It's Shedding Season, Becoming Territorial, The Head Shake and the Sweater Thing

Markus looking at a clone of himself in the form of fur

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 talking about going through our first shedding season, Markus starting to become territorial in the neighbourhood, him shaking his head and what it could mean, an update on his food and the sweater thing.

Shedding Season

This miniature clone of Markus sculpted from his fur came from 15 minutes of brushing. There was more.

We've heard that there are two seasons for a Shiba: shedding season and shedding season. Shiba owners joke that their shedding feels like it's year round and doesn't actually stop when the next shedding season begins. Since Markus is half Shiba and half Jindo, we weren't sure what we were going to get, so we were half looking forward and half dreading the time he was finally going to shed. When we brought him in for grooming a couple of weeks ago, we noticed that it was just starting so we hoped that the groomers will remove the bulk of the fur. Little did we know that was just the beginning and it was going to get way more intense.

For the next month, we would groom Markus once every other day and vacuum our space twice a week. Thank goodness for the Dyson. When we started to brush him the first time, we were really gentle since we didn't know how abrasive the brushes were. A couple of days after brushing him, we'd start to see tumbleweeds of fur on the floor again (since we have dark floors and his fur is golden) and fur sticking out of him, which meant it was time to brush again. By the end of it, we had our system down pat and we weren't nearly as gentle anymore.

We also noticed that Markus didn't shed his fur everywhere at once. The shedding started around his back legs and his sides and then worked its way up towards his neck area. His neck area didn't end up losing as much as the rest of his body, though. He also didn't like us brushing his bottom half and every time we'd try to brush his back legs, he'd just sit down so we couldn't get back there!

Throughout this time, we ended up purchasing two different brushes, both of them from FURminator. We didn't know which brushes were appropriate for the type of fur that Markus had, so we made our best guess based on our research. Markus' fur isn't like a typical Shiba's. His tends to be a bit softer and wispier (where Shiba fur can be thicker and dense). Markus also has two coats of fur - a top coat and an undercoat.

We started off with the FURminator Slicker Brush, which is supposed to detangle and remove smaller debris on the fur. We found the slicker brush to be the most effective brush for taking off chunks of loose fur at a time. We just kept going and going with this one. Even if it looked like there was nothing left, we'd run the brush through and it would pick up entire tuffs of fur. We could do this for over twenty minutes until our backs started to hurt and that was our cue to stop.

The other brush we used is an actual deshedding tool - the Undercoat Deshedding Tool by FURminator. This one's interesting because I found that the fur in undercoat tends to be thinner, lighter and a little bit staticky. Unlike the top layer, we don't end up brushing out as much either. This tool goes deeper and it's a lot more abrasive than the slicker brush, so we try not to use this tool for too long.

I've learned not to try and take everything off in one session. Once it starts to slow down on the regular brushing, I usually call it a day knowing that there's going to be a lot again in a couple days anyways. Part of stopping is to make sure we're not brushing him until he's raw either. While it can be annoying to have to brush and vacuum all the time, it's also part of being an owner of a dog that sheds a lot, so we've accepted it as part of the maintenance.

My advice is to go and buy a little stool or low chair to sit on. If your dog has a lot of fur like Markus, you're going to be sitting there for a while and if you're bent over the whole time, you're going to be feeling it in your back or your neck real quickly before your dog's even fully brushed!

Being Territorial in the Neighbourhood

Markus can be territorial, but he just usually looks really happy all the time

It's been about 3 months since we adopted Markus and we're finding that he's starting to get territorial with other dogs in the neighbourhood. It's almost as if the amount of times we've walked in our neighbourhood has slowly expanded his territory and he's starting to feel threatened by some dogs. The good thing is that it's not all dogs and there are only a handful that he doesn't get along with even though they've never met close up. I wonder if it could be smell related, but I'm not quite sure and it's something we'll be keeping an eye on.

The Head Shake and the Ear Thing

This past week, we also noticed Markus shaking his head a lot. It's this quick little shake that he does and we thought it was unusual that he just started doing this, so we kept an eye on it. We also noticed that one of his ears would be down and folded, so we knew something must've been going on with that one ear.

Not having seen this before, we brought him to the vet to get them to look at it and they prescribed us an ear cleaner - a liquid that you can either pour onto cotton and wipe inside the dog's ear (don't go too deep and obviously, don't lose the cotton!). Alternatively, some people just pour a bit of the liquid directly into the ear and the dogs shake their heads to get it out.

You can purchase ear cleaner without a prescription, so it's good practice to just clean out their ears every now and then. Sometimes there's build up and it gets oily in there, so it's worth just flushing it every now and then.

Edit: We've since gone through the bottle that we originally used with Markus and we've picked up this Burt’s Bees Ear Cleaner now that works just as well.

Markus didn't like us touching his ears especially when it was probably sensitive. It would be folded down and if we tried to get in there, he'd back away from us. We had to essentially back him into a corner and hold him before we were able to get it. Even then, he was shifting so much that we actually had to make sure we didn't lose the cotton in his ear. When we pulled the cotton out, we knew this was worth doing because of how dirty the cotton was. Markus did great and we rained treats on him immediately after!

The Sweater Thing

I wish I caught this one on video, but I was panicking and didn't think about recording. At home, we have security cameras on the premise and on one particular day, I received an alert on my phone that there was movement around the house. Most of the time, Markus doesn't move around too much during the day, so I decided to check up on him and good thing I did. From the little screen on my phone, I saw that Markus had jumped onto the couch, where I had left a sweater on the couch that morning.

I watched as Markus discovers the sweater on the couch and starts to play with it. With his cloths, he usually likes to fling it around first, but he'll eventually start to bite with his back teeth, which usually means he's trying to rip it apart. While sitting at my desk at work, I put on the two-way audio from the phone and I called to Markus - Markus! No! Drop it! Drop it!

Markus stopped dead in his tracks, not knowing where that sound just came from. He looked up and just started barking towards the camera non-stop. It would take him a few minutes before he would finally settle and go back to his bed, but hey, my sweater's still intact. 

Food Update

In our last update, we had switched to Acana's Pacific Pilchard (I believe this is only available in Canada) and Markus likes it enough, but we wanted to give him something with a little bit more protein. Sticking with the same brand, we wanted to try a different flavour so we picked up a bag of Acana Ranchlands to see how he likes that one.

With Pacific Pilchard, Markus doesn't eat all of it in one sitting and it seems like he eats what's enough for him. At times, he's still gone a full day without eating, so we have to top the food off with something just to get him started. He'll eat it, but he doesn't finish it completely so he doesn't seem to love it. We'll keep looking to see if there's something that he'll finish and hopefully the Ranchlands is the one.

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!