Why are huskies characterized as being "not off-leash dogs"? Is this some notion that has been handed down over time that has everyone terrified so they don't give their huskies a chance? I rarely use one and he always stays within ear-shot of me. I have had him 2 and 1/2 months and started him on a 50' lead at first, but within a week he was running off-lead. He will chase things but always comes back. The only problem I have is getting him to jump in the car voluntarily, but if I toss a treat in and he will jump in after it.

I have some good advice for folks who want them off leash. Go on hikes or excursions with other people who have dogs that are good off-lead. Huskies are pack animals and will stay with pack. Reward them when they come to check-in with you. Do this a number of times if possible, and they give them a chance to earn your trust. Use treats and good affirmations when you call them. They are smart and trainable and look to you to be their alpha pack leader.

Koda wrote:

You're on a roll today!

I just wanted to add my little face: -_-

Oh Tori you are on it today.


Sorry my 2 stay leashed, just love them too much to lose

jbealer wrote:

Oh Tori you are on it today.


Sorry my 2 stay leashed, just love them to much to lose

More quotes for truth! except I only have one.

Koda wrote:

Mine will still on leash.. he just wants to run..

jbealer wrote:

Oh Tori you are on it today.


Sorry my 2 stay leashed, just love them too much to lose

Agreed!!! I actually got into a little spat with my best friend and her boyfriend while visiting in GA over the weekend. I told them that next time we went we would make the drive and take the pups. Their 3 dogs are let outside off leash and don't go anywhere. It's awesome how trained they are, but MY DOGS will run. They think otherwise. I'm like dude, do me a favor, look up huskies and then argue with me. I was getting a bit upset actually. Don't tell me that MY dogs won't run when you don't know anything about the breed! Fine, some might not run and that's great, but MINE WILL. They're like they won't run away here. Really? Just because you're in the country they won't run. Okkkk

If your dog was a rescue, he still may not feel totally secure with his surroundings and comes back to you because he feels safe. Eventually though, he will have the confidence to go without stopping, and will do so.

I want so badly for Keeonah to be an off leash dog, and have had her off leash a few times without an issue. We go for a 2 mile walk, practicing heel (she walks on a loose leash 80% of the time now! ) and the last block(about 100 yards from my front door and no cross streets in between us and the front door), I will unhook her leash, and we continue working on heel. Twice now she has stayed at my hip all the way to the house, but once she got excited and took off. She knows the house well and went to the front door herself, recognizing that the walk was over. However, if even one distraction had been present, Cat, guy on a bicycle, guy off a bicycle, *shudders* a car. Then there is no doubt in my mind she would be gone. For this reason, I pick and choose her fleeting off leash moments very carefully. If it is just me and her, with no other distraction, I can keep her focused and get her to recall from almost 50m away. did it once at an empty park. But there are too many variables for me to do it comfortably all the time.

I'd say Keeonah has an above average recall, and a well above average heel, but if you set a dog born to run free, one of those times, they will seize the opportunity.

We have tried the off-leash in rural areas twice. There was a party (the night before the rehearsal dinner party) at the in-laws, and since the dogs always wanted to be around people, we put 8 ft. leads on and let them wander, dragging the leads. After about 10 minutes of the little cousins playing with them, they come to me and say "Where are Juno and Bleeker?"

Spent a good half hour yelling for them in the woods, and when they heard me they came running back. I think they started exploring and just got lost. Same thing happened a few months later, but it was letting them run from me to the older cousin (100 ft away) dragging their leads. They ran towards him, veered left to stay out of his reach, and headed for the hills. Get them back about 1/2 hour later that time too, but decided twice was enough for us.

If people train them to be off lead and it works, great! For me, the one time it takes for something to go wrong (with an auto, wild animal, dog hater, whatever would leave me with a lifetime of guilt and telling myself I should have known better.

See that's the thing. I feel like so many Husky owners want to be an exception to the rule "oh my husky is different though". And then we hear about the horror story later. My pup does seem to be genuinely good off leash, and i want to keep working with her little bits at a time while she gets older, because who knows. If we work at it and work at it in really safe conditions, maybe she CAN do it, but i am a bundle of nerves every single time i unhook her lead, because one day something in her mind might be different. It's a sensitive subject for a reason i guess

Basically - Murphy's Law "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

You're dog could have near perfect recall (there is no such thing as 'perfect' recall) and that one time something is going to set the dog off and they're not going to listen to you AT ALL. By allowing your dog off leash in any unclosed area you're opening the door and inviting in ALL kinds of possibilities for your dog to run and run and never look back. You could lose your dog forever because you decided "well, since he/she always stays by me and never wants to wander they must be good off leash!".

Until that one time when they aren't good off leash.

That isn't to say that no Siberian can be trained to be off-leash. But you can't also tell me that those people haven't had at least ONE incident where that dog took off and ran and ran and they couldn't call their dog back or off whatever it was going for.

Bella has above average recall but I work with her daily on it. I still would never trust her off leash anywhere that wasn't fully enclosed.

Tccgold wrote:

If people train them to be off lead and it works, great! For me, the one time it takes for something to go wrong (with an auto, wild animal, dog hater, whatever would leave me with a lifetime of guilt and telling myself I should have known better.

Just how i feel as well.

yeah i have let S&J off leash, but we are always a few hours in on a hike with NO trees/woods in site and were with eddys pack, it works but i would take every time into account and if there is ANY second guessing they stay leashed.

I don't trust my dogs anywhere off leash, not even my little ones who would never in a million years think of not being able to see me.

We use a 20 foot lead on both dogs, then tie them together if we want them to be able to be "off-leash". Kya will normally come back, but not always, so if we do this, they are more likely to stay near us because they feel the pull of the leash, even though it is tied to them. That again, does not ensure that they will never run off, we have just found a way to trick them into staying near but being able to run when I can't.

I know that isn't a traditional method, but hey, it has worked so far

jbealer wrote:

yeah i have let S&J off leash, but we are always a few hours in on a hike with NO trees/woods in site and were with eddys pack, it works but i would take every time into account and if there is ANY second guessing they stay leashed.

YEP! It is all situational awareness, and knowing when it's a poor idea IMHO. In the 4 months that I have had Keeonah she has been off lead outside for a total of maybe 30 minutes lol.

All of my dog's are off-leash trained (non-huskies) accept for Hayden. We tried training him and it was going pretty good, but I had a terrible scare when he saw another dog and bolted out our gates straight for a major highway! Thankfully I had his treats with me and bribed him to come to me. That was it for me and I wouldn't let him off a leash if someone paid me! I'm glad some people have great success with it, but I'm perfectly happy saying my Husky is leashed and I know he's safe

MyKeeonah wrote:

If your dog was a rescue, he still may not feel totally secure with his surroundings and comes back to you because he feels safe. Eventually though, he will have the confidence to go without stopping, and will do so.

I pretty much assumed that this is the reason Rio will run straight towards me anytime she gets the chance at the park. She still is not comfortable and does NOT want to be away from me. I know it's only a matter of time until she is a crazy running husky, so I refuse to let her off lead.

Like everyone else, I love my dogs WAY too much to loose them. I've been through that, will do everything NOT to go through that again.

http://www.diamondsintheruff.com/nopulling.html

On another note (sorry but )

I use this method with Keeonah, as well has holding a treat right above my knee, getting her to trot after it. Say heel, give her the treat mid stride. The two methods together have made Keeonah no less than exceptional on lead. If the leash was always going to be as slack as it now is with her, there is no real point in going off lead

MyKeeonah wrote:

I use this method with Keeonah, as well has holding a treat right above my knee, getting her to trot after it. Say heel, give her the treat mid stride. The two methods together have made Keeonah no less than exceptional on lead. If the leash was always going to be as slack as it now is with her, there is no real point in going off lead

On that note, have you guys had success with a husky immediately being good on a lead? I can't explain it, because she has NEVER had training, but the first time I put Rio on a lead, she was looking at me and stayed right next to me, watching me the entire time. Like I had spent months training her to do it!

My husband had a hard time understanding why I never let Lady one of my other huskies that passed away in 2007 off her leash. I had her for 10 years she listen to all my commands had a great recall. My husband would turn her loose in the tennis courts at the school in the winter time she did great.
We moved to FL and my hubby thought he would try it here in his moms backyard she had no fence. After about a week my daughter took her out without the leash. She was gone, it took 2 days to find her.
Oh, btw... we did take her and my other husky at the time hiking all the time at a place called Oldmans Caves. They loved it there.
Plus I prefer to keep mine on a leash to avoid someone else dogs biting someone and my getting the blame.

It's the continual story of someone posting how good their husky is off leash for months and th the final post stating they wished they had listened and kept their husky on lead because their dog either got ran over by a car or they took off days ago and have not seen them since. In fact... This just happened to a guy on another forum. I would be happy to provide you with his contact information so you can here his story and how heartbroken he is over the loss. By-the-way, he had her off leash for years without any issues until this last time. Most of us just don't think that is arisk worth taking.

Nope nope nope.

I have chased my ass hats way too many times to ever voluntarily let them off leash. Mickey is good but I would never walk him around somewhere with no leash. It's a risk that isn't worth it to me.

We practice recall all the time but I would never unhook the leashes and let them be free with nothing to keep them safe.

I may be new here, but of the handful of posts I read, it seems that every so often someone posts some thread posed as a question but they're really just trying to brag for some reason I don't understand.

My husky is 99% wolf and 75% dinosaur and she doesn't need a crate, a leash or a collar. She has instant recall and likes to obey commands without treats. She's so smart she actually learned how to stop shedding. In her spare time, when she isn't positively contributing to the amount of money I have, she likes to split her time being nice to the local neighborhood cats and not being freaked out by toddlers.

I'm pretty sure that most huskies should be on leashes most, if not all, of the time. Doesn't seem that controversial to me.

Chris_C wrote:

My husky is 99% wolf and 75% dinosaur and she doesn't need a crate, a leash or a collar. She has instant recall and likes to obey commands without treats. She's so smart she actually learned how to stop shedding. In her spare time, when she isn't positively contributing to the amount of money I have, she likes to split her time being nice to the local neighborhood cats and not being freaked out by toddlers.

nice Chris, now are you breeding that husky/wolf/dinosaur, cause you know there should be more!

Yes, thank you Jennifer. I am definitely breeding her and selling the pups for $10,000 a piece, but I'm only doing it because I care so much about the dogs, and because our society is the perfect place for more animals like that. And if people don't end up liking them, they can just take them to their local pound, no worries.

I'm not sure why anyone would allow a dog off-leash that has an undeniable instinct to run. Couple that with a high prey drive and you're flirting with disaster. I have this argument far too often with people: "you're mean because you crate your dogs and keep them on a leash. Mine HATES his crate and does fine off-leash." Oh, and this one always gets me: "if they really loved you, they wouldn't run away. You must not treat them right."

Just because a dog/husky does fine off-leash doesn't mean he/she will always be that way. If something interesting enough catches their attention, having decent recall and being the "pack leader" might not be enough. Why take that risk? Allow them off-leash in a fenced in area where it's safe. I don't understand how anyone can not see how risky this is, ESPECIALLY with an animal that's BORN with instinct that makes running away even more likely.