The Mouse Thing, the Hockey area, Travelling with Raw and the Turkey Diet

Markus playing in the outdoor hockey rink at Queen Elizabeth Park

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.

Since our last update, we've taken two trips - one to Portland, Oregon and another to Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. We broke down both of those trips and you can follow our adventures!

In between those trips, Markus caught a mouse, we discovered the Queen Elizabeth hockey area and I discuss what it's been like travelling with raw food and finally trying turkey.

The Mouse Thing

Markus looking up trees for squirrels to chase

About a week ago, we were taking our morning walk with Markus. There are a few office buildings across the street from where we live and we like to take Markus there on walks. There are a few grassy patches and bushes on that side - enough to keep things new and interesting for Markus. Behind the office buildings, there's also a small short trail where we like to take him.

On this particular morning, we had barely made it across the street. We had just gotten to the first patch of grass when Markus pounced like a cat would on prey. In that moment, I looked at him and I saw a mouse halfway into his mouth. Before I had the chance to reach down and pry his mouth open to dislodge the mouse, he had already eaten it.

Although it looked pretty small, Markus swallowed the mouse so fast that I'm not even sure he killed it. To make matters worse, about 10 feet away, I saw one of those pest control black boxes with the holes that are generally filled with poison for pest control. We were suddenly worried that the mouse had already ingested poison and Markus had just caught and ate this mouse with the poison.

We weren't sure what effect the poison would have on a dog, but my wife ended up working from home so we could keep an eye on him. Luckily, it was heading into the weekend, so after three days, we counted our blessings that there didn't appear to be any negative effects.

Markus has always pulled towards small animals like squirrels and bunnies in our neighbourhood. We've often wondered what he would do if we just let him catch them and now we know.

I shouldn't be surprised that Markus was able to catch a mouse and even less surprised that he would actually eat it. Markus came to us from the rescue shelter, but before that, it's believed that he was a street dog. I'm sure he had honed his ability to catch pests like mice during those days since they were his source of food. I was hoping that living with us, he would lose his drive to catch and eat prey, but I guess there are some habits you never shake.

I'll never forget the look that Markus had on his face after he caught the mouse. It was a look of proudness.

The Queen Elizabeth Park Hockey Area

Markus sitting in the outdoor hockey rink at Queen Elizabeth Park

If you've been to Queen Elizabeth Park, you might be familiar with the area by the tennis courts. With the tennis courts, basketball courts and hockey courts, this area can get really busy in the summers.

On one of our recent trips to Queen Elizabeth Park, we realized that the hockey courts aren't always being used and they're fully enclosed because of the hockey boards. For dogs who aren't good off-leash without enclosures, this hockey area made for a good enclosure to let our dogs go off-leash.

And the dogs had so much fun! It's certainly not the same because they're running on concrete as opposed to the grass or dirt that we're used to at dog parks, but they're not able to go off-leash on the grass. Also, it helps grind their nails down, so that's not too bad.

Note: There was some shattered glass on one of the corners when we went into the hockey area. We just had someone standing there to make sure the dogs didn't go to that area.

Traveling with Raw Food

We've had some people ask us about travelling having to bring around Markus' raw food. While it's definitely more complicated, it's really not too bad. We would previously just bring Markus' dry dog food in a bag and do the scoops according to the number of days and we were good to go.

Traveling with raw dog food is a bit more complicated because the food needs to be kept cold. For starters, we had to purchase a cooler that's big enough to hold a few of these tubes and ice packs. To serve the food, we need to make sure there's a knife and a scale with us so that we can cut the tubes open and give Markus is proper portion. Add in the fact that we sometimes have to add pumpkin to the meal, that's an extra thing we need to carry.

We also have to make sure the rooms come with a freezer or refrigerator. We have had rooms that didn't have a refrigerator and we've had to ask the front desk to keep it for us in their kitchen refrigerators. While that's fine, it's also a bit more of a hassle and we end up leaving a tip as well.

While it is a bit more annoying, it's also what we signed up for. What's love?

The Turkey Diet

About two months ago when we went to pick up more raw food for Markus, we picked up a bag of raw beef. We were hoping to give Markus different choices from just eating chicken all the time and as it turned out, Markus didn't like the beef at all. We struggled to get through all the tubes of raw beef that we got that we ended up mixing it into his chicken so that we could trick him into finishing it.

We're still hoping to change his protein so he isn't always just eating chicken, so when we went to CRUDO this time, we picked up a bag of turkey. Turkey is pricier, but Markus seems to be a dog with impeccable taste so we wouldn't be surprised if he ends up liking that. We will be trying Markus with raw turkey for a little while and we're hoping this one does better than the beef did.

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!