We picked up Epic at 8 weeks old. We selected him out of the litter because he had the most drive evident at their age.  He had moderate retrieve drive, but excellent play, food, and bite drive.  He was fairly assertive and did not like being dominated, but quickly forgave.  He was the first pup to recover from being startled and was the first to investigate new things.  He did great on the drive home and took everything in stride: 11 hours in the truck, two ferry rides, a night in a hotel, visiting with some friends, meeting our dogs, going for a walk in our strange woods, wading in our stream!  He is adorable!

His first week has been fantastic.  He has met all the other dogs, and the sheep, goats, cows, chickens, lemur, racoon, etc.  He has switched to a predominantly raw diet and is doing great. We have been working on building his retrieve drive by playing two-toy retrieve games.  And we have worked lots on attention and his name.  But mostly we have just gone lots of safe places and encountered lots of new things.  He is amazingly aware of everything going on, but is not bothered by any of it.  

At nine weeks his ears are both up and he weighs 14 pounds.  He has a calm full bite and likes to spin around in circles.  He also likes to pounce on anything he finds on the floor and shove on it with both front paws like he is giving it C.P.R.  I think this will make for some cute tricks later!