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. :-)
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