[WonderPup]

OMG, I have a ton of suggestions for you... I'll poke around in my library later and see what might be best.

A couple that jump to mind right away as must haves are
(some of these are assuming you would take him to a show, which you may not if he hates car rides. You can get him over that though if you work at it and then who knows, you both may like it?)

Building Blocks of Performance - this is the bestest most awsome book out there that in my humble opinion every dog owner should have, even if they aren't planning to comepete. I pull it out EVERY time we get a new puppies. For that matter it's one of the two books I keep by the whelping box when we have a litter even if we are keeping anything from it, uh yeah I start training early lol.

Competitive Obedience for the small dog - I love this one to, it's great info for all small dog trainers. It really gets down and explains how a smaller dog's perspective is so much more different than a larger ones and how a smaller dog can look sooooo much more out of position if he's even just slightly off where as a larger dog's size hides it. It's a neat book and covers alot.

Introduction to Rally-O - I'm not sure this book is up to date these days with some of the reccent changes that have been made to the rally stations in the last couple of years. It's a great place to start though and rally is the MOST fun way to train other behaviors. Thats actualy how it got started, it's basicly a sport based on what trainers used to do to reinforce behaviors they were teaching, it often called doodling then. lol

Peak Performance, Coaching the cannine Athlete - good general info all around, also has a lot of don't do this or you'll hurt you dog kind of info - helpful.

Just in case you decided to actualy show
Sucessful Obedience handling - this one you may think you don't need to start but you'd be surprised how many little things mess you up that you can practice right off the bat. Head of ring issues so to speak.

Oh and here is a link to browse through a pretty large selection of books I don't have the patience to give reviews on just now LoL.
http://www.jjdog.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=1CATDogTrainingBooks

 

[WonderPup]

lol, Saleen used to be afraid of the car too, I have NO idea how she got over it to be honest. One day she was just kind of like, "Oh ok this is fun!" ???? Who knows. She didn't really have a choice in the matter in a way. We went to classes twice a week, once for her puppy class which was 45 minutes away, and once a week to the classes I teach which was another 30 minutes by car. Plus I took her and Jazz to work with me every day. So the car was just the big scary thing that if you got in you'd end up someplace fun. Like I said though, one day she was just Ok with it and we haven't had a problem sense. I used to feed her breakfast in the car on the way to work come to think of it, maybe that helped? Thankgoodness she was never a car sick kind of dog. Saleen is like that though, all of a sudden something she's afraid of becomes OK. We had an off leash playtime at the puppy class she was in and she was terrified of even the little dogs. She had to go in the fenced area with the little guys because the puppies her size were just overload for her. She was fine with Jazz and the other spoo we were sitting for when we brought her home but nobody else. I have a big male spoo that I always let Jazz run around with at the shop to wear him out before grooming. This particular day Saleen decided to join in and had a blast. Two days later at puppy class she went crazy and wanted to play with everybody and ran and romped with the bigger puppies, we had to drag her home she didn't want to stop lol. She was best friends with a dobie puppy that day, then an aussie. After that though she was afraid of the poodle that she met and made friends with the day we brought her home. Nikki comes over often and for whatever reason Saleen hides behind me when she does. Last week I brought her over and turned her out in the backyard to romp with Jazz before I worked with her, she and Saleen are now best friends once again and were all over eachother the next day at the class I teach. She's also decided Nikki's momma and daddy are ok people too. Weird dog, but I love her anyway lol.