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??