Siberian Husky

The Siberian husky isn't quite a dog in that domestic, couch-bound sense. It's rather a piece of the wild Arctic that, out of politeness, agreed to live with you — and inside it still hears the call of the snowy expanses and of its own pack racing across the tundra. It was bred for one thing: running enormous distances in the frost, day after day, pulling a sled and barely tiring in the process. That history didn't evaporate over a single generation spent in an apartment block. It's all there in it — in those pale, sometimes ice-blue eyes that look at you with warmth and, at the same time, with the independence of a creature that will never quite acknowledge anyone as its master.

Because the husky is a free spirit with a sense of humor and the character of a teenager who has just discovered it has an opinion of its own. It doesn't so much bark as argue — it delivers long, singing monologues full of “woo-woo-woo,” comments on every injustice in the world, and can stage a protest so theatrical that the neighbors are ready to think it's being wronged — when the whole point is merely that it didn't like the weather. Asked to do something, it will first weigh whether it's really in its interest. And if it gets bored — and it gets bored quickly — it will turn your couch, garden, or door frame into an art project no one commissioned. With a husky it's never boring. It is, on the other hand, sometimes “interesting” in the sense in which the Chinese wished one another “interesting times.”

There's one more thing every new husky owner finds out in a flash: this dog is a born escape artist. A fence isn't a boundary for it, only an engineering puzzle — it can be jumped over, dug under, forced, or, failing that, opened with a paw. And once it finds itself on the other side, it isn't running away from you at all. It's simply running toward — toward the horizon, a scent, an adventure, because in its head the world around the corner is always a touch more interesting than the command “stay.” That's not spite or a lack of attachment. It's an engine that ran in its ancestors for thousands of kilometers and still demands the road.

And here, precisely, lies the secret of this breed — something that will either scare you off or make you love the husky forever. The husky won't love you the way a dog created to please humans loves. It won't gaze into your eyes awaiting an order or angle for praise. Its attachment is different, rarer, and — once you understand it — more beautiful: it's the love of a free creature that owes you nothing and yet chooses your company. A husky isn't owned. At most you can earn a place on its team. And once it accepts you onto it — when this wild runner, after a mad dash across half the neighborhood, turns around and comes back to you of all people — you get something no submissive dog can give: proof that you were chosen by someone who didn't have to.

At the bowl the husky can surprise you, and strongly at that. It looks like a consummate athlete, so instinct suggests feeding it like an athlete — a mountain of food. In fact it's exactly the opposite: generations of work in the frost made it a master of thrift, a dog that does astonishingly much on an astonishingly small amount of fuel. It's one of the most frequently overfed dogs of all — and excess weight in so active a breed strikes straight at the hip joints, to which the husky is prone to begin with.

Because the husky isn't a dog for everyone — and that's exactly why people who once come to love it love it completely. Give it kilometers to run, an occupation for that sharp head, a fence worthy of its talents, and a figure as light as a true athlete's, and in return you'll get something more than obedience. You'll get a partner for adventures, a chatterbox, an eternal teenager with wolf's eyes and a warm heart.

And one frosty morning, when you're running together through fresh snow and it turns to you with that laughing face of its, tongue lolling to one side, you'll understand this whole breed in a single second: here is a creature created for freedom that, of all the roads in the world, chose the one at your side.