We were catching up on all of the questions and comments posted this week, and thought we would answer a few of them:

Digging Holes

Kat (which is one of my favorite Siberian names and I plan to “borrow” it some day) of Steve and Kat fame asks about the Journey to the Center of Earth:

How do you get your humans to let you dig big holes like that? Every time I start a hole, Mom puts poop in it. It’s so frustrating!

Well, Kat, the answer is simple.  Our humans think its great we dig holes.  Something about it tires us out and “A Tired Sibe is a Good Sibe.”  But we can’t dig just anywhere.  As part of our Sibe Quentin (the Chez Herd Siberian Containment System), we have a small area of the yard that we can get to anytime we want to.  And it is ours – all ours.  We can dig all we want.  Every now and then, they fill some of the really big holes in (something about not wanting to fall in and getting lost).  They also have concrete buried an entire foot (30 cm) deep and a foot wide all the way around the fence (which is 8 feet (244 cm) high), but the yard itself is just for dogs.

More about Digging Holes

Thor and Marco Polo ask:

How do you know when you are at the Center?

Wow – great question.  Again our humans are very helpful.  They tell us.  That’s right, they say “Enough” and we can stop digging because we have made it.  Of course, they also say that when we start singing really, really loudly or when we are wrestling inside the house, but we are pretty sure that it is an expression of gratitude.

Critters

Biloxi asks:

Woo have bea-woo-tiful hiking trails. Any deer or squirrels to catch your interest?

And The Op Pack asks:

Do you run into very many critters along the way?

We do.  We had a very close encounter earlier this summer with a deer (aka, Big Dog with Horns), but our human was not fast enough with the camera.

And our squirrels are interesting here.  You see, we have the Carolina Northern Flying Squirrel.  We have prayed and prayed for one to come gliding into Sibe Quentin, but no luck yet.  Of course, since Meeshka has warned us to be vigilant for flaming squirrels, we have decided to be very much on alert for the combination of flying and flaming squirrels with our history with fires.

Tourists

The Desert Pups ask:

Mom wants to know do you run into a lot of tourists when you’re hiking? Do they freak out when they see this huge pack of dogs coming at them?

We run into lots of tourists and enjoy it.  We bet hundreds of pictures a year are taken of The Herd because every time we are out, people are taking our pictures.  Sometimes, even at a traffic light, we look over and someone is snapping our picture.  The humans have threatened to put a sign on the Jeep that says Pictures = $5 just to see how much money we can raise.

As for freaking out, most people are thrilled to see us and a lot of people pet us.  Since most of The Herd are rescues, the Humans believe that the constant social interaction helps us overcome some of things that happened to us before we arrived at Chez Herd.  But every now and then, we do meet someone who is not excited to see us (go figure), and we have a strict rule that we step well off the trail and let them pass.  

Unfortunately, the Great Smoky Mountain National Park forbids dogs on trails – even when leashed – because other dogs (or, more accurately, their humans) have behaved poorly.  We hate that, because we can actually see that park from our house, but we never go.  Since we want to enjoy using all of the great forests and parks in our area, we behave on the trails.  At home, however, all bets are off!

Thanks for all the great questions.  Feel free to post more and we may answer some more in another post.