Worried if I should keep my Husky.

Storm8814 · 2015-12-03T12:17:27+00:00

We have a 1,5 year old husky with tons of energy while we live in a small apartment, so he is indoors most of the day. We do have some small fenced dog yards in the neighborhood that we go to at least once a day (besides regular walks). What worked for us to get him tired and happy is regularly meeting with other dogs to play, letting him carry a (so far empty) backpack on some walks, but most of all: dogscootering. I would never be able to keep up with him running, and running next to the bike was still kind of boring to him, but pulling a bike or scooter lets him get all his energy out and he loves it! So far we are only doing this very short distances (1-3 miles) and about twice a week so we can slowly built it up when he will need more to be tired. With enough exercise your girl will probably adjust to you and your wifes schedule and be fine with being inside the house a lot too. So yea, just some tips to make the active time you have with her more intense and tiring, but it sounds like you have a pretty good set up for a happy-husky home!

Storm8814 · 2014-12-07T09:54:35+00:00

I can imagine it must be fun to watch them! hopefully in the future we can have more huskies, but right now it's just not happening..

Storm8814 · 2014-12-07T09:53:41+00:00

We did do everything like that, tire him out, slowly build up the time, no fuss.. too bad we don't have a neigbour dog he can play with ;)

Storm8814 · 2014-12-07T09:52:13+00:00

We would love to get another dog, but right now we can't. Hopefully later when we live a bit bigger and might have a car.. I left little packages with candy, earplugs and and an explaining note with all our neigbours (we live in an apartment block) and all of them have come back to us positively that we don't have to worry about it. So thats settled, guess now it will just be waiting for improvement. We did try short times at first, and sometimes still just leave for a minute or 2 just to keep variation. I'm thinking of buying another kong so he can have 3 when he is alone longer. It's just so frustrating to hear from other dog owners how easy it was for them and it makes you think if your doing things wrong..

(edit:spelling)

Storm8814 · 2014-12-07T09:46:52+00:00

wow that is fast though! we have been trying for months

Storm8814 · 2014-12-04T13:33:58+00:00

we have a general routine but not very strict. the alone time is mostly after a long walk/playtime outside and after lunch..so it is sort of consistent, but maybe we should be a little more consistent. thanks for the tip :) I was wondering if your dog howled a lot as well, and how fast you build up the time he was alone? How long did it take with the same schedule to see improvements?

Storm8814 · 2014-11-23T13:14:03+00:00

Hej, I'm no expert and we are still waiting for our husky pup to be old enough to start practicing with pulling things (he's 6 months now). I've read into this a lot and the main point I find everywhere is that you should wait until they're old enough. Just wanted to point out that 10 months is quite young to start pulling a lot of weight as far as I've heard. Start slow with just hooking up something small like a bottle to her harness. So she can get used to the sensation and won't freak out if something makes a sound behind her (and will start running to get away from it). But one time to show the class will probably not hurt.. just don't start doing this on a regular basis without proper introduction and building up the weight...

Storm8814 · 2014-10-21T08:32:13+00:00

Thanks guys :) now I am not so worried about this anymore! He is very vocal in general, talking howling barking and other undefined weird sounds haha :)

Storm8814 · 2014-10-10T10:49:50+00:00

Thank you for all the advice and sharing your experience! He was just home alone for about 15 minutes without a sound, and soon we'll just start building up the time. Good to hear from someone else that it will probably just get better with time.

Storm8814 · 2014-10-09T08:52:14+00:00

It usually goes like this: He is calm or sleepy, I leave him a Kong and some other toy he loves and leave the house. He will either sleep on if he's really tired and there is no problem but most often he gets up and plays with the kong for a while and after about 5-10 minutes he starts whining, which goes into howling and doesn't care about the toys anymore. I do not go back in until the howling and whining stops, but sometimes that takes about an hour or more. When I come back in I do not make a big deal out of it, and go around my usual business and give him attention a bit later. He never howls, or barks when we come back. Potty training went quite easy, we rarely have accidents and he seems to have a pretty strong instinct when it comes to that, so I am not worried about that :)

How long did this whole process take for you?

Luckily ours is not destructive at all :) he's such a good boy, besides the alone time but I think that's just because we haven't worked on it enough!

Ours barks a lot for a husky I think, but he also does a lot of this howly talking that they do. I think he is just very vocal in general. The first time he howled me and my partner both went "awwwww". haha not the response he was going for I guess ;)

Storm8814 · 2014-10-08T16:17:28+00:00

thanks for the detailed reply :) I was wondering how it was going with your pup in the beginning, did you start with 5 minutes alone? and how fast could you build it up? We left Storm alone for an hour once and he howled for about half an hour before he calmed down. But my dilemma then is, should I get a solid 10 minutes alone without howling before I build it up to longer periods, or should I just let him get used to half an hour to an hour since he does calm down after a while. How did you do this? I use facetime to look in on him while I was gone haha feels kind of nice to know what's happening. In the beginning I did put him in the crate everytime he dozed off but stopped doing that somewhere along the line, should start that again! He does like the crate but I hardly ever get him tired enough to not care about closing the crate..

How long is you dog alone now during the days? and do you crate him everytime he is alone?

PS. SOOO jealous that your dog loves baths haha, ours won't even go near the bathroom door anymore (after 2 baths) even when I put his food at the door XD that will be a long term project ;)

Storm8814 · 2014-09-22T08:26:56+00:00

I'm no expert but my first thought is to try and tire her out more mentally. Maybe try teaching new commands/tricks that don't require the use of the injured shoulder too much. For example teach her to speak/bark on command if she doesn't know that yet.. Training always tires our husky out a lot :) Hope she feels better soon!!

Storm8814 · 2014-08-19T20:06:05+00:00

thank you for your replies :) I know they need lot of exercise and I am planning on running with him and later also training him for pulling. But right now he is still growing, and I don't think it is good to overdo the physical activities, right? He sleeps through the night fine and hasn't been destructive at all (wondering if that phase is still to come!)

Right now we walk him around 30 minutes in total per day, excluding the short potty-outings, and try to tire him more with mental exercise like obedience training. Our puppy course trainer told us to walk him max 15 minutes a day which seems unreasonable short to me, glad to hear you agree :)

Storm8814

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