living with and training your dog — how to get through the ups & downs of potty training, chewing, teaching commands, getting your dog to listen, and everything else that takes place during that hectic first year! When I’m not training, walking, grooming, or making homemade treats for my dogs, you will find me at the corner of Good News & Fun Times as publisher of The Fun Times Guide (32 fun & helpful websites). To date, I’ve written over 600 articles for dog owners on this site! Many of them have upwards of 200K shares.