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.

Halloween just passed, so you know what that means. Dog costumes! We're sharing our first Halloween with Markus with you.

HOWL-O-WEEN Kids & Pets Trick or Treat

For Halloween, we took Markus on a walk down West Broadway in Vancouver for their HOWL-O-WEEN Kids & Pets Trick or Treat event with a couple of our Shiba friends. This day was special to us because we've only ever met up with other dog friends at dog parks, so this will be the first time Markus will be meeting up with other dogs outside. There's no better way to hang out with friends than to dress up in cute little costumes!

The HOWL-O-WEEN Kids & Pets Trick or Treat event is a walk down West Broadway between Collingwood and Larch St. with over fifty merchants handing out candy and pet treats outside their shops. At the beginning of the walk, they have a starting booth where they hand out maps for the walk and collect non-perishable pet food or donations for the BC SPCA. Throughout the walk, these shops are marked with signs on their door that they're open for candies or dog treats.

We had a lot of fun and we were glad to have been able to check out the shops and Markus collected a nice haul. There aren't too many Halloween events that actively promote dogs and their owners to come out, so it was a good one for us to do with Markus. It makes it all the more special that they support the BC SPCA!

The Pumpkin Boy

We picked up a little pumpkin for Halloween and we were feeling a bit inspired. We decorated the pumpkin and Markus doesn't seem very impressed by it. What do you think?

The White-Tipped Tail

We wanted to share a fun fact about Markus this week. Like many dogs, the end of his tail has a white tip. We did a deeper dive into the heritage of dogs to try and understand unique features of dogs such as a white tip of the tail. What part of the dog's DNA makes the tip of his tail white?

What we learned was that dogs with white tips on their tails were traditionally hunters. Breeds like Bloodhounds or Beagles commonly have white tipped tails because of their ability to hunt with their nose. These dogs would usually hunt in the fields and the idea is that while they're out hunting with their owners, the white tips on their tails stick out and make them easier to spot when they're out in the wild.

A lot of Jindos also have white tipped tails and they've also been known as hunting dogs. Supposedly the LAPD trained 4 Jindos to be police or military dogs, but they considered them unfit because their hunting prey drive was too strong. Even though they knew their mission or what their task was supposed to be, the Jindos would abandon their mission to do their own thing because they would rather go hunting.

To a much lesser degree - certainly we're not training Markus to be a police dog - we've definitely seen this behaviour in him. Whether we're in the yard, at an off-leash park or at someone's house for the first time, his curiosity and drive to explore overrules any training we've done with him and it becomes hard for us to corral him after that.

To train his recall, we'll often call Markus back at off-leash parks when he starts to wander away from us. Sometimes when we call him, we know that he hears us because he'll turn to look at us. In that moment, it's almost like he's weighing his options and trying to decide if it's worth coming back to us and then he decides to blatantly ignore us to keep exploring.

We've noticed that during our regular walks, he responds well to treats and he'll listen when we call his name. Those same treats have no effect when he's off-leash because his love of exploring exceeds his love of treats! True to his white tipped tail, Markus is definitely curiosity motivated and we love that about him.

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!