Behavior Eval

So, I took Sagan up today to meet Christine at Companion Animal Solutions.  It was nice meeting her and she had lots of nice suggestions about how to deal with Sagan's fear.  Her diagnosis is that he is "conflicted"....curious, but fearful, and that we have been pushing him too far, too fast.  That basically, Sagan has lost faith in us as handlers because we keep putting him in fearful situations.

I appreciated the honest assessment, but I can't help but be struck by the fact that if what we've been doing is wrong, there are going to be a lot of EFFed up dogs in the world.  And here we are, with another project dog, which is *exactly* what we thought we wouldn't be getting, since we know he was socialized well as a pup.  Blah.  I also felt about this appointment the way I felt about Winnie's fear aggression appts.  I felt great while there, and then the enormity of orchestrating all of these situations, and controlling all of the variables REALLY overwhelmed me once I was home.  Where I am going to find strangers (not people he has met) to help me for long enough to do counterconditioning exercises?  I know what I need to do, I'm just not sure how well I'm going to be able to do it.

So, he is on the shy end of the shy/bold spectrum, and is showing fear toward lots of things.  This fear needs to be addressed.  Repeatedly, constantly with treats and clicker.  Wrapping my head around this project.

On a lighter/more fun note, Sagan is totally playing fetch now, and will blow bubbles in the water dish if we stick a piece of cardboard in the water.  Is this considered waterboarding a dog? :-)

A Very Busy Week

Well, our week started off not so wonderful, with Sagan still showing lots of fear and trying to bite our vet tech on Tuesday.  Ross and I had some difficult conversations, moved up our behavior evaluation of him to next week, and set out to keep working on desensitizing Sagan to loud noises and people.  While the vet may not be the best test of his temperament, I've seen fear aggression in dogs (Winnie), and I know how horrible that can be.  Keep your fingers crossed for the evaluation.

Sagan did have a lot of field trips this week:

1) Game Farm Park twice...once to desensitize cars and car noise (success), and once to see how he did with large groups of people.  Ironically, he was far better at this, probably because people weren't fawning over him.    We passed by a few really busy fields with softball games going on.
2) Les Gove Park.  There is a pretty active kid play area in this one.  Sagan did fine, except he was fairly afraid of 2 small yappy dogs going the opposite direction around the loop.
3) Downtown Auburn.  Ran right up to someone with their hand out to pet him.  We went Saturday morning, fairly early after breakfast, so it was really pretty quiet.  He did bark at a delivery guy and seemed horrified of the train (understandable).
4) Fido's Farm with Monique.  Monique got some great pictures and I am jealous of her camera.  Sagan saw sheep, and got to play with his brother, Rye.  He also got to romp in fields off leash.  The only thing he showed some fear of was a large helicopter (noise) near the military base.
5) Puppy class.  This was overwhelming for him in that he didn't want to engage in puppy play (hid under our chairs or behind us the whole time).  He definitely warmed up and wanted to check out the other dogs later, and he was a rock star in terms of obedience.
6) To my friend Dacia's to meet her children and their mini-Aussie, Eddie.  This didn't go so well on the dog front, but OK on the people front.  After submissively peeing in their entryway after being barked at by Eddie, they never really warmed up.  Instead, they brought our their gregarious chocolate lab, and Sagan snarled and snapped at him, despite Fuzz' waggly behavior.  He did warm up to the people and their children, though, so that is good.
7) Petsmart in Puyallup.  Our petsitter works there, as well as his friend Tracy.  Cody and Tracy encouraged several employees to come up to Sagan to give him treats, and Sagan didn't have a problem with anyone here (YAY!).  He was a little spooked by a cart, and was a little upset by the group of dogs playing behind the glass.  He also got spooked by his reflection in the window.  We stayed here quite awhile, and walked all through the store.  Sagan nicely greeted 2 dogs...a very small toy dog, and a much older Aussie.  Maybe he is going through a stage with spastic dogs bigger than him.  Thanks to Tracy and Cody for all of the help with him!!!!

Sagan and brother Rye:

Sagan looking like he has places to be:

Sagan's amazing ears that fully tipped upright this week:

Action!

Clearly watching something:

Maybe these sheep??

Almost 14 weeks!

Well, this week, Sagan became afraid of JUST about everything.  Cars, people (continuing), noises, objects.  It actually made me feel a bit better like it has to be a phase, since we're doing almost everything right (I'm sure there are things we could be doing better).

The car thing was easy enough to address.  We went 2x today down to the park, started far away from cars, and got to the point he could walk on the sidewalk right next to the road, without being interested in the cars.  Score. That only took about 10 minutes.

He has been minimally better with people this week.  No terrible occurrences.  A couple of times he snarfled and then went up to the person.

We went to his first puppy class on Wednesday (no puppies the first week).  We met everyone, and found out there will be a cool mix of dogs there:  a great dane, pit bull, rhodesian ridgeback, mini-aussie, and a shih tzu.  Fun stuff.  Liked the instructor, Tracy.

We also signed Sagan up for a behavior consultation with Companion Animal Solutions & Christine.  Monique had suggested we do this because of Sagan's stranger danger.  We will go to an appt. with her on 4/5.  She will give us some more tools to deal with his issues, and assess just how fearful he really is.

We also started the process of teaching him fetch today....  we are doing "get the ball" for him to put his mouth around the ball and pick it up.  He is a ROCK STAR on recalls.  I am super impressed with him on this at 14 weeks.

Here is some cuteness.

Signs you know you have a puppy

This will be a picture journal of the many changes in our house that indicate a puppy is present.  I took all of these pictures in about 5 minutes wandering around the house, snapping photos.  I staged nothing, but simple captured the state of our house.

Exhibit A:  Petzyme in a gallon container, paper towels, and shoes on the railing and on top of the laser printer.  The ones on the laser printer are wet from the muck outside, hence why they are upside down.

Notice Winnie hiding for cover in her crate:

Exhibit B: Other destructible items also end up on top of tables, like pillows:

Exhibit C:  Ex-pens must be used to protect books on the bookcase.

Exhibit D:  Toy schrapnel.

Exhibit E: Pillows protecting computer cords.

Exhibit F:  Ex-pen to protect area where he hid behind furniture to pee and poop until he forgets about it.

Exhibit G:  Towels may NOT be hung on the stove.  They are simply toys at that height.

Exhibit H:  A bottle of Petzyme, Buffalo bites treats for training (Sagan's fav), pill pockets and pills for the older dog.

Exhibit I:  The most damning evidence yet:  the puppy himself.

The 3 Month Mark

So Sagan continues to amaze me every week.  The good news...Clavamox has fixed his issues.  And he is eating MUCH better now.  Amazing how much more you want to eat when your tummy isn't upset. He also is loving his Nina Ottoson toys (a suggestion by Cody...thanks), and is really doing swimmingly on training.  He is consistently doing sit, down, come, shake, watch, touch, and we are now starting to work on leave it, drop it, bang (lay on his side), and loose leash walking.   We are also starting to change up the environment for those things he does well in the house.  Sagan did an amazing job at school with me on Thursday. He was about 95% on "come" at school in different classrooms.  That impressed me.

What didn't impress me is how worried he still is about strangers.  We had some moderately successful adventures in this regard all week, and we are now working on this in earnest.  With about >70% of strangers, he is wary to some extent, usually more often with men than women.  With a few, he doesn't warm up at all after 10 minutes, either cowering or hiding behind me.  Sometimes he will bark and snarfle at them.

I had a great opportunity with a group of kids that came in on us visiting with a woman Sagan already knows and loves.  I asked if the kids would help, and gave them all treats.  They sat on the floor and waited for Sagan to come up.  After I tossed some treats in that direction, he carefully took treats from all of them, after about 30-45 seconds.  While he never really wanted to be petted....  he did go up to a pretty large group of kids.

We did have one not so great experience where I instructed a kid to do the same, and he lunged for Sagan. Sagan bigtime growled, and I practically threw the kid off of him.  Blah.

I feel really overwhelmed by the stranger danger.  Part of me imagines a scenario in which he learns to be permanently afraid of people and starts biting.  I also am in a bit of denial, and I keep thinking he will snap out of it.  He was socialized really well as a pup.

Some gratuitous cuteness pictures.  Here he is looking quite much like a border collie:

Some size comparisons with Doppler:

The shots you rarely capture with a camera. :-)

Highs and Lows

Well, we've had this little guy for over 3 weeks now.  There are some definite highs and definite lows.

High points:  he no longer cries in the car, is MUCH better about using his teeth, and is doing *really* well on potty training.

Low points:  still not eating well, still having poo issues, and is very tentative around people.  The latter is concerning me, and we have begun taking steps to hopefully fix this before it develops into a big problem.  We're going to have a few folks over the next few Sundays to be "awesome strangers"....and we took him on a few trips today to Petsmart, Petco, and wineries in Woodinville to either interact with people or watch people from afar.

Play by Play:
Encountered one really nice boy in Petsmart.  He was calm and asked if he could pet Doppler.  Sure thing....then he asked if he could pet Sagan.  Sure thing.  Sagan wagged a little and let the boy pet him calmly.  Boy talked to us about age and breed of dogs....

Encountered the same boy and his family a few aisles over (in the toy aisle...bonus).  Three people....all asked again if they could pet them (I love polite people), and this went well.  Even with 3 people surrounding him, he was wagging...perhaps a little tail tucking.  Things really broke open though when a boy pulled a tuggy toy out of the bin....Sagan went right up and started tugging with the boy.

Encountered a woman, her daughter, and a beautiful one year old cattle dog/something mix.  Everyone petted, and lots of dog sniffing.  Dog was calm, daughter was calm (the time to find calm kids is Saturday morning at Petsmart, people).  Exchange lasted about 3-4 minutes.  Sagan sat on the mom's feet.  Another woman came up (I was thinking this was a lot of people, but everything seemed to go ok).  Sagan left the woman's feet, and came up to the 3rd woman with his tail tucked.  Still sought her attention though.

Then, we went to Petco (we were looking for a SMALL easy walk harness...  ended up getting a halti harness because both stores were out of smalls!).  Petco was a lot busier, and Sagan barfed up a bit of breakfast hauling on the leash.  Whoops.  Even more reason to get the halti as we work on leash skills.  One woman wanted to pet him and kneeled down....he seemed a little overwhelmed, then a dog barked, and he went to check that out.

At the checkout, we chatted with a man with a lab.  Doppler loved the lab.  Man reached over to pet Sagan in Ross' arms.  Sagan did not clammer away like he sometimes does with me.  Man petted him from under his head and over his head.  No problem.  Same with the checkout lady.  Sagan wagged a bit when she petted him.

In Woodinville, he didn't really interact with people, though he did pull, wanted to see 2 groups of people at Columbia....  they were interested in wine, rather than dogs, though.  But a success that he wanted to go see them.

Hope things continue on this vein. :-)