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