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 be sharing with you about our first time playing in the snow with Markus, we've started going to doggy training classes with him so we want to give some updates on how that's going, about the Olympics tweet and Markus' derp face.

Markus in the Snow + the Salt Thing

We finally got snow in Vancouver! I know for a lot of people, this is a dreaded time of the year, but we don't always get snow up here and we weren't sure if we were going to this year, so I'm happy to have seen a bit. We were also excited because it was the first time we got to see Markus in the snow since we've adopted him!

We waited a little bit for the snow to pile up and then we let him out to explore.

While there was a lot of excitement with the snow, an unforeseen part for us was the salt. In Vancouver, homeowners are required to make sure that the sidewalk immediately outside their areas are maintained and walkable. While many of them shovel the snow, some of them will lay salt on the sidewalks so that it naturally melts the snow away. While this is great for pedestrians, we've found that it can be harmful to dogs.

There are two types of salt that owners use - the ones that are made for salting sidewalks and the ones that they probably grabbed from their kitchen. The ones that are made for salting sidewalks usually come in giant bags and tend to have larger pieces of salt. These chunks of salt can get lodged into a dog's paw and I discovered this first hand when Markus started limping. He was walking on three legs while trying to shake out his fourth leg. Realizing there must've been a chunk of salt stuck in his paw, we paused to remove it.

Since then, I've noticed people salting the sidewalks even if there isn't snow. If there's a chance that the sidewalk could frost over or a chance of snow, some areas like the sidewalks by office building will do it just in case. My recommendation is that if it's safe to, just avoid the salt. Even if a piece of salt doesn't get lodged in the paw, salt still stings, so it's better to just avoid it altogether.

If you have no choice but to walk through salted areas, just be sure to watch how your dog responds and if they start to limp, there's probably something stuck in their paw. Also remember to wipe your dog's paw with a warm cloth afterwards. If the salt sticks on their paw, we want to make sure that they're not licking the salt off since some salts (if you've seen the blue tinted ones) come with chemicals or melting agents that can be harmful, especially if ingested.

We Started Doggy Training!

Today was the first day of our doggy training classes with Markus. Even though there are plenty of lessons that we can find online, we wanted to make sure we had the expertise and eye from someone who does it for a living, especially since Markus was said to have aggressive tendencies. We wanted to make sure that if Markus was showing any tendencies, that a more experienced trainer would be able to spot these early on so that we can work with him. Our classes were at My Fluffy Friend by the Kitsilano/West 4th area in Vancouver and it was a lot of fun!

There were four other dogs with us (we went early so we could be the first ones there) and we learned a few lessons today already. Without giving away the curriculum, we started off with some fairly basic commands like sit and down. Many of us have previously taught our dogs those tricks already, so we quickly progressed to some harder tricks like staying.

Whether they're sitting or lying down, reinforcing the stay command is important. Most of the dogs were actually pretty good at staying, especially if their owners were still in view. It was when the owners would start moving out of the room that the dogs would leave their position to follow their owners. Markus has the tendency to want to stay close to us, so he struggled with this part, so it's something that we'll keep working with him on.

We also spent time learning how to walk with your dog properly. Markus has always been a good follower, so we didn't have problems with this one, but there were definitely other dogs pulling away. We were, however, recommended to use a harness with a front clip instead of the collar. Up until this point, we had been using a Martingale collar, which has been fine, but we've also noticed that there are moments when Markus puts the brakes on and the collar has been close to slipping out, so we wanted something more secure.

Our trainer recommended this Petsafe Easy Walk harness to us, which comes with a clip in the front. For training purposes, we used the front clip, which might feel awkward, but that's actually the point. The front clip is great for training because if a dog starts to pull forward, they end up getting pulled backwards, which is really uncomfortable for the dog. This teaches them to stop pulling forward, which in our opinion, is much better than tightening the collar around the neck with a Martingale as they pulled.

With this harness, we also used a basic Petsafe 4-foot leash (3/4 inch thick). The reason why we use such a short leash is so that Markus can be trained on proximity and learning to stay close to us. We inquired about the retractable leashes, but we were told that it's not an effective way to train dogs because they don't get a good sense of how close or far they're supposed to be since it's always changing on them.

The class as a whole was a lot of fun. It left us with some tips and tricks (literally) to take home with us and practice with Markus. We were nervous heading into the class because we weren't sure how Markus was going to respond to being in a confined space with other dogs, but he got along really well with them! It also helped that the trainer kept an eye on things and allowed the dogs to keep playing even though we thought that Markus was starting to play too rough. Everyone was very respectful and as a result, the class was a good space for all of us.

The Olympic Tweet

If you've been following the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, you might be familiar with the name Gus Kenworthy, an American freeskier. After he was done competing, Kenworthy posted some tweets about the dog-meat market in South Korea, something that caught my attention. Markus was rescued from these exact conditions that he was drawing attention to, so it meant a lot to see something putting their support behind the rescue organizations in those areas by speaking about it and adopting a dog of their own!

We wrote about the dog-meat trade a few months ago and it was great for us to see the discussion being continued.

The Derp Face

There's really nothing to say about this. We caught Markus looking like this and it made us laugh.

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!