The Whidbey Trip, Another New Harness & the Eye Thing

Markus resting easy at the Captain Whidbey

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.

We went on another trip with Markus since the last update during which we picked up a new harness for him. Since we've been back, Markus was dealing with an issue on his eye, which we had to get looked at.

Seahawks & Whidbey Island

Markus at the top of the Rosario Head Trail on Whidbey Island

Football season's back and it was a matter of time until we made a trip down to Seattle for a Seahawks game. We originally went down for the game, but we also made an entire trip out of it to neighbouring areas of Seattle. We've been around Seattle and neighbouring cities, but this was the first time we were going to the west of Seattle on the islands north of Tacoma.

On this trip, we went town hopping and got to visit a number of quieter towns as we worked our way towards our destination on Whidbey Island. This trip was also the first time we were going to be on the WSDOT Ferry and we were excited to see how different that experience was going to be. 

The Washington State Ferries rules for pets on the vessel were a bit different from the ones we were used to on the BC Ferries. For starters, they allowed us to take Markus all the way to the top of the vessel on the sundeck where BC Ferries only allow dogs on the top deck of the auto levels. We did a dedicated post on ferries - both BC Ferries and the Washington State Ferries which you can find here.

When we got onto Whidbey Island, we ended up staying at a location called Captain Whidbey. Even though we were only there overnight, they really took care of us and we enjoyed our stay. The facilities are more cabin-like, which makes it feel more like you're going to a cottage by the lake. It's a quiet and relaxing space for a vacation and their restaurant here was amazing.

Around the Whidbey Island area, we also visited some parks and did some hikes with Markus around the Deception Pass area. We wrote about this trip and all of the things that we did which you can find here.

Another New Harness

Markus showing off his already salt-stained new RUFFWEAR Front Range Harness

On our trip, we stopped by a Mud Bay Pet Supplies and we picked up a new harness for Markus. We've been meaning to do this for a while because his current harness just isn't working out. We've been training Markus with a front-clip harness and we recently picked up another harness to start transitioning him to the back clip.

With this new harness, we started noticing that Markus was balding around the belly area where the bottom strap was and by his armpit area. At first we thought this was an allergy, but we noticed that the balding was a little too perfect for it to be an allergy. We monitored what he was eating for a few weeks to see if the balding would get better, but it was only getting worse.

Since identifying that the balding was related to the harness, we've been looking to replace it with a new one. We realized we were going to do a lot of hikes and trails with Markus while we were on this trip, so we figured we should switch the harness before we did the strenuous activities. So on the way down to Seattle, we stopped by a Mud Bay Pet Supplies store and picked out a new one for him.

We ended up purchasing a RUFFWEAR Front Range Harness. At first, we weren't huge fans of this harness because of how bulky it looks, but the reviews for it couldn't be ignored. The harness is very well padded and there aren't any abrasive points that could cause balding. The harness is a bit more expensive than the current ones we've been using and even though it's only been a few weeks since we've had it, we've really liked it so far.

We did a full product review on the RUFFWEAR Front Range Harness, which you can read here.

The Eye Thing

Since we've been back from the trip, we noticed Markus has been pawing at his eye a lot. He would paw at his eye, smell his paw and then lick it. This became a cycle and the licking and touching his eye wasn't sanitary, so we figured that if there was already an issue, it wasn't going to get better.

We took a closer look at his eye and we noticed that it was red on one side. From the edge of his eye where there would normally be crusties in the morning, we were finding a greyish liquid gunk instead. There’s nothing like being a dog owner than having to smell the puss from your dog’s eye, but once we got a sniff of the liquid, it was a clear indicator to us that we needed to get it looked at.

We monitored it for overnight to see if it would get better and when it didn't, we brought Markus to the vet in the morning to get it checked out. The vet prescribed a medicine to be used in the eye, which was a balm-like antibiotic that needed to be applied to the dog's eye.

The instruction on the box actually says to squeeze and apply a quarter inch of the balm onto the eye. How on earth are we supposed to do that with a dog!?

The strategy that we were taught was to apply the balm onto a Q-Tip first and then rub the balm into the corner of the dog's eye. When the dog blinks, they'll naturally blink the medicine around the rest of the eyeball and that's it.

When it's done that way, it's surprisingly easy to do. We would let Markus settle first and then we would quickly apply the balm onto the corner of his eye before he knew what had happened. Then he'd blink a few times and that's that.

We ended up doing this for about a week and Markus' pawing at his eye became less frequent. We stopped seeing the puss and we're happy to say that by now, the infection seems to have passed!

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!