Adventures with Aspen: For the Love of a Stick??

As many of you know we have been working with Aspen on his "people" skills so to speak.  Well today we made a trip to the park and here is what we did...

We stopped to admire some goslings at silver lake park.  Aspen did want to go in and say hello but he refrained.  THANK GOODNESS!!

Next we stopped and played some hop scotch.  Okay fine I played it and Aspen watched.

Then we found these cute circle things :-) I'm not sure what it's for but it's cute.

And finally we went to the skate park... Aspen doesn't like strangers, he doesn't like strange riding things that make lots of noise. His reaction was very stand offish and nervous about all those loud skate boards.  He was panting heavy and was very distracted looking in every direction, but an interesting thing happened at the park.  I grabbed a stick.  You wouldn't think anything of it but my dog made a complete 180!!! His tail went up and a look came into his eyes..." give me that stick!!"  He was chasing me and playing tag-a-war.  It was short lived but it gave me a glimpse into the future.  He can do this... we can do this together. These moments are what keep us going and reminds me how much I need to look outside the box when working with him.. who would have guessed for the LOVE OF A SICK :-)