Siberian Huskies
Little history
The Siberian Husky is a breed of sled dog. The breed orginiates in Siberia from the Chukchi people. Huskies are one of the oldest breeds at about 3000 years old.
Leonard Seppala won the All-Alaskan Sweepstakes between 1915 and 1917 with a team of Siberian Huskies. But him and his team are best known for a critical role of bringing the diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska. His team ran the most miles between Nenana to Nome.
Huskies in the UK appeared mainly in zoos to start with, until Mr W.K. Taunton and Mr H.C. Brook, collectors of foreign breeds, imported a few towards the end of the 19th century. It wasn't until the early 1970s where the Siberian Husky developed in the UK.
Can you live with the breed?
Huskies are a hard breed to live with and are not recommended to a first time dog owner.
They are destuctive, ours have ruined countless things, like the Kitchen floor by tearing up the lino, phone chargers, laptop chargers, clothes and all sorts of other things.
Huskies will steal your food off the table and sides.
Huskies are escape artists, you will need a fence 6 feet high around the out side of your garden and if the ground is soft around the edge you will need to sink another length of fence 2ft into the ground because huskies dig.
When walking your husky NEVER let it off the lead 9 and 3/4 out of 10 wont come back and will most like be shot by farmers for trying to kill the livestock or hit by a car.
Huskies CANNOT be trusted with any kind of smaller animal. Because huskies have a high hunting instinct they will probably kill other smaller (and larger) animals.
Huskies love company so if your working all day with they will be bored and start destroying your house. Really they shouldn't be left for more than 4 hours by themselves.
They blow their coats twice a year.
They do need a decent amount of exersize because they are working dogs.
They are mischievous.
They ARE very smart.
People have given Huskies a aggressive persona, which is mostly completely wrong. Huskies are one of the most loving breeds of dogs around, because they love your company.
They are ALWAYS happy to see you.
They are great with people but like any dog should be supervised with small children.
You can get them in to mushing, which you'll immediately get hooked on.
They will teach you so much about you and them.
They ARE very smart.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, do the reseach on the breed, go to rallies and dog shows ask about the breed. Go on sibespace (see links) and use their forum to ask questions about Siberian Huskies. Get books like Siberian Huskies for Dummies, or The Complete Siberian Husky, both of which are on amazon.co.uk and play.com.
There is a lot of points I've listed against having a husky and its for a good reason. Too many huskies are given to dog homes or abused because of owners that buy the dogs without even knowing a thing about huskies and then cannot handle living with them.
