In our development with Markus, we’re constantly pushing for the next thing. We’re always trying new things to train and work with him - so much so that when something doesn’t go the way we expect it to, we can become discouraged or even frustrated.

Taking the time to reflect where things began helps us to appreciate where we are today and it gives us the boost for another day. Putting in perspective that Markus was a rescued dog who had difficulty being adopted because he was labeled as aggressive helps us to appreciate how far he’s come in his time with us.

The Paws & Reflect series is our way of pausing to appreciate all the progress Markus has made from his days as an aggressive dog at the rescue shelter. We revisit his past to help us put into focus all the great things he’s already accomplished with us.

Happy New Year's to everyone from The Pawcific Explorer to you. It's become a little bit of a tradition now for us to list out our resolutions for Markus at the beginning of the year. Since New Year's just passed a few days ago, here is our 2020 list of resolutions for Markus.

But first, how'd we do last year?

Let's review last year's resolutions. Last year, we had the goal of doing more outings and travelling more with Markus, to have more meetings with Markus' friends and to find a food that Markus loves to eat. So how did we do?

For the first resolution of traveling and going on more outings, we did fairly well! We took quite a few overnight trips last year and we shared at least seven of them with you on our Overnight Adventures series. We hope to do more this year and in fact, we have a major one coming up (more on that below).

For our day-to-day outings, we weren't great, but we were alright. We took Markus to dog parks and trails often enough, but not as much as we would have liked.

The second thing we wanted to do was to meet with Markus' friends more regularly. This was important to us because it helped with his development. When Markus warms up to other dogs, he's okay walking and being around them so meeting up with the same dogs regularly means that we get to skip through the warming up phase. We did this fairly well and throughout the year, we've been able to add even more dogs to the pack.

Our last resolution of finding a food that Markus loved enough to have full time was something that we accomplished pretty quickly - within the first two months of the year. This was perhaps the most important thing for us and we were able to find a food that he was excited to eat consistently when we switched him to a raw food diet.

It's almost been about a full year now since we first switched Markus to the raw food diet and he's still excited for his meals. As of today, he still licks the bowl clean as if it was his first time having it.

Throughout the year, we've switched up his proteins too. We started with chicken and then tried beef, turkey (what he's currently on) and duck. He did well with all the birds, but we did struggle to get through the beef.

All in all, we thought it was a pretty successful 2019. We got to take quite a number of trips together, Markus progressed with his training and now that we have his food down pat, we can really work on getting his routines down pat.

We now give you our 2020 Resolutions for Markus.

A Successful Road Trip

We've been planning a long road trip with Markus, but there are still a lot of details that need to be fleshed out. This road trip is going to take us beyond the Pacific Northwest to California and possibly beyond.

This is going to be the longest road trip that we've done to date, both for ourselves and with Markus. We look forward to planning the rest of this road trip in the upcoming weeks and then actually going! Most of all, we're excited that we get to be taking a trip like this with Markus. We'll be spending a lot of hours in the car together and we hope that everything will go smoothly.

Learning Higher Level Tricks

We hope to teach Markus some more tricks! He has the regular tricks like sit, down, shake, twirl, wait, stay, two paws and watching down pat, but we wanted to do something a bit more advanced with him this year. We're hoping to take things up a notch and practice tricks like weaving and staying/waiting for longer durations.

We recently heard about this company called Do More With Your Dog and their whole thing is about getting dogs to do a series of tricks recorded on video and they assess how the dog actually does. If the dog does well, they earn a trick title along with a certificate and a badge.

We'll likely end up using this as a way for us to validate some of the training we've been doing with Markus - like earning a Novice Trick Title for starters. We hope we can see all our hours of training with Markus put into good use!

Improving Outdoor Obedience & Recall

One thing we'd like to improve with Markus is his outdoor obedience and recall. We find that when we're outdoors, Markus is still more interested in discovering more than anything else. Exploring is his greatest treat and it almost trumps any actual treat we can offer him.

Whenever we bring him to the dog park, he gets tired of playing with the other dogs pretty quickly and he'll start to explore and sniff around the fenced areas. Whenever he gets into this state, it becomes really hard to convince him to do otherwise and he starts to shut us out when we call him. This hunting mentality kicks in and it's hard to shake.

If we call Markus when he's like this, he'll turn and look up at us because he hears us and he knows we're trying to get his attention. But in that moment, instead of coming to us, you can see him stop and look as if he's tying to decide if it's worth coming to us and then he'll actively ignore us and turn around. It's the snubbiest move.

This year, the main thing we'd like to work with Markus is to improve his recall. Whenever we're in these sorts of outings - whether at the dog park or other off-leash areas - we want to train him up to a point where he'll have the discipline and recall to come back to us when we call his name.

We’re so grateful for your support of The Markus Project. We mostly choose our locations through searching and word of mouth. If you know of a park, trail or location you think we should check out, please share it with us. We’d love to know!