Juvenile Delinquents

One of the common questions I get is why I like Siberian Huskies so much.  What is it about the breed that gets to me?

I can certainly talk about the friend of mine who had one when I was a kid.  Or the striking looks.  Or the Jack London books.  Or any of the other reasons that people originally become interested in Siberians.  But once I got my first one as a very naive, inexperienced Siberian owner, I realized how frustrating the breed can be.  And exactly that frustration is what intrigues me so much about them.  As I like to tell them all of the time, they are juvenile delinquents.  Every one of them.  Not hard core criminals, but constantly up to some mischief.

Saturday evening, we come in from a day on the trail.  Dogs are fed, I get a quick shower, and I am walking out of the house to go get dinner.  Hmmmm – what is that Qannik is chewing on?  It’s white and looks like plastic?  And Kiska has something too?

I open the door and go into the dog room.  Dog room.  Built just for them.  With thick walls (not sheet rock – I have lived through that), concrete furniture (see the world famous Frankencouch to understand that), etc.  How can they possibly get into trouble there?  Hmmmm.  I used to have five of these:

Now, I had one of these:

And Qannik and Kiska were each chewing on half of a plastic outlet cover.  Notice that the outlet without a cover is also missing the screw.  Did they actually unscrew it?  Steal my tools?

So, I shut off the power to the outlets, went to the hardware store and bought five of these:

Metal plate. No access to outlets.  Screwed in with very long screws.  With Natasha supervising over my shoulder as I installed each one.  Probably trying to figure out how to unscrew them from the wall.  And snorting her displeasure through the whole thing.

But, I remind her, I learned from her Mama Bear Nikita, who would often stamp her feet and snort at me while I filled in holes with concrete that she dug under the fence (see Escape Artist).

Ever vigilant against the Siberian Delinquents.