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 sharing our experience leaving Markus alone at home for the first time while we traveled out of town, meeting his new cousin dog Archie, defeating the stairs, his fascination with the washing machine and our New Year’s resolutions with Markus.

Leaving Markus for a Week

Around this time last week, Pammy and I were on a plane on our way to Toronto, Canada. This was going to be the first time we’re going to be away from Markus for a longer stretch of time since we’ve adopted him. Up until this point, Markus hasn’t been great with allowing strangers into our space, so we weren’t really sure how this was going to go. We figured maybe he’ll be okay with people coming in since they’re going to be the ones to feed him.

Still, we wanted to make sure that Markus was familiar with the people who were going to look after him. Leading up to the week that we were going to be away, we asked our dog sitter friends to come over and take Markus out. This allows them to have exposure to each other - so they can get used to Markus’ routine and for Markus to get familiar with them as well. Since Markus has only been living here for two months, we didn’t want to relocate him again, even for a week, so our friends agreed to take turns coming over to our place instead, which we were very grateful for.

While we were enjoying our trip, we were getting updates from back home about Markus. They had mentioned that he wasn’t really eating his regular food (which is actually quite normal), but responded well to treats at the very least. We also eventually ate more when he was evidently hungry, so that was good as well. Everything as a whole worked out nicely and it’s good to know that we can be away for long stretches at a time.

Markus has this thing about greeting us. It’s actually super endearing. Whether we've been away for an hour or a full work day, Markus also greets us excitedly when we return. The longer we’ve been away, the more excited he is and it really makes coming home a joy when no matter how rough of a day we’ve had. Well, since we were away for an entire week, we weren’t sure if he was going to be excited or snubby. This was the reaction we got from him when we returned home.

New Cousin Archie

While we were away in Toronto, a family member adopted a dog of their own - a French Bulldog. When we got back from Toronto, we brought Markus to finally meet his new cousin dog. To our knowledge, this was the youngest dog he's ever met (6 weeks old) and we weren’t sure how Markus was going to be with him. Remember that we were told that Markus can be aggressive with dogs, so we wanted to be cautious in case we just hadn’t come across his trigger yet.

Markus was great with Archie. He was calm and he seemed to recognize that Archie was only a puppy. There were moments where he wanted to play and he was also responding with a whole other kind of gentle that we haven’t seen from him before. This was really encouraging to see!

The Stairs Thing

A few weeks ago, we mentioned how Markus struggled going up the stairs because he hasn’t had experience with it having spent most of his life in a shelter. He was able to get his front paws up the first few steps, but never knew what to do with his back legs. He’d then stand at the bottom of the stairs looking up, knowing the task is to go up, but just couldn’t figure it out.

Well, this past week, we had a breakthrough. We figured that maybe he didn't know to lift his back legs because he couldn’t see where his back legs were. To solve this, we got him to go up diagonally by leading him with treats, so he that if he were to look back, he could still see his back legs. This seemed to do the trick because even though it was slow, Markus moved his front legs and then his back legs one by one until he eventually made it up the stairs!

Once we had made it to the top, we realized something. Going down was going to be even harder. Now he's at the very top of a 14-step staircase, so if he slipped, that’s a long way down. He also doesn’t like to be carried. When carried, he’ll kick and writhe around until he’s back on the ground, so that’s not happening on the stairs. Either he’s gonna figure this out or he’s spending the night upstairs.

Surprisingly, he was really good going down the stairs. He managed to fumble his way down pretty quickly. We took it step by step and we guided him along the way and there were times where he forgot about his back legs and would slip, but we were there to catch him. Slowly, but surely, he made it down. After that, he was walking around all night with a new sense of confidence having defeated his old arch-nemesis, the stairs.

The Washing Machine

Since Markus didn't live around technology, it felt like everything technological was new to him and this week, he discovered the washing machine. We let Markus into the laundry room one time while we were doing the laundry and we had as much fun watching him as he was watching the laundry spin around.

Seeing how technology amazes Markus is always reminder to me to appreciate the things that we so often take for granted - things that many of us grew up with and use everyday without a second thought. To us, a radio is older technology and we’re hardly ever amazed using one, but watching Markus experience the radio for the first time was so funny. The noise coming out of these holes on the side of the car was so confusing for him and he was looking at them as though there was something alive in there. For Markus to be amazed at these types of things reminds me of just how much we really ought to be appreciating the little things.

New Year's Resolutions

Now that we're in 2018, we wanted to set some goals for us with Markus (we’re late, but whatever). We thought about the things that we wanted to work with him on. He's shown great potential so far, but we wanted to take his training to the next level.

The biggest thing we wanted to train him on was to be better with other dogs. When we adopted him, it was said that he would be aggressive toward other dogs and if it's within his capacity, we want to train him to play well with other dogs at places like dog parks. This is by far the biggest resolution that we hope to achieve with Markus in 2018.

The second thing that we want to do with him was to start taking him places and traveling with him. We want to do more with Markus than just walk him around our neighbourhood. We want to do take him to other parks and potentially even go hiking as well. To do that, we need to feel comfortable taking him out and making sure he does well with stranger dogs first. This will be a true test and we will have to work at this. These are our two goals for the year, but given Markus’ ability to pick up things quickly, we feel he’s going to do well.

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!