Hello everyone, My name is Ken, i recently adopted a 2 years old mama Yuki. She had litters on my birthday this year. Found that out when I took her to the vet to get spayed. (The shelter had appointment booked for her spayed before I adopted her, there were delayed due to she just gave birth and had to nurse.) The meet at the shelter went well. They told me that Yuki required hydrolyzed diet, and she is skittish and scare of city noises. I am all okay with that, she is so precious a little special cares is not a problem a at. My roommate and his dog Turbo (a 5 years old Pitbull mixed) were also there. Everyone were happy and we got on our first ride home together as a pack. That's when I started going thru the paper and noticed they tagged her as an Akita and Husky mixed. I did not know she is an Akita and Husky mixed as they advertised her as a shepherd mixed. I did not know anything about the Akita breed, husky I do have experience, one of my friend have one. So naturally I pulled out my phone and started googling. That moment is when I found out I have something special here, and also feeling extremely overwhelm and nervous... A lot of reading, I actually been reading a lot on here for a month before I start an account and introduced myself. So it been 2 months since Yuki came home with us. The first two weeks were rough, part of it probably is her adjusting. but she also started dominating over Turbo, my roommate's 5 years old sweet boy, it was extremely difficult to give her any simple commands like come, and sit. Then, a lot more Youtube and going deep into the rabbit hole of internets. I learned that I cannot train Yuki like a regular dog. Now I do not raise my voice, I showed zero frustration when she act up, and a lot of positive reinforcement later, she is showing tremendous amount of improvement. The week following her spayed surgery bonded us. She now knows that I can take care of her, she is not nervous around the house anymore, started demanding me to give her belly rub. She is fine with turbo now, and she also likes my roommate, and my dad that helped me dog sit the doggies for an afternoon. Yesterday I was able to introduced a female chihuahua mixed to her. We started with a calm, across-the-street meet. After a 5 minute and they were still cool, then we started with a walk, then home and hanged out for couple of hours. She even let the chihuahua have a go at her water bowl. She does have her bad moments, she's reactive on walks, she tolerate some dogs, and some she would try to lunged from a block away. But otherwise her walk is pretty civilized, she stay by my self most of the time, (on my treat pocket side, hmm) or close-by sniffing people's yards and bushes. We are also working on her phobia of busy streets. My house is about a mile from the main busy commercial street. We are making progress, getting a little bit closer and closer to all the loud noises. Anyway, that's our story so far, I do not feel intimidated by her breed anymore, however, I am still an Akita newbie, so many questions, so many I have yet to experience with her. Hope I can learn much more around here. Cheers! Yuki's Dad
Hello Ken and Yuki. Yes Akitas are a unique breed. I may be able to answer some of your questions on the Akita side of things, but I have never owned or lived with a husky.
Yuki is really beautiful, and I am sure you are going about her training the right way by using positive methods. Give her time and space, and don't force anything. Welcome to Breedia.
You definitely have your hands full with that mix. Both breeds can be prey oriented (females more than males), so I would never trust her alone with small dogs, cats, etc. How you handled the meet and greet is great. And it sounds like you are working with her to learn rather than fighting against her - perfect! My standard disclaimer for huskies: they are smarter than you and take great joy in proving it as often as possible. Akita females are similar (I find the males to be less determined and a bit more goofy in nature). Huskies also get bored easily and will escape yards just to have some fun. Do remember that shelters are making a guess when it comes to breed info. That guess is based primarily on looks. Also, most mixed dogs are more than two breeds (my Moose-dog was 3 breeds, my Bat-dog was 7 breeds and my Tornado-dog is 4 breeds). So, it may be that Yuki has other stuff in her that can balance out the huskie and akita. I can recommend dnamydog.com if you want to know for sure. I would recommend it for Turbo - it could better identify his breed mix and could get the "pit" moniker removed (which unfortunately has become a bad word and can come with a lot of stereotyping and fear).
Thank you everyone for the kind reply. I have two dnamydog in the shopping cart ready to go. I want to try the A.T My Pet Allergy test too since Yuki is on hydrolyzed kibbles, it would be nice to find out exactly what's causing the allergy so I can feed her better food, any body have experience with those at-home test kit?
I haven't done the allergy test before. With the dna test, just make sure you do it before they eat anything so their sample is "clean". When you get the results, look at appearance and behavior. And it may be a very minor bit. For example, my Moose-dog's physical newfie trait was simply a white stripe down his chest. I never did identify Bat-dog's german shorthair - the rest gave me all sorts of minor physical or mental clues ("talking" like a beagle, attitude like a corgi, barrel chest like a boxer, etc).
