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.

On this update, we brought Markus on his first full hike, we noticed a reaction of his that we don't want him to develop and we got a new family toy!

Quarry Rock Hike with Markus

Last week, my work had a celebration on Independence Day (even through we're Canadian and our day off is Canada Day on July 1) and we went to Deep Cove in North Vancouver. There are so many things you can do at Deep Cove like water activities like kayaking and paddle boarding or other activities like hiking or just enjoying the view. For our celebration, we had a barbecue by the water, which was great for the summer and then we split off into different activity groups.

Since Markus was with me, I opted for hiking (maybe we'll work towards kayaking or paddle boarding with Markus in the future). The hike at Deep Cove is a fairly well-known hike called Quarry Rock. The hike itself is roughly about half an hour up and another half an hour back down. With a dog, it took us a little bit longer because Markus would stop a lot to explore and sniff around.

The trail is very well-maintained and the best part of the hike is the view at the top. Once you get to the edge of Quarry Rock, the view overlooks Deep Cove and everything that's happening in the water. It is simply breathtaking. We did a full breakdown on the Quarry Rock hike at Deep Cove that you can find here.

This was the first real hike that we've done with Markus and it was a lot of fun. He seemed to really have enjoyed it as well . We're generally not massive hiking people, but I can see us doing more with Markus in the future. Up until now, we've taken him on more trails than anything and we really pushed his boundaries with this hike. He was good with the people and dogs we passed by, but he was especially interested in the hike itself, so we're looking forward to doing more with him.

Bone Marrow and Growling

Since it's been so hot, we've been giving Markus pieces of frozen bone marrow every now and then. The beef bone marrow come in 2-4 inch pieces and if you haven't seen it before, it's a bone with a hole in the middle where the marrow is situated. The bone marrow is usually frozen and we just give Markus the entire piece and he licks the marrow out much like ice cream on a hot summer. Sometimes the piece of bone will also come with bits of meat still stuck on the bone and that's an extra treat for Markus. He cleans the bone so much so that the bone is completely white with nothing left after and it surprises me every time.

Even though Markus is a true carnivore and really likes the bone marrow, it's also a messy treat. As the bone thaws out, the blood from the bone starts to become a problem, which would be fine if he ate it in his dog bowl. The problem is that Markus likes to bring the bone marrow to his bed and when it thawed out, the blood would get on his bed which would start to smell really bad in the hot summer. For the times that Markus has been given a marrow, we need to plan for a blanket wash pretty closely after. 

The last time we gave him a piece of bone marrow, we realized how protective he got with the bone. We knew that he really liked the treat, but one time we needed to reposition him and to do that, we needed to temporarily pick up the bone marrow. When we reached our hand towards the bone marrow, Markus started growling in a protective way, which is something that we haven't seen before. It was a little unnerving to see Markus growling at us like that and we don't want him to develop a protective behaviour, so this is something we're going to be monitoring a lot heading forward.

Our New Family Toy

Markus got a new toy! Well, it's actually less for Markus and more for us as a family. We recently got a new car, which is great because we were starting to get concerned with how Markus was in the old car. Our old car was kind of like a hatchback and because it was 2-door and also because of his size, it wasn't the easiest to get Markus into the backseat. Instead, we would open the back up so that he can hop into the car and then lower the backseat, but we would have the problem of him coming all the way to the front, which wasn't safe at all.

With our new car, we have a proper trunk area now and that's where Markus goes on our day to day travels now. The car's for us, but he still gets to benefit from it!

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!