The Trials and Tribulations of Owning and Training a Puppy! Part 7

This week has felt a bit same-same - life getting in the way of Brin training. That said we had a brilliant scent session on Friday working on developing his indication with a kong as the scent item. On the way home I realised I’d been so in the zone I hadn’t taken any photos which is a shame for the blog but a great result for training.

Using a piece of kong (the very top part chopped off, not the whole kong), I place the reward in and when Brin pauses and looks at it, I drop the food out of the kong. At first Brin just kept jumping up at the kong and got very excited but eventually he learned to sit and look at the kong - step one achieved and we have practiced this a couple of times in the week, in between Brin stealing the piece of kong off the side or out of my training bag whenever he gets the chance!

It looks like, despite my best efforts, I have another counter surfing whippet/sight hound. This is a common trait in this breed and Sonic used to do it when he was younger, but I managed to avoid it with Logi. Brin seems to get restless sometimes and that’s when he sneaks off and pinches something. He makes me laugh though because he steals my treat pouch and brings it into the living room to show me which means I take it back and put it back away! My last lurcher, Finn, would steal and hide until he had eaten everything, and Sonic used to steal things and take them into Finn’s bed to eat them leaving the empty packet there for him to take the blame!

I have also done some obedience work, on my heelwork (although I feel like I’ve not done enough of this) and distance control (sit to down). We have lots of work to do on our sit as Brin backwards sits which is great for distance control but not for recall and retrieve as it tends to mean he sits too far away in these exercises. Gradually we have been doing a couple of exercises where he has to bring his back legs to his front legs to sit rather than putting his bottom down and moving his front legs backwards. A work in progress but we are getting there.