Brin the Teenager! 5/2025 - Crazy squirrels and car troubles!

It’s been over a month since my last Brin blog and what a month. Work has been pretty busy and so has Brin with lots of training in Obedience and Scent Detection. Brin also had his first scent competition and came away with a third place rosette which I was extremely proud of. His searching is brilliant and we still have some work to do with his indication but a fantastic result for my clever little whippet. With his obedience training I feel I’m starting to see some real results on the exercises that we practice and I’m able to start putting the components together so that his heelwork and his formal recall are looking pretty good. Not bad for a puppy that struggles to even stand still let alone sit still! 

On to the not quite so good stuff - it seems we have a love of squirrels! To be honest the birds and squirrels are very active in the forest at the moment, building nests and foraging for food. This means there is lots of rustling in the bushes which is almost impossible for Brin to resist. His recall from the noises using his favourite ball as a reward is working well but eventually the excitement proves just too much and I find its best to finish off the walk on lead once he has reached his limit on hearing and responsiveness. 

And then there’s the car! It took Brin ages to settle nicely in the car, mainly I suspect because he had travelled on the back seat and I wanted him to travel in a crate for safety with the other dogs. Eventually he was quiet and happy and this has all been fine for around 6 months now but, in the past two months he has gradually become unsettled in the car. I thought this was because I had left the boot up at a training session and Logi had barked at a dog that then came near the car. However, although Brin then barked a bit for the next week whenever anyone came near the car this soon stopped. But while we are travelling he sometimes whines, like any responsible dog owner I have stopped and checked if he needs the toilet but this has not been the issue so I am struggling to know what his problem is and I am continuing to monitor to see if I can find a common denominator which causes his unsettled behaviour. Despite all of this I really can’t complain about Brin - he is such a clever, willing and fun little dog and I am having a great time training and playing with him and walking him both on his own and with the other dogs.