Doggy Training Updates, Valens Dog Food Update and the Professional Doggo

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.

We only have a short update this week with some updates from Markus at doggy training, a check in on the Valens food, bringing Markus into the office and teaching him to how to shake paws.

Doggy Training Updates

Markus posing for a picture at doggy training before all the other dogs arrived

It's the fourth week of our doggy training and it has been a very fulfilling experience so far. The course has been very useful and we're glad to have put Markus into it, but we've quickly come to realize that even though it's doggy training, the majority of the class is actually training us as dog owners - what to look for, how to respond, how to train your dog, etc. Dog owners are human and we tend to have our own responses when our dogs don't behave as we want them to and the class does well to teach us how dogs tend to think so we can learn to be patient with them.

What's also been great is that we've been able to have Markus play with other dogs, but in a much more controlled setting with a professional dog trainer watching. There were moments when Markus' play with the other dogs would look rough to us since he's bigger, but we're told that's just the way dogs play and to let them go. Had it just been us, we likely would've stepped in and split them, but that's the benefit of having a professional eye to supervise. Markus is coming out of his shell in the classroom and the smaller dogs are getting exposure to playing with bigger dogs and this is good training all around.

Markus has been a model student in the course so far. He's picked up most of the tricks, but there is one command that he struggles with and that's the "pick up" command. This command requires us as the human to physically pick up Markus from the floor and for an added layer of difficultly, sit down on a chair. Since Markus is nearly 4 years old at this point and spent most of his life living either on the streets and in a rescue shelter, he didn't grow up with being picked up. In fact, to be picked up likely had a negative feeling to it so naturally, he's defensive about it.

With the other tricks, it has been about performing something to get a reward and he's excelled at that, but this trick requires him to give up a bit of his security and feel uncomfortable. The other dogs in the class are both smaller and puppies, so they're used to being picked up. For Markus, he fights being picked up and when we are able to do it, he's okay for a few seconds and then he starts to buck or kick until he's on the ground again. This is something that we know we will continue to practice, but beyond that, but it'll also come with trusting us as his owners, which takes time.

Checking in on Valens Food

Last update, we talked about the lawsuit that Acana's facing and how we changed his food out of precaution. We picked up some samples for a lesser known dog food brand called Valens and Markus loved it so much that we ended up getting a big bag of it as his meal full time. We started him on the Valens Fisher and it's been a couple of weeks of this so far and he's still enjoying it!

Markus has been finishing his entire bowl of food, which was rare when we were giving him Acana. For the first time since adopting him, Markus has consistently been finishing all the food in his bowl. There are still days where he won't finish everything, but those days aren't the norm anymore, which is a great step forward.

Valens also has their Farmer flavour, which is a mix of turkey and chicken. Markus enjoyed the samples of that one and finished all of it as well. If we decide we want to change up the protein, we have some options, so we're going to keep trying this with Markus for a little while.

The one downside about Valens is that they're harder to find at pet stores. Unlike Acana or some of the other brands that you can find anywhere, we've only seen Valens being carried at a handful of places. There are enough locations in our area, so as long as we're aware of how much food is left, we just plan to pick up food ahead of schedule. We hope you're able to find some in your area as well!

Teaching Markus to Shake Paws

Markus practicing his shake, but not quite doing it right

We recently taught Markus how to shake his paws. If your dog knows how to sit already, it's a pretty easy trick to learn. You start by getting the dog to sit and your reach your hand out in front of the dog. If the dog makes any contact with their paw to your hand, start raining treats on them. In time, they'll try it on their own just to get the treats, so start to associate the "Shake" command with it. When they're comfortable with it, you can lightly hold their paw and shake it as you would with a real handshake. To take it to the next level, you can practice different sides as well!

Taking Markus to visit the office

Markus coming into the office to start his professional career

With the paw shake in his repertoire of tricks, we were ready to bring Markus into his first professional setting. This past week, we brought Markus into my office so my coworkers could finally meet him for the first time. They've heard about him and they've seen all the pictures, but it was great to finally meet everyone. For the most part, he was nosy sniffing things around the office more than anything, but it's finally great to see the start of him becoming more independent and earning his own dog money!

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!