My house or your house

I’ll take mine thank you.

People sometimes wonder why our huskys stay outside and not always indoors on the couch. For one thing… we only have one couch. Also, most of the dogs feel comfortable in their own house. This doesn’t mean that they don’t enjoy being in my house. They do. But, I can say with certainty that each dog enjoys having its own house. A dog has a sense of independence and pride with its own house.

Each dog’s house is located in a particular spot in the yard, next to particular neighbors. Many dogs have lived in the same spot for years. They know where their house is and return to it after training runs, dog room weigh ins, play pen romps or simple kennel meanderings.

How do they know which house is theirs? Well, the simple answer is: They are not dumb dogs. It’s their house. How do you know how to return to your home at the end of the day?

At their house they keep their treasures. Each dog has bones, kongs and chew toys, as well as fresh straw bedding and their own food dish. It’s their food dish. If they choose to eat their entire meal, great. If they don’t then they can clean up the remnants when they want. The house and space around it is their own ‘personal area’ – no one else should intrude.

Each dog returns to their house willingly. But you still have to expect them to be dogs: they take the loooonnnng way home or they pee on their neighbor’s first house or they visit the dog room and clean up 8 kibbles on the floor or they get sidetracked because the play pen gate is open… Oh! Yay.

The other day, Gravy and Chipper did not go on the training run. They each had a scheduled day off. Instead of going out with the teams they spent the afternoon in one of the play pens. When the time came to return to their houses for the evening, they were let loose to run and ‘find their house.’ Now I have to admit that Gravy saw Karolyn walking in the rear of the yard with a full bucket of dog food and took off to accompany her. Can you blame him? But, once he focused, turned around and galloped back to his house, he was rewarded with an enormous, tasty warm meal. Chipper was pissed off that she sat out of the training run, so she ran to her house, ignored her meal and visited with her two neighbors, Champ and Commando. Both boys ignored her and eventually she flitted back to her house. Hurmph.

We added a human feature to the dogs’ houses. New name plates. Of course, all of us at SPK can tell Sanka, Amber, Junior and Violet apart, but it’s nice when we have visitors to able to say, “Please go harness QT” and our guest doesn’t come back with Bruno in tow. Oops. Plus Karolyn worked very hard on the name plates and I LOVE them!

Dogs take pride in their houses. How do I know? Well, every boy dog who lifts his leg to claim his property is outwardly proud of his house. It shows as winter continues and a pride pee-cicle gets larger and larger. Yes… this is gross in our judgmental human brains, but not in a dog’s brain. They think it’s awesome! (FYI Kodiak is currently winning in pee-cicle size.)