Ive been looking for a husky for a long time In New Delhi, India but couldnt find a good one. All these agents who arent breeders themselves keep calling me and sending me pictures but nothing works out eventually ( Either the breeder backs out or I dont like the puppy etc.).

I got tired of all this and finally went directly to a breeder who has 17 adult huskys. I put down a small deposit and he said he'll keep me informed as and when puppies become available. This litter was born about a month back, initially i really wanted a black and white pup but when i went to see them i instantly like the grey/brown/black one. Here are some pictures. This was last week and today I have to go and pick him up, by now he should be grown up and more playful.

Also, Ive decided to name him Bruce!

It's so tiny, and so cute. When the right one comes along you just know it. Good luck and welcome to the forum!

So I got him and the Breeder recommended a crate/cage and gave it to me on a rental basis, I hate the idea of a cage but i think he's too small and he might hurt himself somehow by chewing on wires or by sleeping on the cold floor and I would be sleeping and won't get to know.

Whenever he sleeps off I put him in there but he keeps getting up and crying after every 15 minutes, on the contrary if I'm driving and if he's on my lap or someone elses he can sleep for hours and won't cry, he basically misses his siblings and mother. I think i got him a week too soon, he's still too small.

We're having fun tho and he's become playful and enthusiastic and he's exploring and its only been one day!!

8 weeks is the usually recommended time to wait to take them away. Once he gets used to the crate he will love it. That is his place and just work on keeping his place positive with special treats he only gets there. He looks like he is settling to it very well from the looks of the last picture. It just takes a little time. My mix cried a lot at first but quickly grew to love his crate and would often go on his own and even sleep there at night when he didn't have to.

Ya i think 8 weeks is the right time, this guy seems to be about 5 weeks. Got him a bit too early. He's now getting used to his crate like you said, Ive now started keeping the cage door open so whenever he has to sleep he crawls inside, Ive made it very comfy by putting in colourful and warm clothes and he's taking to it.

Do your dogs still have crates even though they're grown up or so simple rugs/beds at a corner in the room.

I still crate my 2 year old at night and when we aren't home. I don't quite trust him enough for long periods of time, plus it's for his own safety.


Your Bruce is a cutie though!

I don't crate my girl. She's 5 and fine as long as paper isn't within reach. The black and tan male isn't a husky but we still crated up until a couple months ago. He's 3. We are still selective about when he's allowed to not be crated while we are away. No matter how much you dog proof your house they always seem to find a way to get in trouble.

My last dog didn't require crating at all, but during his first 5 years he got punished a lot for doing wrong things , even a few slaps here and there so by the time he was older if ever he did something wrong like run downstairs and get into a fight or make a mess in the house he knew he had done something wrong and would hide and be sorry when we addressed the issue with him but he never got reprimanded severely because he basically understood what was right and wrong and thats all one could ask for. I think the same has to be done with this guy so that he has more freedom later on.

Ive got another question. Bruce currently has one eye which is blue but not completely , towards the outer circumference of his pupil there is a small black ring. The other eye is less blue with just a sliver of a blue ring. he's now 5 weeks of age, will his eyes continue to change colour either way or would they stay the same. Ive also had the feeling that he has a bit of a squint which you can make out in the pictures here. Does it just look like that coz of the difference in colour in both eyes?

Another question I have is that when I got him the breeder specifically told me to not pet him on his ears as they might droop and I must've done it a few times and now one ear has become droopy. Will this fix itself as he grows?

I think both these things are visible in these pictures.

Oh and some more questions.

The breeder said don't take him out till he gets all his vaccinations which will take about 3 months and also don't bathe him till then, he's been living with his littermates and other dogs and is smelly and a bit dirty, how soon would it be safe to bathe him.

He currently eats 4 times a day, 7 - 12 - 5 - 10 are his timings and when we're preparing his food he can smell it and starts searching for it all over the house and whines till he gets it. I think he was the most plump of his littermates and his little tummy balloons after he eats. His food comprises of 3/4th cup water, 2 tsp of milk, 1 tsp of cerelac, 1 tsp of the puppy food the breeder gave, we mix it all together and boil it and make it into a thick paste and give it to him. Do you have any suggestions as to wether this food is alright. Till 2 days before he was only on his mothers milk.

Some more pictures, does anyone know why the portrait ones are uploading in landscape

If you had to punish your last dog a lot for doing wrong things then my thoughts on the matter was that he didn't really know better (if he did he wouldn't have done them) he seemed like he knew better because he could read your distress as you walked in the room and saw the mess and that's why he hid. Around here we prefer to prevent bad behavior by not giving them the opportunity to get in trouble by crating when we can't watch them. Huskies are notorious for getting into things you never thought they could and making messes other breeds of dogs would never dream of. It's not only important to prevent these messes for your sanity but for the safety of the dog. A bottle of pills you thought was out of reach for your old dog is probably not as far out of reach for a full grown and determined husky.

The eyes will change some but until he is older it's hard to say how much. Multi-colored eyes, or parti eyes, is normal and can give a dog the illusion of squinting or even being cross eyed when they really aren't. This variation of eye color isn't a sign of anything wrong with the dog's eyes or ability to see. That's just how the coloring turned out.

I am no expert on young puppy food but that seems like a lot to feed 4 times a day. If he's really bloated up afterwards then I would cut back a little. I would take out the normal milk and just do a little bit of the cerelac formula (1/2 cup or 1/4 cup liquid mix) in with some kibble and start transitioning him slowly over to hard food. Just make the transition slow so as to not throw off his digestive system too much so he doesn't end up with the runs any worse than he already might.

As for the pictures, it's the formatting in your camera. Camera's are set up to always take landscape so when you take a portrait style picture you will need to manually rotate the picture in your camera's software or Windows live photo gallery (if you have PC) then you can post them all the proper direction.

Taking puppies to places where there have been other dogs before they have had all of their shots is playing with fire since pre-shots they can catch Parvo, Rabies and any number of other things. If you take him out be cautious about where you go. Avoid places where other dogs have been. I would go ahead and give him a bath but huskies don't need bathed often usually or it can really freak their skin out. My girl only gets a bath 2 times a year. I would get a good gentle oatmeal shampoo. Don't want anything too harsh on his young skin. As for the ears, I've not heard the no touching or they will never stand. It takes time for the cartilage to build up enough strength to stand and it maybe possible that touching his ears can slow down his ears standing.

I think he understood too, for example if we ever ran downstairs if the door was open or he pushed open the door, when someone would go fetch him or when he came upstairs and we were waiting for him he would growl and snap and quickly hide beneath some furniture because he knew he had been reprimanded before for the same thing, we didn't make it a point to get him out and punish him again, just that he understood that it was a bad thing to do was enough. Similarly if we made a mess in the house and we would point and call him to the place where he had peed , he would very guiltily walk slowly with his tail down and again we wouldn't punish him for it, but before all this happened he was punished a few times. I know some people wince at the thought of physical punishment towards a sweet dog but somehow I don't like restricting them and the more they understand whats wrong and what the punishment associated with it is, the more reluctant they are to do it and the more freedom they get.

I think the point you're trying to make is that a husky is a completely different dog and they are very mischievous and sometimes crating is the best solution. Ill keep asking for advice and if crating is the best solution i guess ill have to do it.

We have reduced to the quantity a bit and in a weeks time the breeder has told us to take it from 4 meals to 3 a day so that should balance it out. Also we'll start mixing in vegetables like spinach in his food and start giving him non vegetarian food once a week.

Yes I think it'll take some time for the cartilage to build up, till then no one is allowed to touch his ears at home. Also a bath has been scheduled for next Sunday

Love his name lol. He is super cute!

Thanks

Something very scary happened yesterday, I was holding him and he squirmed out my hands and fell on the floor which is concrete and he immediately became completely stiff with his neck at a very unnatural angle and shivered a bit and cried. It was so scary and we rushed him to the vet which is about 10 minutes away from our house. Through the way he was absolutely still and he had clenched his jaw. He was so scared and so were we, the vet saw him and gave him a couple of painkiller drops and slowly he became better. We observed him throughout the day and he was better in a couple of hours, he's running and jumping and being naughty and eating properly so I think he's alright now.

Wow, glad he's okay. Luckily baby anything's are pretty resilient. Often times more resilient than our hearts when they scare us.

He's been with us for 10 days now and he's getting more energetic. He's extremely stubborn and just doesn't listen. Maybe he's too small to understand at the moment. I have a couple of problems tho.

One is that he's tries to eat everything, like bird poo and vegetable skin and whatever he can find, we try to keep all that away but during meal times and before all kind of things fall on the floor. Its impossible to keep him out of the kitchen, the only way to do it is to keep him in his crate and doing that will result in him crying for half n hour and I'm not sure he understands thats why he was put in the crate in the first place. When i try to take bird poo out of his mouth he snaps and bites aggressively and when i slap him slightly he does so even more, he's not being submissive to physical punishment , on the contrary he becomes even more aggressive so I've stopped doing that since i tried to pet him once and he snapped at the hand aggressively because he must remember what that hand did, i then calmed him down with the same hand and pacified him and gave positive verbal reaffirmation and he was okay then and let me touch him with that hand, Ive decided since that no more hitting as I don't want him to revolt everytime I touch him. He also bites other people when they take away stuff he really wants, or take him away from an area he wants to be at.

What can I do to let him know that its not okay to eat stuff like that? Im not sure his attention span or intelligence has developed to the point where he can correlate punishment like the crate to his undesirable acts.

I have taught him to sit and he understands that command now although he may or may not listen according to the mood.

The second problem is that I took him to a park downstairs which is very well maintained and put a leash to his collar, the collar i put on him as soon as i got him so he's used to that but he hates the leash, he just won't move. He detests it so I got him upstairs and in the night I put the leash around him and a carpet close by and reduced the leash radius so that he doesn't have too much movement room. I wanted him to be submissive to the leash and understand that its okay. The thing he hates about the leash is that it prevents him from going where he wants to go and instead takes him into a undesirable direction and he hates that so he just parks himself and doesn't move and tries to free himself. Ive attached a few pictures. Im not pulling him too hard in those pictures, just to a point where the leash is taunt.

Now I went to a good pet store in the morning and they said that he's too small to understand anything at this point, he doesn't even understand his name and we should not try to walk him/ train him or restrict him from doing anything undesirable for anything else because his brain is too small to process any information and understand it, they say that we should wait till he's 2-3months old before we can start training him.

I understand that and I'm all for being patient but how do i curb things like eating bird poo and biting people. I can let go of the leash for a month but what if he doesn't take to it even then, should i be looking to leash him and take him for little walks on the rooftop in the hope that he's okay with it in 2-3 weeks or even a month or do i wait for more time and risk him being even more stubborn at that time. The leash is very crucial according to me and him being obedient too because considering he's a husky he's going to need a lot of exercise and he can't be trusted to be safe without a leash in parks because this is India and the number of street dogs and other unsafe things are around in plenty.

Puppies can learn at an early age, it's just slow and you can't do training for extended periods of time. As young as you got your puppy he missed a crucial portion of socialization with his siblings that teaches bite inhibition. Dogs explore their world with their mouths and it is their siblings that teach them how hard is too hard to bite and how often is too often. When he bites yelp really loud and then give him a firm no. The yelp will simulate what his sibling would have done.

If you want him to like the crate, don't use it as punishment. Like hitting has made him timid to good touching, using the crate as punishment will make him dislike the crate as well. Try using a bathroom or gating off a corner of a room as his time out area. Same with the kitchen. If you don't want him in there start by gating it off if possible. Or every time he goes into the kitchen, pick him up and sit him outside of the kitchen telling him no followed by wait. Do this every time he steps in. Set him back, no, wait. When he waits, give him a treat and praise. Wait will be a good command for him to know when he is older as well because you can use it to keep him from darting out doors.

As for the leash, there are several leash training threads with several different techniques you can try. If you search leash you will get a plethora of options. I would start by getting him used to the leash by letting him drag it around the house. Of course he isn't going to like the leash. It's a big new world and he is curious and it's holding him back. Once he has gotten used to it and the idea of dragging it around then you can start teaching him that going where you want is a good thing by luring him with treats and praise when he does good and not dragging him along. Until all of his shots are done it's not safe for him to be at parks where other dogs have been but if you start getting him used to the leash now he will be better by the time he is old enough to really need the exercise.

Here's a thread for another owner with a fellow poop eating pup.

https://www.itsahuskything.com/t14305-again-at-my-witts-end#215668