Becoming a Running Buddy

So we are in the midst of Control Unleashed 2 for the 4th time.  This class is soooo good for Sagan's reactivity issues.  It is in this class I feel that I can actually truly make progress with him.  I met up with Janey last month for some "car crash" from that class:






 Minus crappy leash manners in this video, he is doing good work in class, and is constantly being challenged in an appropriate way. I am taking a break after this session for awhile. I'm nervous that starting my Ph.D. might mean that I won't get to take this class for awhile, but I hope to make it work. :-)

 Agility is going well....I need to get some video of him doing work. We did this crazy front cross/post turn drill in class a couple of weeks ago. Several jumps and he did it all. I'm figuring it out, and so is he. He LURVES agility, so I am still really trying to advocate for him around the new folks in class. A few folks in our agility class are encouraging me to enter him in a trial in May...we will see, though I want to stay true to what I said in my last post. Want to get him more solid mentally before I attempt that.

 The latest is that Sagan and I are going to run a half marathon on 4/28. He is currently running up to 7 miles with me. I am investing in 2 different sports harnesses, since the Easy Walk is chaffing on those long runs. Trying the Comfortflex from Clean Run and the cool IDC harness with the name patches. Sagan is such a polite running buddy. I put him on a double-length bungee hands-free leash. He runs so nicely. This last weekend, we did the 7-mile run, and managed to navigate a busy street, several on-leash dogs, and a couple of off-leash ones. THIS, however, is the cutest part of our run...the start of it: This is actually a walk, but he does the same on our runs. And it is such a Pavlov moment...the beep of our Garmin watch goes off, and Sagan pulls like an Alaskan sled dog. LOL Fortunate Ross and I can enjoy Sagan in this way. :-)