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