Trust - A Deadly Disease Discussions

How do you know though that she will just run and run? My friends with a young husky were told this by the breeder, so they had never ever let him off until a chance meeting with them in a local pub. We went out with them for a walk in the local wood, with Tai. As soon as we got into the woods and away from the road, both dogs were let off the lead. Nobody made a fuss, nobody even looked at the dogs, we just walked along together with the humans chatting away, and the dogs sniffing around the trees, cocking their legs etc. etc. We must have gone about 2 miles all told, with never any sign of the dog running off.

Next time these people let their husky off the lead, they were on their own, and the dog did not "run and run and not come back". He did his own thing, for sure, chased a few squirrels, had a great time. Every time his owners called him, he came back. They are very grateful to us for saving their dog from a hellish life kept on a lead the whole time. They don't work him, he is a pet, and was decidedly overweight when we first met them. He is now lean and healthy and fit ... and let off the lead.

Until you trust your dog, how will you ever know that he will run away? Huskies are very loyal pack-loving animals, they will not run away ... at worst, they will disappear out of sight, Hal did this many times, for several minutes, but always came back. They do not want to be separated for too long from their pack.

Good post C & D

That's anthropomorphisation! Your dog would absolutely choose to NOT be on the lead, but take his chances, were he able to make that decision.

I have had a dog run over and killed, as tragic as that was, it was at least partially my fault for not fencing the garden better. Knowing that the garden was not 100% Lizzie proof I should have perhaps kept her on a chain when she was out in the garden, or on a long line. But that to my mind would have been cruel, because Lizzie hated being confined.

So, she got run over and killed. I was of course devastated, but I don't feel at all guilty. She died doing what she loved best ... chasing a squirrel.

let me share the experiences which led to kira being on lead....

she was allowed off lead until about 6-7 months old, we often went out with an older dog and we worked on recall with her, she was still an impressionable pup, the prey drive hadnt set in, the want to run forever wasnt there. she had recall, she came back. GREAT!

one day when we let her off in the field we always went to, river one side (she doesnt like the river) and fences on the other 3, nice and safe, we thought. NO, she found the one tiny hole in the fence, which let up to the train track (obviously cut by some idiots trying to get on the tracks). she was off!!! chasing rabbits on the train tracks. 5 minutes of calling her, me crying hysterically, coaxing with treats and OH grabbing her and bringing her down, she was back with us and straight back on the lead. 5 minutes later a train goes by.... Scariest time of my life, and it still scares me now.

the 2nd time was when she slipped her harness, how she did it i dont know.... but again she was off, but we were in town this time, and she ran down a very busy main road, didnt go into the road thank god, but it was close. we only got her back because she stopped to have a chat with a guide dog. Since then we have got her an alaskan semi slip collar, which tightens by a couple of inches, so she cant slip it, and she now only wears that harness in the car.

the last time was my doing. we went for a walk in the park, when i swapped her over to her longer lead, i clipped the lead onto the ID tag ring without realising. 5 minutes of pulling later and it opens up, kira realises there's no weight on her collar, look at us, then turns and legs it. I burst into tears (again lol) while OH, me and a friend chase after her. Again, she was saved by another dog, a border collie this time, she stopped to talk and the owner collared her for us. We now dont use tags, we sew our details into the collar, just in case.

yes its a lot of precautions and faffing about sewing our details into every new collar, but its worth it, at 11 months and already 3 close calls, shes lucky to be alive. and i'd rather worry about her and do everything that i do for her (no tags, long walks instead of just letting her off, more expensive collars that have to be ordered offline, lunge lines etc etc) than let my guard down and have her taken from me.

hi Gnasher
whilst i understand what you are trying to say...i dont see how you can comment about living with siberian huskys :? just because you know a few and Hal and Tai might of had/have a little amount of sibe in them :? thinking what is right and living it are too different things:? :?
of course by saying we dont let them off the lead,they are chained to our legs even when we go to the loo (lol actually mine do follow me to the loo without the chain ;-) );-)
would you take a cat out without a lead and expect it to come back to you because you 'taught it a recall' ;-) ;-)

Another excellent post Mish !

Good post, I have heard many Sibe owners say their dogs were great offlead until they reached a certain age after that they had to be kept on lead for their own safety. Which IMO is the responsible thing to do.

Very scarey story about the train tracks. I am so glad your hubby was able to bring her down and get her back to safety. some tracks are electrified, and I can never remember which ones are, so doubly scarey.

Your other two examples though are events that happened after the dog had been confined to a life in harness. So what did she do when she suddenly discovered that she was free? She legged it. Completely understandable. She would have come back, I totally will not accept that huskies OR Mals for that matter will just simply run away. They have a very strong pack instinct, and will return home. This is running for the sheer joy of it, having suddenly sensed freedom! She would have come back.

Tai got into a field of sheep only a few days after we had rescued him. We were cycling along a disused railway line with sheep on either side of this particular stretch. However, they were well fenced in with barbed wire and sheep wire too I think, but Tai managed to get through and we couldn't get him out. We couldn't climb the fence because of the barbed wire, and he would not come. We whistled, we called, but we did not panic. We kept the faith, and after about 10 minutes, he came back. He didn't really chase the sheep, just made them panic and then stood watching them. However, had the farmer seem him, he would have shot him. So the point I am making here is that he DIDN'T run away, he didn't even chase the sheep, by staying calm and whistling and calling him we semi kept him under control. We were on our bicycles at the time, cycling along with him running by our side. We know now to keep a weather eye out for sheep ... this is usually my job, but we call out "sheep ... pedal like stink" when we see sheep. This way, we can still have him off the lead because there is no way he is going to be left behind. If he so much as looks at them, I roar at him and he immediately looks ahead and follows. Going through a field of sheep, then we have him on the lead when we are on our bikes just in case.

Gnasher, I know kira wont come back, because its happened before, we've had chicken, sausages, toys, nothing will bring her back.

I also think your being highly irrisponsible going against everything the majority of owners, breeders and breed clubs advise. Let your off, thats up to you. but dont encourage others to let theirs off, yes a few can do, a few others cant. You could be leading new owners into trouble and heartache.

I am NOT a bad owner for keeping my dog on a lead, im a RESPONSIBLE one, i know my dog, i know she wont come back. i also know the law, which says that dogs are to be kept on a lead.

It's not just the dogs to think about, its other dog owners, and cars. If she was to go up to an agressive dog and get bitten, it would set that dog back in its training and if someone else saw and reported that dog it could get put down, which would have been avoided by keeping kira away on a lead.

if she was to run into a road and cause an accident she would not only be hurt/killed, but a driver, passenger or pedestrain could be aswell. And i would be liable, yes i have insurance but i would never forgive myself if i caused serious injury or death to another person.

Cruisers recall is excellent, they still dont get offlead in unenclosed areas tho

No, Hal was a wolf cross, but good dollops of both Mal and Husky in him. Tai is very Mally, but there is still nonetheless a lot of husky in there too. I know one Huskamute very well who is never on the lead, and at least 4 pure sibes who are all let off the lead, and at least 2 of them are middled aged dogs.

With the greatest respect, why bring cats into the equation? Cats are a completely different species to dogs. Cats are lone animals, dogs are pack animals. Whereas I know owners of bengal tiger cats, my daughter included, who say they have trained their cats, they are nothing like dogs. I am bewildered by the introduction of the cat scenario!!

Mals, like huskies, are frequently condemned to a life on the lead ... again by breeders insisting that they cannot be let off lead. This is total rubbish, I refuse to accept such nonsense! No dog is untrainable, you just have to know how to train it. Huskies and Mals are very difficult dogs to train, they are extremely intelligent, have a high prey drive, and I completely agree that it is not easy to train them to recall safely and reliably. But it is possible ... if I can do it, anyone can do it, because I am by no means an expert dog trainer.

as i said she is only with us because of the 2 dogs. both times were near busy roads (a 2 minute run from the park exit is a main road) and im sorry but im not gunna risk it, she gets lots of exercise, both in harness which she loves and with a lunge line. Its responsible.

There's no law round here that says a dog has to be kept on a lead !!

What law's that then?

Tai would never ever go up to another dog and bite it, and neither would have Hal. Hal was intensely socialised from 6 weeks old, and Tai must have been too, because I have never known a dog more better with other dogs than Tai. He is fantastic with young and old.

If you couldn't trust your Husky off lead around other dogs, may I suggest that it could be because she is kept on the lead the whole time and not allowed to mix? This socialisation is so important, and they cannot socialise like this on the lead. Leads to me are a necessary evil, Tai only ever goes on one on the road or around livestock.

Sorry - I've got to go to take him out. I am enjoying this debate, and will come back later !

Wrap up time now ... in more ways than one !!

But gnasher you have never owned a pure bred Sibe, have you? So its just the same as me saying my CKCS has great recall I can do it. And to be fair you cannot compare Hal or Tai as you don't really know what is in their mix.

you wondering why i brought cats up illustrates to me you do not truly understand the sibe,just think you do :-(
sibes are not difficult to train!! i have done competitive obedience,agility,good citizens as well as harness work ,my sibes have good recall ,still no running in unsecured unenclosed spaces for my guys,because i understand them ,not because i have some fantasy of what they should be ;-) .
also you have crosses...you cannot truly tell me what breeds are in your ute's as even the breeders cannot,i have a couple of crosses in my pack...they are very different to the pure guys believe me.

well as far as im aware there's a law! could be wrong tho, its not unheard of! lol

kira is not agressive in any way shape or form, i was not saying she'd attack or bite, i said if she was to go up to an agressive dog, kept on a lead for that reason, and it bit her, if someone else saw it and reported her the dog could be pts etc, and that would have been avoided if i'd kept kira on a lead. she loves other dogs and will go up to them to say hi, but shes not great at understanding signals (we're working on this) so doesnt always leave the dog alone if it warns her.

and she is allowed to mix, we live with 2 grey hounds, we regularly go to see a staffy x and a lab x who she loves, and she gets to me other dogs out on walks. my point is that if shes on a lead i can keep her away from agressive dogs (unless they're off lead obviously) and only allow her to meet other friendly dogs if the owner allows it

This is exactly the naive "I know better than every Siberian Husky organisation in the world" attitude which unfortunately leads to the deaths of too many Siberians each year. My wife is an expert dog trainer. I have seen her achieve things with Sibes (and other dogs) that I would have thought pretty near impossible. As I said above, all our adult dogs have excellent recall and obedience and are often a source of amazement to people who regard sibes as untrainable. Yet neither she nor I would ever let our dogs off lead in an unsafe/unenclosed area because we know that their recall can never be 100%.
Far from being "condemned" to a life on lead, our dogs probably have a more varied and exciting life than most. They do run off-lead in safe areas:


They work in harness 2/3 times a week:



We show them:


We do lots of fundraising events for welfare where they meet the public and get spoilt rotten:




And they are spoiled family pets:



Just because we refuse to risk our dogs' lives by letting them off lead in unenclosed areas does not mean that they have a lesser quality of life than other dogs - far from it!

Mick

I have a sibe and guess what - I don't feel a single bit of remorse for "condemning" him to a life on the lead.

I don't agree that he can't be happy like this - on the contrary, he is. He gets to run at the dog park every week, at least a couple of times. He is walked a lot everyday, played with and also trained. He has a good recall and is good around most dogs.

His proneness to run is not just an excuse for us to not allow him off-lead, as we have actually invested time and money in training him to come back. It is just something that will not work with this dog and I am not willing to risk his safety and others' as well by insisting that walking him freely is possible.

Walking a dog on a lead is definitely less cruel than having it shot by a ranger in the forest or under the wheels of a truck, just because "he died doing something that he loved".
Sure, junkies that OD also die doing something they loved.

As to saying that not being able to walk a dog off leash is only for laziness, this is not true. I have trained my dog and even went to professionals, but running away is instinctual.

Why would breeders advise people not to do this if it were not true? I highly doubt that after years and years of experience they would not know what they are talking about!

I am not going to fool myself into blindly believing that he needs freedom because that's what he "wants".