Home Alone, What Food We're Trying, Basic Tricks, Bitter Apple and His New Girlfriend

Markus learning his first trick of sitting with ease

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.

In this week's update, we wanted to share about our experience leaving Markus home alone, the type of food he's eating, basic tricks we've taught him, how his fascination with cloth has developed, what Bitter Apple is and how to use it, and meeting his girlfriend.

Leaving Markus Home Alone

The first couple weeks since adopting Markus have been a combination of taking vacation days from work and taking turns working from home so that we can watch him as he adjusted to his new home and country. Eventually, we would need to return to work again, so we needed to figure out if Markus is capable of being home alone for an entire day or if we need to arrange some sort of daycare for him.

With our days off, we started leaving Markus alone at the house in increments of hours at a time. On the first day, we left him home alone for 2 hours. Since we have security cameras installed around the house, we were able to check-in to see how Markus was doing randomly during that time. We were happy to see that for the entire time, he was sleeping in his bed.

The following day, we increased the time we were out of the house to 4 hours and then 6 the next day, 8 and finally 10. Checking in on him throughout that time, Markus mostly just stayed in his bed and slept. This was a relief for us, because being able to be away from the house for 10 hours at a time meant that both of us were able to go into the office during the work day (including the commute).

At first, we thought that it was strange that Markus didn't even get up from the bed to stretch or drink water. We realized that sleeping throughout the day must've been something he developed at the rescue shelter. Since they run on a volunteer basis and there weren't visitors all the time, the dogs were left alone for hours at a time. With nothing else to do, the dogs likely got used to sleeping in large chunks of the day. 

Discovering that we were able to leave Markus home alone for long stretches at a time was an incredible blessing because it meant that we didn't need to leave him in a daycare.

What's Markus Eating?

People have asked us what we're feeding Markus and this area has been a little bit harder for us so far. If you recall, the vet mentioned to us on our initial checkup after arriving from Korea that Markus should put on some weight since he's a little skinnier. It turns out that Markus is a bit of a picky eater and it's been hard trying to find something he'll eat consistently. According to the shelter, in the time that he was there, he really liked chicken and rice, but we also prefer to try something different with him. 

Since Markus has been with us, we've been trying different brands and different types of food. He's currently on Acana (Pacific Pilchard), which he seems to like the most out of all the other flavours from Acana that we've tried with him. He seems to like fish in general, but he's still not finishing all the food in his bowl, so maybe he doesn't like it that much.

At times, he's gone a full day without eating his food, so we really need to find the balance between topping his food with treats and finding something he likes enough to eat more of in one sitting. When hungry enough, though, he'll finish everything in his bowl, so at least he's still eating when he needs to. As we go forth, we'll continue trying different types of food and flavours with him until we find something that suits him more.

Teaching Markus Basic Tricks

In the first few weeks, we've been able to teach Markus some basic tricks. We're discovering that he's an incredibly quick learner. The hardest part of teaching a trick is getting him to do it (usually by accident) for the first time. Once we can get him to replicate the action two or three times and then start associating the command with it, he seems to be able to start doing it by himself almost immediately afterwards. 

We've been using a clicker for positive association when he does something good. The clicker helps to associate positivity, so when your dog does a trick properly, you click to let them know. We find the clicker helps us a lot and Markus is able to associate the positive things that we want him to know and with ease. With the clicker's help, we've been able to teach him to sit, lie down and shake a paw within the first few days of adoption and each one took about 15 minutes. He's been doing them consistently ever since.

When adopting Markus, one of our concerns was that he would have developed certain habits already that would be hard to train out as a 3-year-old dog. Seeing how quickly he's able to pick up new tricks by using a tool like the clicker has been so encouraging and has given us the hope that we can work with him for any behavioural issues that we might come across.

The Fascination with Cloth

Last time, we mentioned that Markus doesn't know how to play with dog toys and always gravitated back to playing with his blanket or his bed. His idea of play is to tear something up and for this reason, we've had to start looking for a bed that Markus can't tear apart. 

In the past little while, Markus also has gotten to cloth hanging around in our space. He usually wakes up before us in the morning and he'll sometimes come to the bedroom door to check if we're awake. On the way over, he passes by the kitchen. In the kitchen, we have our dish towels hanging on the stove rack and there have been mornings when we would come out to find Markus playing around in the kitchen with the dish towels.

Another time, Markus came across a scarf outside on the grass while we were out for a walk. It had been raining so the scarf was collecting water and fairly damp. Markus approached the scarf and sniffed it a couple of times with a bit of apprehension. The next thing I know, he was rolling himself on it. That day, we learned that Markus will roll on stuff, but of all the things that dogs are known to roll in, cloth isn't the worst.

Currently, we're working on diverting his attention to his dog toys instead. If we see him starting to play with his blankets or pulling at our cloths, we immediately swap it out for one of his toys so he starts to associate that the toys are for play time.

The Bitter Apple Thing

On one occasion while looking for cloth items to steal from us, Markus discovered the couch cushion. It was early in the morning, so by the time we came out from the bedroom, he had already ripped a hole in the cushion and pulled out some of the cotton. When we discovered this, we needed to let Markus know that this was unacceptable.

Since we were well past the time for discipline, we tried this product that some people recommended to us called Bitter Apple Spray. Bitter Apple is a mixture of bitter extracts that's sprayed on problem areas around the house to discourage dogs from chewing something excessively. 

Comparing it to the clicker which gives a positive association, Bitter Apple sort of does the opposite. Spraying Bitter Apple on something we don't want the dog to touch helps them know that this is something we don't want them to touch. Since they start to associate the bitter taste and smell with that item, they don't want to touch it anyway.

Bitter Apple has been a great training tool for us. We sprayed a little bit on the cushion and got Markus to smell it. In our limited time using the Bitter Apple (paired with using the clicker), Markus has developed a good understanding of what's his and what isn't. Well, except pieces of cloth where he seems to know it's not his, but he's taking it anyways.

Meeting His First Girlfriend (That We Know Of)

Markus (right) and his new girlfriend are already not in talking terms

This week, we got to bring Markus over to a friend's household that has two dogs. This is the first time we're bringing Markus to another household with dogs so we didn't know what to expect. Our friends are active dog trainers and they knew that for Markus to socialize and meet other dogs is good for his training so they were great about having him over, which we really appreciated.

Of the two dogs, one of them is a young Labrador Retriever named Jasmine and Markus took a liking to her. He was following her around the house and she would also show her belly to him. At the end of our time together, Markus was able to settle with the other two dogs and they ended up doing well. It's good to know that Markus is able to go to other homes with dogs!

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!