Hello all I just joined and wanted to introduce my huskies and, less importantly myself. You can call me Eto and my dogs Frey and Abigail live in the countryside of southern Arizona on a little farm. I have always been a fan of the breed but having just moved from 7 years stint of apartment living in the Pacific Northwest I finally felt I had the space for these great dogs to enter my life.



Now about the huskies! Frey is the black and white male who is 5 months and Abigail is the 9 week old red baby girl. Frey is oddly quiet, he is always listening for a command no matter where he is and is absolutely as sweet as can be. Abigail on the other hand is the standard "talker" and will tell me off for not filling the food dishes quickly enough however she's smart as can be and while stubborn, enjoys learning and of course playing.



Anyway I'm glad to be here and while it my first time straying from the Doberman community I am very excited to join you all!

Welcome to the forum and wow what great looking pups you have. Lol yes they are quite different than dobies aren't they, hahahahaha. Dobermans are in my top 5 favorite breeds, but huskies take top dog for me and as I can see you too!!can't wait to see these two grow. They look pretty happy with eachother, love the pics! <3

Thank you for the kind welcome and I am so glad you like my little ones! Both Frey and Abigail hit off right away and are always together playing or sleeping so it's quite adorable. I gotta say I'm loving the energy this breed gives off so far after being so used to the ever alert, intense, velcro doberman vibe. Don't get me wrong Dobermans are amazing dogs - like you know - but I'm so happy to have a new breed in my life to dedicate myself to! Plus...my dobergirl loves Frey and since he can't rough house with Abi yet those two are a great match.

Welcome to the forum. Great looking pups.

Welcome - gorgeous pups you have!

Welcome aboard! Can't wait to see all of the adventures you guys have in your new home.

Hi Sarah and welcome to the forum.  I'm another desert dweller and this thread you can see my place. Quite a bit of differences between our two deserts - you have more grasses (from your pictures) and I have more creosote and sage bushes. Just for the tech - I live in the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert - what's yours?

Welcome! Your dogs are beautiful

hi, welcome to the forums. you fur babies are adorable; specially the one with his arm around her, super cute pics.

Your pups are adorable!!! Welcome to the forum! My dad used to have nothing but Dobermans, they are amazing dogs.

Apologies for the late response, I've been super busy and troubles keep arising. But thank you all for the warm welcome!

@aljones We live in the southern Arizona desert where we have a lot of shrubby trees and short cacti. The jumping cholla here pose a real problem because if the dogs run past one they end up with bits stuck in their fur and ultimately Frey tries to chew on them. May I ask how you deal with the heat and your pups? I'm thinking of getting kiddy pools and filling them with ice during the summer heat.

We don't get quite as hot here as you do over there.  I went to visit some friends one summer in Phoenix and for the two weeks I was there the daytime temps were always in the 110+ area.  We normally stick around 100 - 90's a cool day and 110 is simply way too hot.

Bear in mind I'm dealing with three adult dogs and I'd be real inclined to say that a dog less than a year old is not going to be able to control its body temp as well as an older dog.

How do we live in the summer - well, just about the way that people have lived over here for centuries.  We have no air conditioning - except the breeze that comes in the back door, so when it hits the century mark we do what everything else over here does, we hole up till it cools off.  Avalanche - my sun dog - will happily lay out in the sun when it's 85-95 but when it hits 100, he's wanting inside.  My other two, naw, when it gets around 90 or better, they're crashed till late evening when the sun goes down and it starts to cool off to 80 or so.  During the 1/4 moon or better, we may go out walking at night - gotta have light to see snakes.  Avalanche likes it since he gets to go make friends with the rabbits and Sasha and Sky chase each other - one of the few times they get along well is when they're running.

Okay, I had to go look.  You're in the northern Sonoran desert and you are several degrees warmer than I am here.  I don't think that's going to change what I have to say though.  The two requirements - as you probably well know - for the desert are shade and water, not necessarily in that order but both are important.  (( okay, pedant, quit now ))  My dogs get the occasional dip in one of the tinajas we have a few miles away but since the cattle use it as well, I kinda steer clear of the stinky mess.  I've taken them down to the Rio Grande but between it's chemical pollution and swift flow - I don't do that often.

We live simply, they don't have a pool - the water would evaporate too quickly to be feasible and while Sasha will wade in a pool none are too impressed by standing water; I do have a waterer like this one that holds a 4 or 5 gallon jug of water.  In between dogs, birds, bees, road runners and the occasional coyote I fill it about once a week during the summer.  

They have access to an area under the porch if they're outside and of course, during the summer they're most always inside.  If you looked at the thread where's Al live you'll also see that I have a huge water catchment roof so it provides me and the dogs shade during the heat of the day and water.

This is an oddity to me - I know that we have people further north who have ice baths for their dogs during the summer but I don't think I would.  The idea of a hot dog jumping into an icy pool just seems wrong - I have the suspicion that the change in temperature would be too much of a shock to their systems.  As an aside, those who do use ice baths all seem to live in cooler, more humid climates where an animals natural cooling might not work as well as our do in the desert.  As a further aside, I've given my dogs ice cubes - and they ignore them, all of them!

All of the above relates to me and my dogs - as the saying goes "Works for us!"  I'd probably be more concerned with a dog who was less than a year old since their bodies aren't as effective at regulating their own temperatures.

One final note - something I don't have to deal with - there's a problem with some grasses, which I see a lot of in your pictures. There are some grasses whose seed will go into a dogs nose when it inhales - I'll leave it to someone who knows more than I to explain symptoms and 'cure'.

@aljones Oh wow, thank you for all the information! We do have an ac here so they will have access to a cool, shaded house on top of plenty of clean water but since these are my first snow dogs I was concerned.

I'm not sure about this but my mother - whom I moved out here to help out after my step father's passing - mentioned that they have "evaporated cooler jackets" for dogs. So I guess they work by getting them wet and they work on some sort of coolant system to keep the animal at reasonable temperature even in the summer.

As for the grass seed, I am worrying about that as well because just today my Doberman and youngest came in sneezing because they had to sniff up stuff. I'm not sure how to stop this kind of thing but because these aren't the only dogs who grew up in this environment I am hoping it won't be too detrimental to their health. Maybe I can ask our country vet about how they deal with seeds and thorns here?

Neither husky comes from this state originally and my Doberman who loves the heat is also from another place so I have to fret about them... However you did alevate quite a few of my worries since your snow pups can handle the heat near you even if there is an age difference in our dogs.

Welcome, your dogs are so very cute! Best of luck with them.