Raising Markus is the series where we share stories about our time raising Markus. Said to be aggressive and having gone unadopted for over a year, Raising Markus is the story of a rescued dog from Korea given a second opportunity, now in Vancouver, Canada. This series will include the lessons, joys and struggles of dog owners fumbling our way through our first adoption. The hope is that if you're considering rescuing a dog of your own, our stories are useful to you.

This week, we're meeting a cousin dogs and we go into the types of dogs Markus seems to be better with, we'll talk about the pizzle thing, his first Christmas, meeting babies and we have an Instagram account!

Meeting Cousin Doodoo

It's Christmas season and with that come the dinners, gifts and seeing friends and family that we normally won't see. On one of these family dinners, Markus got to meet his cousin dog Doodoo for the first time, who is Doodoo an older Cocker Spaniel (in the double digits).

At this point in her age, Doodoo is much more interested in human and trying to get food from them than playing with other dogs. Though she's really active and moving around a lot, her and Markus got along very well considering they had just met and it gave us a clue into the type of dogs that Markus does better with. And no, it's not because the she knew how to ask for food. 

Markus seems to do better with dogs who aren't interested in him. If a dog tries hard to smell him, it seems to make him uncomfortable and even suspicious of them. However, if the other dog is interested in other things than him and he gets to meet them and watch them on his own terms, he seems to be a lot more comfortable.

Thinking about the places we take him to and the type of dogs we meet there, it seems to make sense that he's not always comfortable. If Markus is shy about meeting other dogs, then taking him to a dog park is like bringing him speed dating, which isn't on his terms at all.

The Pizzle Thing

As an early Christmas gift, someone had given Markus a homemade pizzle - straight from the farm. If you don't know what a pizzle is, just pause here and look it up (it's also known as a bully stick). The one that we got was over two freakin' feet long and we honestly didn't know what to do with it. While we're trying to figure out what to do with it, we left it sticking out of Markus' stocking and wait until it was closer to Christmas time. When we finally let him try it, oh boy, he was nuts about it.

We had given him the whole stick with the intention of eventually taking it back. We got the feeling that if we never took it back, he wouldn't have stopped until he ate the whole thing. So after some time with it, and to his sadness, we eventually took the bully stick back. We then hacked it down to smaller 4-inch sticks and spread it out giving one to him a bit at a time throughout the next few weeks. It was really the gift that kept on giving.

Markus' First Christmas

In two days, it’s going to be Christmas and it's been just over a month since we've adopted Markus and rescued him over from Korea. What an incredible month it has been for us and we're starting to feel that Markus is beginning to understand that we're his family and life's different now.

And it's not just for him - life's different for us too. For starters, we've stopped receiving Christmas gifts because everyone wanted to get something for Markus instead!

But that's alright.

The best gift that we could've received came to us from Korea a month ago anyways.

The Baby Thing

One of our friends had a baby earlier this month and we invited them and some other friends over to our place for a game's night. They brought their baby along and for the first time, we got to see how Markus was with babies. Up until now, we've been able to see how he is with puppies, but for the first time, we would finally see how he is with human babies.

We watched with the parents (also dog owners) as Markus met the baby and he was a whole other kind of gentle. Markus sniffed the baby, showed a little bit of interest and that was it. Throughout the night, the baby would cry here and there and Markus would look at her direction with some concern. As a whole, we were not just impressed, but relieved at how Markus responded to meeting a baby.

If you're not familiar with Markus' story, when we were adopting him from the rescue shelter, there were some concerns about him being aggressive towards other dogs. Another part of the concern was that they had never seen him with children and couldn't be sure how he was going to be with them. Here he was meeting a baby and being incredibly gentle with her. 

We Have an Instagram Account!

People have been asking us to start an Instagram account to keep up with Markus' life without asking us for pictures all the time. We were hesitant at first because the training in itself already takes a lot of time, but we were already taking photos for ourselves, so we might as well post them for those who want to see it.

If you would like to keep up with Markus' life and follow the things he's doing, you can find us on Instagram @markus_mcgruff!

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!