Goodbye to Our Good Friend Maki

It's been almost a month and most of you know that Maki passed away from mushroom poisoning Friday Dec. 5th. He was loved by all who met him and we find ourselves missing him every day. He was a sweet dog who brightened up our day and we'll always cherish the time we had together.

Hopefully, in his death he has taught us the dangers of mushrooms and everyone we know will be more careful with their kids and pets. In my research of Maki's killer I learned that it isn't just one mushroom but many that have varying levels of toxin and they grow in many states including Michigan and California.

This will be our last posting but we'd like you to check out Maki's younger brother, Helix's blog:
helixreport.blogspot.com

Here's a cute picture of Maki the weekend before he passed away. We took him to a giant off-leash dog park and he had a blast playing with new friends and exporing.

A Failed Halloween Costume

There's a dog boutique that we sometimes stop by on our way to one of our favorite restaurants that allows dogs on the patio. I'm a sucker for dog boutiques and all the ridiculous stuff they make. I try to stick to toys and bones but deep down I kind of wish Maki would wear sweaters, coats, and costumes in addition to the occasional bandana. I often insist that he try on at least one thing while we're in the store. I came very close to convincing Daniel and Maki that a reflective, water-proof, fleece-lined coat was just what he needed for the rainy season, but they didn't have his size :(

One recent success (not from the dog boutique) but something I was determined Maki must have is a Kuranda dog cot for the backyard patio. He uses it about half the time, luckily I found it cheap on Craigslist :) Here's a pic.

Sorry for the tangent back on track to the topic of this posting, Halloween costume. Last week we were back in the boutique and they had the Halloween costumes on sale and I insisted he try them on. I manged to wedge him into a green mohawked zebra costume which I loved but it was meant for smaller dogs and only one leg fit :( He looked decent in a dracula cape and we probably should have chosen that one but I insisted that he try the Dogzilla costume which looks more like a dinosaur or Barney's girlfriend or Dorothy the Dinosaur. And also insisted that he looked good and we needed to purchase it! Here's a picture of him enjoying his costume :)

So really he hated the costume and had difficulty walking. I think it was built for a different body type. He also kept trying to gnaw the parts off around his legs. Finally he gave up and refused to do anything but sulk. I also realized that the costume is very stupid and the head piece makes no sense. If you pull the cap down he can't see and if you leave it up then he has four eyes and two sets of teeth and looks more like his head is being eaten by a cartoon.

We returned it today and with my copious free time I have hopes of making a sweet cape or something more acceptable for Maki!

Maki's Illness Yields Great Insight into My Personality

It's been a rough past few weeks in our house...we had a great vacation at Torch Lake with Maki and the fam. Upon returning to work I was informed that I was being laid off due to the company's financial issues, bummer. The following day I came down with a nasty cold and was generally in a "poopy" mood. I had a terrible time with the Unemployment Department...but enough complaining! This is Maki's blog!

As Daniel mentioned in the previous post Maki caught or ingested something nasty and proceeded to have a week of puking, pooping, and general discomfort. So I guess it was fortunate that I could stay home and care for him during the day because it would have been miserable for him to be trapped in a crate all day. Especially given the fact that Maki felt the urge to defecate nearly every 30 minutes for the first few days. We've been teaching him to ring a bell next to the door to indicate that he wants to go outside. Let's just say it's felt like Christmas in our house lately and I plan on pimping Maki out to the Salvation Army this winter for some extra cash!

I felt really bad for him but after a while it began to test my patience letting him out and encouraging him to come back inside all the time. Especially at 3am in the morning. You're probably wondering "why not just leave him outdoors?" That would have been convenient however it was sunny, in the 80s everyday, and Maki insists on sunbathing. This would have been very detrimental to his current state of dehydration. He's also very stubborn and wouldn't drink any water. We found a compromise where he would lick the water droplets off my fingers if I dunked them in his water bowl which was painfully slow and inefficient. From all this I determined that I can't imagine having an infant that wakes up screaming all night if I can't deal with a sick, bell-ringing dog!! I have more appreciation for all the parents in the world now :) Here's a picture of him being sick and sleeping on the couch.

He's back to his normal self now which is great but he's kept his knowledge of how the bell works and insists on going outside all of the time. I should probably just let him be outside all day but I worry about his dehydration, I'm fairly paranoid that he might be dog-napped, and there's always the fear that someone might shoot with more pellets. So I check on him every twenty minutes or if I hear abnormal jingling of his collar. This has led me to believe that I will be an extremely paranoid, worry freak parent in the future.

I can't remember if we've mentioned before (I think we have) that it was revealed that Maki has a "beebee" lodged in his side. We first noticed it the day we adopted him and then it was confirmed when Maki had chest x-rays for his pneumonia shortly there after. What we didn't know was that he actually has two. The recent stomach x-rays clearly show the one in his side and another further back and closer to his spine. I panicked when I spotted this on the x-ray but the vet said it's not that close to the spine and he'll probably be fine. Later I was relaying this information to an x-coworker and friends and we gained further knowledge that they aren't "bee-bees" they are pellets which are made of lead! Another panic...he could get lead poisoning and how will we afford removal surgery!!!

Here's a view of the latest x-rays!

Having all the time in the world to Google and do "research" during the day I did a thorough review of the long-term effects of internal pellets. Let me just say that pellet guns aren't toys! They're weapons and millions of helpless dogs and kids are shot with them all the time. There haven't been a lot of studies done on animals but I found a number of papers that discussed pellets inside children. Bottom line is if they aren't in a location that is likely to cause serious damage it's better to leave them in than take them out and the chance of lead poisoning is low. So no surgery for Maki :)

That's all for now!

Elizabeth

Its been a while

So it has been a long time since we had an update on Maki... well he has done quite a bit since our last entry. Most recently he went on a trip to Michigan were he spent a week chasing squirrels and keeping chipmunks in check.

The most recent news on Maki is that he is sick... the poor little guy can't hold anything down and has been puking and having diarrhea since Friday. Elizabeth wanted to make sure we had a record of what had happened to Maki, so she proceeded to create a log of events (big or small) that had occurred to Maki since his sickness began, she also collected samples of anything that might have been useful to the vet. Needless to say the vet was incredibly impressed, and proceeded to congratulate Elizabeth on a job well done. He also asked what her professional background was, which gave him some insight on why she is so meticulous =).

We ended up taking him to the vet on Sunday since he was pretty dehydrated. Because of this they had to inject fluids into him, leaving him with the most ridiculous looking hump on the top of his back! It looked like a camel hump and it jiggled when he moved sideways. Eventually the hump became an utter, which I'm sure Maki was not very happy about.

Now he has been hanging out, sleeping, procrastinating, and pacing around the house if he needs to go outside. This is driving us NUTS! It is really frustrating when he goes around not knowing what he wants, but it is probably equally uncomfortable for him. As of now he has been able to hold down some food and water which is good. However, he refuses to take his medicine. This is the first time he has been hard about taking pills, so we are not sure what to do. We are trying to hide it in the food, but he is not eating that much so its kind of hard to do that.

I will end this entry with a really funny picture of Maki that I found in a folder somewhere in my computer...

- Dan

Maki Enjoys His New Yard

We stopped by "the new house" and showed Maki his yard.  At first he didn't really know what to think of it so we took him around on the leash to have him sniff it out.  Later we unleashed him and encouraged him to explore.  It took a few moments and he didn't seem interested in venturing away from us.  Then, out of nowhere he must have realized that it was "His Yard!!!" and decided to celebrate with a few victory laps around the shed.  Needless to say I think he likes his new romper room!

I happened to be videoing with my phone so the quality is poor.  But the little dashing blur is Maki ;)

-Elizabeth

Maki's Future Playground!

For the past month we've been religiously scouring craigslist's "for rent" postings. Our lease ends in May and we would really like to find a cute, affordable house with a nice yard for Maki. It was a mentally tiring exercise due to the fact that we we're either looking too early and no one wanted to hold the house for a month or the majority of budget-friendly homes were in the "murder zone" of Oakland. We did view a couple homes that were in the nicer, lower crime zones of Oakland but the prices were on the high end of our budget and we'd rather not stretch too far.

After our return from the Mitten vacation we became more liberal in our search and started to consider the fact that we might need to look at multi-unit dwellings or stay in our current location. However, we really would like to move out of our current "Jr. One Bedroom" apartment and by Jr. One Bedroom they mean studio with a extend-o wall. Not very conducive to people who have varying morning wake-up hours. We also wanted to move away from neighbors on the other side of the wall as Maki's barking was previously a concern and the lady below us is less than pleased with our noise level at times.

We looked at a real walled one bedroom within our current community but it was previously inhabited by a smoker and smelled horribly. Our current apartment was once inhabited by a smoker and the closets continue to leech smoke odors into my clothes.

Our search was becoming more and more dismal and we began calling any decent looking ad in craigslist that we happened upon. One add was for a small one bedroom house and "small pets negotiable." Maki is small for a dog so we called and went to the showing last Monday. The house was indeed very small and below highway 580 (which puts in slightly within the "murder zone") but it had a large yard and the neighborhood appeared safe. The house had just been renovated with new carpet, cabinets and appliances and fixture so the interior was clean and appealing.

We discussed it and decided that it was a good match for us and sent in our applications. There had been 3 other interested parties the day of the showing but we won! The landlady is very nice and agreed to have the yard mowed down and fix the portions of the fence that had fallen down so Maki would not escape. She agreed to allow Maki with only an extra security deposit which was nice compared to our apartment which charges an extra $300 in rent for a pet.

Here's a link to the floor plan that I designed. http://www.floorplanner.com//projects/18501848/floors/18525102/designs/19835598?guest_pass=dtmgfa

Even better she is going to give us the keys early so we can begin to move things in over the course of the next 3 weeks! We stopped by on Saturday to take picture of the yard to share with Maki and friends. I put together a couple panoramic shots!

-Elizabeth

Bath Time!

The day we got back from our vacation (last Sunday) we were obviously very happy to see Maki. While we were petting him, hugging him and kissing him we came to the realization that he smelled utterly horrible. Before he had a characteristic Maki "musky" odor. Maki did not have the characteristic dog odor, his ears actually smell like ferrets! However, the odor at this time was completely different, this was wet doggy smell times ten. Part of the reason he smelled like this (other than not having had a bath in about a month and a half) was that he had been around other dogs constantly for a while now and he had just come back from a hike with Elizabeth's co-worker (this hike has a couple stories that will be explained in a separate post). Despite the combination of reasons, it was time for a bath.

Let's begin by saying that Maki is not a water dog... he is afraid of the rain and does not like getting wet. I suspected this was going to be a very traumatizing experience for him. To my surprise it wasn't! Don't get me wrong, he did not enjoy it... but he did not hate us for it, which is the most we could expect under the circumstances.

The process was as follows: we filled the tub with some water (in retrospect it should have been a little warmer), changed into our swimsuits, got into the bathroom and closed the door! Once he was in the tub he tried to scape a couple of times, this was followed by shivering after being shampooed and rinsed. Before the second rinse we tried bribing him with some treats, he refused to take them! We finished the process as quickly as possible and proceeded to dry him. This took a little while and we decided to turn on the heater in the bathroom... just to avoid getting him sick. After he was somewhat dry we proceeded to let him out of the bathroom. Once out of the bathroom he was as happy as one could be! The experience went much better than it had played out in my mind... We even had some time during the shower to take some pictures!

- Daniel

Separation anxiety?

While we were away in vacation Maki stayed with one of Elizabeth's co-workers. They have a house and a really, really big yard. They also have a dog named Omega, she is very cute and gets along with Maki wonderfully. In his stay in their house, Maki spent 8 hours of his day in his crate, with Omega as company and moral support. After we picked Maki up, he returned to his routine. This involves a walk or run in the morning, a walk mid-day and a walk/run at night. On Monday as usual we started his routine, which also involves recording his day so we know how his separation anxiety is doing. Previously this is what one of Maki's average days would look like:
To brake it down: The image represents about 8 hours. There are some small peaks (like at the left of the image above) that are just the noise from either the hard drive, refrigerator, the occasional plane, or the dog walkers. The really big peaks (middle and right of image above) that are out of range for the recorder are Maki's barks, whines and other noises. Those are directly related to his separation anxiety... basically it has been very bad. This has been one of the harder things for us to deal with and for him to improve. Well to our surprise this is what the recording on the Monday after our vacation looked like!!
It was obvious that he had done incredibly better! Maybe a couple barks and a whine, but much better! but was this a fluke? or was he depressed because his girlfriend Omega was not around? We couldn't be sure, so we continued his subsequent days as usual. To our surprise Tuesday through Thursday were incredible ... absolutely no barks!! we are very very happy with his improvement throughout this week! (Note: there was no Friday recording because I had the day off). Will this last? Hopefully... but for now we are very proud of the little pig.

- Daniel

Exciting older news...

Well there is a bunch of stuff we need to update everyone on... so I guess I will start with some pre-vacation (last week) news. First off, Elizabeth had been very concerned about Maki's safety while in the car. To solve this she proceeded to do incredible amounts of research in dog car safety technology and found a couple of alternatives. The safest thing is to have a crate in the car where he can lay, but we don't like this mainly because it involves a massive crate in one of our cars and it would be difficult to change it from car to car. The next alternative is a body harness. These devices allow the pooch some mobility within the car while being strapped to a body harness which is attached to the seat belt or the child seat hook. We decided on a harness, but then the question became... which one? There are many out there with many prices. After much research on Elizabeth's part she found the only true crash tested dog harness! This thing is heavy duty with seat belt grade straps, heavy duty D rings and hooks. The actual thing is so heavy that at the beginning Maki would loose his balance when walking with it! He has the bright red harness which is great since it would make him easy to identify... not that he would get very far with it on, but it is a nice bonus! He does not mind it one bit since I think he knows it means a ride in the car! Here are some pictures of Maki and the harness:

Other things that have been going on before we left for Michigan... Maki has had some visits to the doctor, but I will let Elizabeth give you the details on this later. Maki has also learned some new tricks! The little guy is very smart and loves to learn new things... and if he doesn't get it he just gives himself a time out in his crate, it is really cute! First new trick he learned was "shake" ... this has now become his favorite thing to do, he can shake with either paw and he will default to this trick (or "sit") if he doesn't know what you want! The next trick he learned was "crawl". This one is a crowd pleaser! At least we both love it, he looks ridiculous. However it is a little hard to get him to do this without a treat, but we are working on it. He has also perfected his training coming in and out of the house. He now will wait for you to say "break" or "come" before he steps into or out of the house. We have extended this training to his walks, he now waits before stepping onto a road from a sidewalk. This one definitely needs some more work since he now stops if we get withing ten feet of the edge of a sidewalk... it can get annoying. Recently he has also learned the command "leave it". He knows that he is not supposed to touch "it" (whatever we are referring to at the moment) until we say otherwise. We have taken this to his feeding time. He will not touch his food until we let him get to it, which is great!! Overall he is a really smart puppy... he is having a really difficult time learning "roll", but I'm sure he will eventually get it. Here is a video of Maki doing some tricks:

Actually, he turns one year old today!! so Happy Birthday Maki!! (this is only if he was 10 months when we first got him)

More updates to come!
- Daniel

Woofwalk!!

Dog walking is a great business to go into if you live in a densly populated area with a lot of working dog owners, such as the Bay Area.  You can charge between $15-$35 for a walk ranging from a simple 30min neighborhood walk to the more extreme 1-3hr off leash adventures.  Last week Maki had Monday thru Thursday neighborhood walks.  He doesn't seem to do as well as when I returned during lunch but this may be due to the fact that he's just getting a walk, not a romp through a field chasing other dogs and birds.  And also he has new people walking him and then leaving him alone which has to be confusing for his separation anxiety.  Hopefully he'll improve as the routine becomes more regular.  More importantly he's signed up for Woofwalks!!   Which obviously I'm excited about and pretty much wish I was Maki on Fridays :)  

Woofwalks is an off leash adventure where he'll be "on the trails" for at least an hour and out of the house for 2-3 hours.  Basically he'll be joining a "pack" of other woofwalking dogs and will be led by "Raul and Teresa" through the local parks, recreation areas, and hiking trails.  I met with the Woofwalks business owner and Raul, who leads the Alameda area pack that Maki will be joining.  Needless to say they impressed me with their knowledge and personalities and usiness.  Maki will be in great hands, learning obedience training, and having a blast.  If I was rich Maki would go on a Woofwalk everyday! But $25 a walk is a little too much for us right now so he'll have special Fridays instead!

I am happy to report that Maki did excellently this past Friday on his first Woofwalk and received a glowing report card.  Yup, Maki gets a report card each time he goes on a Woofwalk.  I love it!!  Being the proud mother that I am I scanned his report card and am posting in this blog tail.  However, it may not be very legible so I'll just read it aloud for you....or type it...

"Maki 3/20/2009, pick up 9:24, drop off 11:53. My day out was : Happy, Playful.  My poops were : other (did not see).  My energy level was : High. Notes : Maki was great on pick up! He was in a pack of 12 today, and he got along great with all!  He had tons of fun play-chasing with many in his pack, and exploring, and smelling the animal trails!  He wore a cowbell so that we knew where he was at all times, but he never ventured too far from his pack!  He is the best "1st time dog" that we have had!  He also chased after sticks that I threw for him, and he listened + behaved well the whole time!  You two have done a great job with him!   - Teresa"

That's all for tonight, but I have much more material to add in the next week or so.  Keep checking up on Maki!!

-Elizabeth

Maki's New Daytime Routine

A lot has happened since writing my last Maki Tail. Dan updated you on our disappointing experience with hiring a personal trainer to solve Maki's issues. He also told you about "the field" and the fox tail incident :( I'm still very paranoid about the fox tails and am monitoring Maki's every breath convinced that an evil fox tail awn escaped down into his lungs and is festering up horrible bacteria which will cause him to have pneumonia and hospitalization. Maybe I worry too much. But he has been sounding more congested with weird snorting sounds lately :( We'll just have to wait and hope it's nothing.

We had an exciting weekend a couple weeks ago where it started on Friday with my coworkers all bringing their dogs to work to meet Maki. This includes Omega a female, Australian, cattle dog mix (Maki really likes her), Latte a white toy poodle, and Mocha (latte's brother) a black brown toy poodle. It went very well and despite the occasional bark everyone got along. The meeting of dogs was a precursor to a larger gathering of coworkers and friends on Sunday. I like to call it Hot Pot Potluck Dinner with Dogs! We met at my coworker Y's house and each brought a "protein" and a "vegetable" to be put into the hotpot mix. Those of us dog owners also brought our dogs. In total we had five dogs and 13 grown humans, and one baby human. Logan the elderly malamute/husky mix was the only grumpy one of the group and I can't blame him given the chaos. Needless to say it was very fun!

We've been working on Maki's separation anxiety but probably not as much as we should. Our work schedules have been early mornings and later evenings; so we haven't been very diligent with our short 5-30min sessions. However, after meeting with the disappointing trainer we decided that we couldn't really do much more to ease him into the fact that he's going to be staying home while we work. So on March 6th Maki was thrown into peril as I departed for work without him. He spent three hours of off and on barking before I returned to walk him at lunch. We went out to the field and we met a dog named Dashy (sounds like daah-she). Maki tired himself out by dashing across the field to Dashy and then running all the way back to me. It was great! I left him back in his crate and returned to work. Dan came home 4 hours later and to our surprise he did amazingly well with minimal bark sessions and a large 2 hour gap of no barking!! Woohoo!

The week before last, we continued to leave him at home with me returning during at lunch to give him some midday exercise. We determined that Maki is quite good if exercised vigorously in the morning and midday. He's not silent but he's lessened the number of barking outbursts, shortened their duration and often will be quiet for 1-2 hours between outbursts :) However, giving him 30mins of running in the morning is a little bit of a change in my schedule and I've been kinda late to work last week...ooops. Returning home at lunch is another issue due to the fact that I work 30 minutes away resulting in 1 hr and 45 min total time required to drive and exercise our pooch. So we've hired a dog walking service for Mon-Thurs and on Fridays Maki is spoiled with a Woofwalk!!  Teaser = we'll be posting Maki's Woofwalk report card in the next Maki Tail this week!!!!  hee hee he got a report card!!!

--Elizabeth

The new hanging spot

After taking Maki to the secret dog park for a little while we have came to realize that they can be pretty dangerous places for dogs. We've had a couple of experiences in which Maki was bullied and could have been hurt. So we have decided to only take him once in a while to dog parks. This forced us to find another place to exercise him in a regular basis. In one of our walks near our apartment we found a great field by the water in which he can be off leash and just be Maki!! This place is great (except for one thing which will be mentioned in a little bit), he can chase sticks and balls and once in a while there are other dogs which he can socialize with. However his favourite exercise is to chase birds! he loves to chase birds around... needless to say, they always beat him. One his friends at the field is a dog named Dashi, he is very cute and plays with Maki when he feels like it but is never annoyed by him! This place has been great until recently when Maki decided it was time to eat as much grass as possible! He would not stop eating it... after a while Dashi's owner, whose name I can't remember, mentioned the danger Foxtails can present to dogs. This was enough to get Maki coughing and gaging for the next 5 hours. I proceeded to go to Capoeira since Elizabeth didn't want to and when I came back the little guy kept caughing and gaging. After Elizabeth's research we decided to go to the emergency Vet around 10:30pm.
Whe we got to the Vet, there were three other people waiting. One was a really loud man with no manners who was speaking on the phone about how he was there because her friend was putting her dog down... he was pretty annoying. The second person was a nice younger lady who was very polite. The last was a incredebely rude old lady who ended up snapping at the nurse on duty because she had to wait a long time in an emergency room (??). After waiting one hour and thirty minutes we were allowed in one of the rooms. A nurse came in and did the initial check up. On a side note, Maki is really indiferent about having his temperature taking through his rectum, which I found surprising since he is very annoyed by people trying to touch his mouth. Bacl to the story... after the nurse we were greeted by an incredebly upbeat doctor. He was too upbeat for being one in the morning. Ater checking Maki up he suggested that the best option was to inject some steroids to make the inflamation of the tonsils go down. This would probably make the gaging an dcoughing go away. When asked if there were side effects, he said genrally no...

We got home and went to bed... around 4am I hear Elizabeth wake up and speaking. I am a very very deep sleeper... so I am completely out of it. After a minute or two I come to realize that Maki had an accident in his cage, he had peed. I proceeded to take Maki out to releave himself. We go back to bed and later in the morning he had another accident. After some research we found out theat there are some side effects to the steroids... increased thirst and incresed peeing... so much for the Vet.

As of now he is just getting the steroids out of his system by giving us lots of kisses and just being a dog. Overall he has been a great puppy, and we can't be mad at him at his last accidents, since they are not really his fault. We still correct him, but we know he is not being stand off-ish or anything like that.

The weekend is upon us and we are currently researching for dog friendly bars... so hoping it works, it should be an interesting night.

Last treat for you guys... video of Maki playing with Dashi!! Enjoy!

- Daniel

Little update

This update is dedicated not to our wonderful dog but to a nearly worthless human. In our quest to bring out Maki's potential we decided to go with some private training classes. After some research and basically choosing the only person who replied our emails (at the time), we decided to go with Sarah. Sarah sounded great on her email, so we decided to go with her. In retrospect, the fact that she was available in such short notice should raised some flags.... but we were desperate. To continue, her rates are as follows: $100 dollars per hour, and there is a required initial consultation in which she would charge her rate. We decided to give it a try and she came over for the initial consultation... she was nothing like what I expected. A goth-like woman in her early twenties, smelling like rotting incense. She didn't even bother presenting herself to me or even shake hands, wave or even a pound (she is from Oakland)... nothing. She brought along a large, black duffel bag which made sense and made her look half way like a trainer. The bag had nothing in it... ok, one harness and that was it. The consultation proceeded by her asking some questions, putting some notes down and coming across very uninterested and annoyed at our responses. After our responses she would regurgitate answers that we had read on the Internet and would repeat what we had already tried. From the one hundred dollar ripoff we learned two things: we should move his crate to another location if we had to leave for an extended period of time (non training) and we should think about getting him a harness instead of a collar. She tried to convince us of this by putting the only thing in her bag on him, he hated the harness.

The experience was rather annoying and disappointing, hopefully we will never run into her again.

To finish the post in a good note, here is another picture of Maki!



- Daniel

The secret dog park!

Yesterday when Elizabeth was Yelping, she discovered that Alameda has two dog parks... One is near our apartment, with two separate sections. One section is a small dog park for dogs less than 30 lbs, and the other is the big dog park for dogs over 30 lbs. This park is pretty active and gets mixed reviews in Yelp. We have been hesitant to take Maki to this one because he tends to overwhelm very easily, and could just get really excited and spiral out of control. Therefore we have not yet taken him to this place.

The other park that Elizabeth found on Yelp is described as the "secret" Alameda dog park. It was described as a less luxurious canine accommodation and thus less crowded... which in our case was perfect!

We went over to find this new dog park, however this was much harder than we anticipated. We drove through a section of the former naval base in Almeda. This place is really creepy and cool all at once. It is quite hard to describe, this area has the look of a ghost town but with pockets of people living in random areas. After searching and looking and being freaked out, we finally found the allusive park. To our surprise people were there! So we decided to continue to drive and hope for them to leave. After a little bit the people and their dogs left, we parked and almost immediately two other cars arrived... we decided to stay.

Maki was released from the leash and decided that none of our toys were adequate for him. Not to worry because he soon saw the other dog that had arrived and decided to go play. The initial meeting went wonderfully! But this dog loved its ball! Then another dog arrived, this dog was older and very mellow. This meeting didn't go as well but was not bad by any means. Maki decided the other "ball" dog was more interesting, however this dog didn't share the same thought for Maki. This led to Maki's first dog fight in our presence. It was quick and there was no clear winner, but we decided to go to the other side of the dog park.

This was a good decision since we came to discover that Maki really likes chasing sticks! so we had a good session of fetch! completely ignored the balls and rope, but sticks are good! We ended the day by having a little photo session of him and both of us... separately. Overall this day was a success!!!!!

- Daniel

Take Your Dog to Work Day...Week...Month?

Take Your Dog to Work Day, or Week or Month?












Maki's week has been filled with new lessons for doggy and owner. We started the week continuing the "bring your dog to work" theme which is getting a little tiresome. He requires one and a half, cloth, reusable grocery bags full of stuff...toys, 3 towels, food, water dish, treats, poop bags, and blanket. The remaining half is left for my items. Then there's his bed and bedding which gets tucked under my arm, his huge crate which folds down into a somewhat heavy, bulky entity and finally Maki on his leash. If it's a great day I can usually manage it in two trips with him spending a short time chilling in the car. But after a week of twice a day schlepping his stuff I'm wishing he could learn to suck it up and stay home without barking his head off. Come on Maki be a team player!

However, I am very happy to have a pup that rides excellently in the car. He's very content to plop down and snooze during the commute.

Barking

I'd love to report that Maki has improved on his separation anxiety and barking however he actually seems to have taken a step back, at least at home. He also has the lovely habit of deciding that barking during work meetings is very pleasant for everyone! He resides in his crate in my shared office during the day however I don't actually spend a significant amount of time in the office due to the fact that most of my work is done in the lab. If there are other people in the office he's fine, no barking. But sometimes he's all by his lonesome and that's when he finds it appealing to complain. The amount of time that is required before he complains is a bit variable given his mood. Occasionally he'll only last 10 minutes but other times he's gone 40 minutes to an hour.

At home it's another story, he was pretty predictable last weekend barking after 25 - 30 minutes but I think we slacked off during the week and didn't do enough sessions and now he starts whining and barking after only 15 minutes, ugh.

Attempts at Preoccupying the Mind of Maki While We're Away

We've been on a quest to find a toy and or other item to distract Maki's mind away from dwelling on our departure. It's been completely unsuccessful. We've tried ball toys, chew toys, rope toys, plush toys to no avail. Our next attempt was at chewable foods like bones, dental chews, meat sticks, flavored plastic bones, treat stuffed Kong bones, peanut butter smeared Kong stick and nothing does the trick. He of course loves many of these items while we're sitting there in his company or even in the next room over however as soon as we go out the door he loses all interest in his wonderful cheweys and toys and fixates on the door! Here's some pics of his toys and chewables. We've determines that he's a "strong chewer" after he destroyed a kong bone and a nylabone rated for "moderate chewers." I actually like to describe him as a "veroicious chewer!" We're still passing $$'s in hopes of the super Maki resistant toy!

-Elizabeth

The Albino Monkey

This entry is dedicated to Maki's favorite plush toy, The Albino Monkey (TAM). TAM gets both great and horrible treatment all at once. When he first was introduced to Maki, Maki ignored him and did not wish to play with him. This changed quickly, when TAM's ear got ripped off in a friendly interchange with Maki. After this Maki has been more than extra careful with the little TAM. When moving TAM, Maki makes sure that there is enough pressure in his jaw to grab him but not make him squeak (TAM has a build in squeaker). This careful handling went on until recently, when Maki decided to partially amputate TAM's left leg. Now the leg has become a new fixation, with chewing licking and more (just the leg though). TAM gets moved around to make sure he is in the middle of the action or snuggling. Also TAMs other ear has been partially ripped. The most surprising thing of all is that Maki has not yet destroyed the tail!! not even a little bit! Here is a picture of Maki and TAM:


Overall TAM is the only toy that Maki really likes. He starting to like a rope toy and a little sandal looking thing, but that is about it. Although today when we were outside he really liked sticks! he would not chase balls but loves sticks!

- Daniel

President's Day with Maki and Mommy

Today I had the day off of work so I was home with Maki. I was supposed to do more separation training but it was a bit difficult due to the fact that yesterday sucked and he barked so much, I didn't want to piss off the neighbors more. I did manage to do a couple 20min sessions and a 30min, all successful! Then we did one more when Dan came home, again successful! However, 30min is usually his threshold so I'm not sure if this is improvement of just good reinforcement.

We went for a couple walks today including an hour long walk from 3-4 which went really well before meltdown. Here's a quick summary...

Peed in many bushes and on many trees

Walked very close to a not intimidated cat : success! curious but not obsessive

Avoided walking on grates in the sidewalk and pretty much any thing that resembles a grate?? what? why is he suddenly afraid of grates? We worked on this a little and he sat on a grate :)

Got barked at by a yapper in a car and a fenced dog : curious but not overly

At the end of the walk saw a greyhound dog across the street : agitated and interested but manageable

And then the meltdown : We were heading back to the complex apparently when everyone else had decided to take their dogs out for a walk and we were trapped like rats! We got to a corner where a lady was attempting to settle her fluffy pup by packing him full of treats but as we were halfway across the street the fluffy puppy fought through the mouth full of treats and got off a couple of barks. At the same moment Maki noticed a guy with a Boston Terrier on the sidewalk where we were headed, he freaked and started barking at fluffy and pulling vigorously. Finally got him headed the right direction but there was the Boston Terrier also be stuffed with treats and Wearing a Sweater!! Maki was unglued and barked at him and pulled like an ox. I lost it and started saying no to his barking, he kinda stopped but wasn't exactly sure what I was saying "no" to. We past the sweater wearing terrier and he caught a glimpse of a black lab across the street, dammit he pulls like a mad man. I try to get him to sit and settle down, which he surprisingly obeys my sit commands but is fixated at looking around for all the dogs. Finally I get him back in our complex zone and up into the apartment! Crash landing but we survived.

- Elizabeth

A Very Rough Day...

Let me start the post by wishing my wonderful girlfriend a very, very happy birthday! We decided to go and get some brunch at a really good Mexican restaurant in Oakland, the Huarache Azteca. It was a really good brunch, with mariachis, huaraches, and quesadillas. The lunch was about 2 hours long and was used as a joint birthday and training exercise for Maki. Like Elizabeth mentioned, the little guy has some separation anxiety. So we are trying to leave and reinforce that we will be back. To track his behavior, we developed "Maki Vision (TM)". The system consists of Elizabeth's camcorder and my MacBook both recording different areas of the apartment. With this we can monitor his actions and hear what he does. While home, he knows that he is not allowed on the couches. However, when we leave he decides that both couches are the most comfortable places in the house.

After checking out the couches, Maki had an one hour and fifteen minute session of barking and whining. It was excruciatingly painful to watch. So much that it actually got to my and Elizabeth's nerves quite a bit. Now we are re-working the leaving the house technique so that he knows that we are coming back. We also have to ignore him for a little while which is proving to be quite hard for me, he is so lovable!! Hopefully the neighbors won't hate us... I might end up writing them a little apology letter and drooping it in their mailboxes... maybe.


With all the issues... we still love the little lazy dog! He is definitely a handful, but very sweet!

- Daniel

Bringing home Maki, or not

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Maki was scheduled to have his neutering surgery Monday afternoon. I called around 3:30pm and was told to pick him up by 5:30p. When I arrived to pick him up the nurse gave me his instructions and said he was a very sweet puppy however they had been teasing him because he didn't look anything like a whippet! The vet carried out a very drowsy, floppy puppy and I thought he must have gotten quite a bath because his fur looked much shorter and his coloring was different. Then I petted his head and looked at his face and thought, "wow he looks really weird!" I checked his paws knowing that our little Maki has one white front paw and one black, this puppy had no white feet!!! I informed the vet that "This is not my dog!" She was a little confused at first but then it was determined that the shelter had brought the wrong dog in! Quite disappointing but also very funny! The poor little puppy in the next cage over got neutered without having a nice home to go to :(

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

I arrived at the vet to find the correct puppy, Maki!! He had been a great little boy for his surgery and was sent home with pain meds, antibiotics for kennel cough and a conehead collar in case he started to lick his incision (although the he was good about licking and didn't require the collar). He arrived at his new home, gave it a quick inspection, attempted to mark his territory but quickly learned that this was an illegal action! Maki slept in his kennel the entire night without any complaints or accidents and in the morning I took him with me to work.

He adjusted to the work setting quickly and loved all the people, he's quite the people dog and loves everyone!


Maki stats:

• A licensed Whippet Mix ;)
• 29.4 lbs
• Brindle and White
• 10 months or your best guess
• Short Hair

Let's review my requirements:

• Odorless : he smells fairly "doggie"
  
• Cat like : maybe a little
  
• Does not lick : Licks a lot
• Mellow but not lame : most of the time
• Housebroken...we think so far
• Not a puppy : definitely still a puppy
• Not small but not big : yes
• No barking : when we leave him alone he barks a lot :(
• Low maintenance : ha! not quite
• No shedding : he's a low shedder but he does have fur and it does come out

So as you can see he doesn't quite fit my perfect dog mold but he is a sweetheart and we love him!

We're working on the separation anxiety issue and he does well for a half an hour but past that and he becomes very barky :( We've set up two camera's to record his antics and we're sure the neighbors aren't pleased with his complaining but we hope he'll improve soon.

-Elizabeth

The Adoption Story

Tuesday February 3rd, 2009

We had been visiting the Oakland Animal Shelter since December 2008 in search of the "perfect" pooch. Elizabeth's ridiculous requirements were as follows:

- Odorless
- Cat like
- Does not lick
- Mellow but not lame
- Entertaining
- Excellently behaved
- House broken
- Not a puppy
- Not small but not big
- No barking
- Low maintenance
- No shedding

We had come across two "nearly" ideal candidates (which was determined through Petfinder.org and a 5 minute visit). However we were beat to the adoption by evil beings that were obviously not as perfect as us =). But it must have been fate that brought us to the shelter on this glorious Tuesday in search of two more candidates. Luckily we were being helped by a new volunteer who had no clue of where these dogs were being held. That is when we discovered a little brindle sweet beast. The other candidates turned out to be very young puppies and we proceeded, out of curiosity, to visit the little brindle (unnamed) beast.

During the first five minutes we witnessed a force of nature - he jumped, nipped, peed, pooped, ate grass, barked, smelled, and licked (however he was not small but not big). It was love at first sight. He proceeded to completely calm down after his wild streak and became and extremely sweet and affectionate guy (licking a lot)... we liked him!!!

We went home and discussed the possibility of adopting the medium sized, sweet, brindle candidate.


Wednesday February 4th, 2009

We hurried to the shelter after work and arrived around 6pm. We proceeded to visit the medium sized, brindle beast. The previous day we were concerned by the labeling on his information sheet which read "Pit X". Pit Bulls are one of the many breeds which are forbidden in our apartment complex. However a very knowledgeable and helpful shelter associate looked at him and determined he was no Pit mix but a Whippet mix ;) !!! His papers were corrected to more accurately reflect his heritage, and we signed his adoption. He was scheduled to be neutered and picked up the following Monday from the vet.

The next four days were spent gathering supplies, cleaning the apartment (?), doing research on dogs, and picking a name. After much deliberation we decided on a formal name for the brindle guy... "Makako". He was named after the Portuguese word for "Monkey". However we decided to nickname him "Maki" (yes, sounds like the sushi roll).

- Daniel