Becoming Territorial, What's in the Box, Trimming Nails, Chew Toys and the Jindonut
Markus curled up into a Jindonut while he sleeps
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 going to tell you about some we're starting to see of Markus being territorial at home, what's in the box, the thing about trimming nails, Markus new chewing toy, and the Jindonut.
Territorial-ness at Home
We've started noticing that Markus gets territorial at home. He's not territorial towards to us or with his space (like his bed or blanket) specifically, but with the entire place in general. In these first few months of adopting him, we've consistently invited people over to our home so that he gets used to having visitors. At first when he was still trying to figure out his place in the family and in the home, he was okay with people coming over. Since he's learned that this is his home, he's become more territorial.
In the bigger picture, his reactions aren't too bad. When people ring the doorbell, he'll bark at the door (which seems to be common with dogs anyways). Then as they come through, he'll keep barking at them. At the very most, he'll jump up at them when he gets a chance to get close to them. We're glad that he doesn't show anything aggressive like biting or growling.
We've also noticed that as long as the visitors are standing, he'll react to them and once they sit down, he'll stop. We're thinking there must be something about the height or the size of people while they are standing that threatens him, so when they sit down, he's calm again. For this reason, we've dubbed our couch the "safe zone".
We're working with Markus through this behaviour and we've tried a handful of things so far. We've had Markus greet the visitors at the door before they come in. They've been good with getting down on his level and greeting him, but as soon as they stand up, he goes off. We've also tried to get him to perform tricks like lying down - ones that require him to stop and calm down - and that seems to work fairly well. At the very least, it buys people enough time to sit down.
We've also tried keeping Markus behind the gate so that he can see how we as the owners are reacting to the visitor. We're hoping that if he has the chance to assess that we're not threatened by the visitor, then he doesn't have to be either. The visitor can then let Markus sniff them on the other side of the gate before we open it up. We've found this to help so far. He still barks, but it feels as though they're less because he's threatened and more towards the excitement of seeing someone new.
What's in the Box?
As a part of helping Markus understand what's his and what's ours, we bought a small box to keep all this toys. The amount of toys were starting to pile up, so a box to keep things tidy was becoming necessary anyways. The box is easily accessible to Markus and any time he starts getting fired up tearing his blankets, we call him over to the box where he'll stick his head in and pull a toy out to play with. At times when he gets too hyped up destroying his blanket, we'll bring a toy over for the sake of diverting his attention.
At the end of the day, we make sure that all the toys are back into the box. Through repetition, we hope he'll learn to associate that the things in the box are for him and if he starts to get riled up, he can go to the box instead of destroying his blanket.
Maybe we can teach him to return his toys back to the box by himself one day!
The Nails Thing
Markus after we asked if we can have his paw to trim his nails
For the first couple months while we've been adjusting to life with Markus, we pawned off the grooming duty to professionals. If you've ever had any sort of dog grooming done, you'll know that it's not the cheapest and the cost really starts to add up. There are many types of grooming you can do, but one of the most common ones is nail trimming.
Nail trimming needs to be done. If you can imagine having long nails that constantly click and hit the floor as you walk, you can also imagine how it can be irritating or sometimes even painful after a while. For this reason, we need to make sure that the dog's nails are well-maintained and since the cost of bringing him in to get it done at the groomer's is so high, we bought a pair of nail trimmers for dogs.
We figured that if we bought a set of trimmers and can do his nails even just one time, it would pay for itself already. Professionals fully trim his nails in like 5 minutes, so how hard can it be!?
Well, there are a couple things we learned that we'd love to share with you (we learned this before trimming, of course).
First, there's this thing called a quick on a dog's paw. The quick is a fleshy vein that grows underneath the nail and accidentally cutting it will cause it to bleed, which really hurts the dog. You'll need to be extremely careful here or they'll never let you touch their paw again!
The second thing to consider is the amount of black nails. We didn't realize this was a thing. Some dogs have clear nails (kind of like humans), some dogs have black nails and other dogs have some combination of the two. With clear nails, you can see the quick underneath the nail fairly easily, but a common worry with dog owners is when the nails are black and you can't see where you're cutting. Markus is about 50/50 where half the nails are clear and the other half are black. In fact, he has some nails where one half of the nail is clear and the other half is black.
Markus’ nails needing some trimming. You can see the black nail on the very right.
I can hardly cut my own nails without going too far and now you're telling me I have to trim my dog's and I can't see how far I'm going? That's wild.
But wait, there's help.
A trick that we learned while looking for tips on clipping a dog's nail is using the light of your phone. Have the phone light turned on and then set it on the ground next to the dog. If you hold your dog's paw over the light, you'll be able to clearly see where the quick begins so you know where to clip. When you've found your spot, do it with confidence. This also works if the nails are black. Although it's not as obvious, it's better than guessing or having to clip the same nail 2 or 3 times just to get it the right length.
If your dog isn't comfortable with you touching their toes, you can start by desensitizing them. When they're calm and relaxed, you can go up to them and tap their toenails with your nails - just to get a little bit of that clicking feeling. Do this everyday or even multiple times a day. Once your dog gets comfortable with it, you can start using the trimmers to tap the nail until they're used to that. Some people say their dog takes months to get used to it, but all this is to help your dog be familiar with having their paws and nails touched.
Just try it. It might save you hundreds of dollars in the process.
The BeneBone Thing
Markus is absolutely exhausted after playing with his BeneBone
On a recent visit to a friend's house, I watched one of their dogs gnawing away at a bone, except that when I took a closer look, it wasn't a bone at all. The dog was chewing on a BeneBone, which gives a similar sensation of gnawing on a bone, but without the mess and the risk of shards that come with chewing a real bone. It's, of course, shaped like a bone.
The BeneBone is made of a tough nylon material that flakes off as the dog is chewing it, but since it's so tough, only so much comes off in one session. They say that the flecks of nylon, if consumed, can travel through the dog's digestive system without being further disintegrated and they just poop it out. It comes in multiple flavours like bacon, chicken and peanut butter and in different shapes, so you're likely to find one that suits your dog.
We gave Markus one of these as an early Christmas gift and he's been enjoying it. We find that he only starts working on the bone when he gets riled up and he only ever gets riled up if we're home and playing with him.
We're starting to think that part of the reason he wants to start tearing his blankets apart is that he looks for an outlet to give him the satisfaction of the chewing feeling. What we're trying to do now is that if we see Markus starting to tear his blanket, we hand the BeneBone instead and he starts working at that. We find that after he's done with it, he's no longer interested in working on the blanket.
The Jindonut Thing
Markus curled up in a Jindonut and on top of his BeneBone
When Markus sleeps, he'll sometimes curl up into a tight circle where his nose is covered by his own tail. At first, we thought maybe it was too cold in the house, but apparently this is common with Jindos and it's called a Jindonut.
We're not the biggest fans of descriptions that compare Markus to food, because you know, of his history and all, but it's still super cute!
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!
