This thread is one step away from being locked. Being butt hurt (either side here) about anything is no reason to start attacking each other.

All I will say is this....

Dragonfly wrote:

Honestly, I don't think you are all terrible dog owners, I really felt like something was to be said about making sure your dog, be it Husky, Retriever, Pitbull, or what have you, has proper training. That doesn't mean that I dub you all failures because you didn't properly train your dogs a certain way, my post was mostly meant to be food for thought.

In regards to this statement, I think that the problem here is that there are plenty of threads on this board suggesting just as you are: that emergency recall is a paramount part of husky ownership. I personally think it's a mistake to have one of your first threads be a lecture on this sort of thing when these threads already exist.

If I may give you a friendly piece of advice, take a minute to read through the forum. Get to know our members. I think you had a rough first start. This forum is a lot more open an accepting when you take the time to get to know the board, its members, and our personalities before diving headfirst into training threads like this.

Welcome to the forum

As I said, you are not really phrasing things to where they are apparently conveying your thoughts properly. I constantly have to rewrite things to keep them from coming across rude. I'd suggest the same to you, reread before you post on sensitive subjects such as this to make sure it isn't going to come across as judgmental in the worst possible way.

And unfortunately, though it's edited, it is sort of to where you're not going to get the bad taste out of your mouth from the original phrasing...


No one is saying everyone has to be in agreeance. But everyone does need to be respectful and not make general judgements and statements that could be viewed as directed towards a mass amount of members on here and really put them down for how they choose to handle their dogs. There's a difference between saying "here is what I do with my dogs and works for me" and "this is what you ALL should be doing and is the right way."


Like Tori said, you just joined and one of your first posts is sort of a critique/judgement call on huskies and recall and sort of targeting people on here. If you waited to get to know the members and see how much everyone is dedicated to their dogs, I don't think you'd of felt the need to post this. I'm guessing this stemmed from the Maya thread and that doesn't give even a glimpse into what most members believe in terms of recall training.

You have not made it seem that want to be part of a community. The whole time you have gotten defensive when anyone even asked you for proof or validity of anything. I asked for CERF and OFA numbers and you made it seem that I was attacking you. I care about Siberians. I care about this breed so much, so it's important for me to see health testing. I wasn't trolling your post, I was gathering information about your breeding program. I was trying to understand your program...as anyone else in the community would and instead you acted like I wasn't allowed to ask questions. They were questions I would ask ANY breeder, not just you.

The whole post was judgemental IMHO, the subject has been done to death and didn't need any further criticism from you. You have no idea how we train our dogs so why comment? You have no right to say we shouldn't own dogs because we CHOOSE not to let them off lead and CHOOSE to do the right thing by ourselves and our dogs. I don't comment on how you raise or "breed" your dogs so what gives you the right to judge me?

I'd suggest you actually get to know us and our dogs and how we train them before making blanket statements like you have. I work very hard to train my dogs, that still doesn't mean I would ever let them off lead. I feel like your thread didn't make a suggestion but rather said this is the only way to do it and unless you can do it don't own a dog.

Thanks Koda, I actually did spend two days reading threads here but I must have missed the emergency recall thread. I've also spent time reading about Huskies on other websites, so some of my opinions are based around things I've read there too, so I guess I was making responses to issues that I haven't actually seen on THIS forum/website.

Heather, thank you for taking the time to talk it out with me, I can definitely see what you mean about rereading. (I tend to make sure all of my punctuation is in order and the spelling is right, but I can see the need for proof reading better, I type REALLY fast compared to some and sometimes my brain gets ahead of my fingers or my train of thought leads off from what I'm currently typing out.

I've had people do the "my way is the right way" on me and I totally see what you mean. I don't actually have that opinion where dogs are concerned, even if I did come rub off the wrong way on first impression.

Hopefully we can all move past this and agree to disagree, I wish you well with your canine family.

Dragonfly wrote:

Thanks Koda, I actually did spend two days reading threads here but I must have missed the emergency recall thread. I've also spent time reading about Huskies on other websites, so some of my opinions are based around things I've read there too, so I guess I was making responses to issues that I haven't actually seen on THIS forum/website.

Don't feel bad. I created the forum and I don't think I've read all the threads. You'd have been hard-pressed to do so in two days

Perhaps there should be one thread where all helpful threads can be compacted into one by linking to them? There are too many for them all to be stickied, but it'd be nice to be able to find good threads (like the emergency recall thread which I just now read) with out having to use the search tool or go through pages of old threads to find them.

It's a good suggestion, but one I would hesitate implementing. By doing so, I'm advocating certain threads over others and oftentimes there are very valuable conversations that happen in the middle of threads on an unrelated topic that only the search function would find. We do our best to keep the forum tidy, but the forum itself is a living document. It changes as we post things and we discuss things stream of consciousness. Trying to organize it with a Table of Contents (if you will) is like trying to put all the thoughts in your brain into order in an organized fashion.

I think I would rather encourage people to use the search function so that they can find all the instances where these topics come up instead of being pointed to just a few threads that happen to focus on the topic at hand.

Ahh yeah I see what you mean lol.

There is a search button on the left hand side.

Stick around... and heed Heather's advice... and I think you might find that you like it here. Heather is an expert in learning how to "talk forum". You'd be learning from the best

Despite what has been said to this point, I'd like to focus on the positive and saying that, regardless of breed, an emergency recall is definitely a good idea. Whether you mean to have your husky off-leash or these escape artists figure out how Kong makes their collars and gets out of them, an emergency recall is bound to come in handy at some point of a dog's life.

So, to the OP, thank you for pointing that out. I think it's a very valuable thing to be aware of, and for others who didn't do the search (which causes me frustrations sometimes ), this is a good thing to keep in mind.

I'm not advocating off leash, and I'm not not-advocating off-leash. Like time and time again, to each their own. Nobody knows your dogs better than you do, but emergency recall is always a good point to include in your training points with your furbaby.

I do think that it's important to emphasize recall training and to remind people that just because we have huskies does not excuse us from attempting to train them as best we can. But I also think it's important to phrase things in a way that doesn't make it seem like you're personally attacking everyone whose dog doesn't have a good recall.

Koda wrote:

Stick around... and heed Heather's advice... and I think you might find that you like it here. Heather is an expert in learning how to "talk forum". You'd be learning from the best

I'm not kidding when I say I have to check my posts every time! People would be amazed looking at my posts from 4 years ago, haha.

I will Koda. Despite the arguments I've been in, I think this forum is pretty neat.
And I will for sure take more care in my posts from now on, from the beginning I was trying to not make (too many) waves. But practice never hurt any one. xD

Thanks Angela, I feel like some of the information people stress about Huskies is a little unfair to the breed, sort of like when people say pitbulls can't be trusted because they are naturally mean and aggressive.

Saying that Huskies can't be well trained because they are stubborn and independent is misleading. (That being said, I'm not saying any of YOU said that, but I have heard that and I think it's bull.)

Like I said, I definitely agree with you that it is common for people to use the excuse "they're a husky!" for their dog having bad manners when a husky IS capable of being as good as any other dog. But each husky is different and some dogs really are a huge PITA in some areas. Where they came from can be a huge factor on that!

katiesham wrote:

But I also think it's important to phrase things in a way that doesn't make it seem like you're personally attacking everyone whose dog doesn't have a good recall.

Yeah, I hear that. But in fairness to everybody, it's been pointed out to him (multiple times), and I have to commend the OP for realizing that he may have mis-phrased some of his words. Not everybody has a flair for forum-speak.

But anyway, glad to hear you agree about the emergency recall... There are people in the dog park who are amazed that Stark listens to me (most of the time). There's still a few hurdles to jump through before I'm there with Stark.

Also... (just because I like these smileys)

That is certainly true lol, Koen was absolute hell for the first couple of months because of all the bad habits and bad tricks he knew, and daang was he STRONG for a dog that must have been 6-7 years old.

I'm currently reading this page on husky personalities.
http://www.siberescue.com/breed/magician.php

Angela, I've been wondering under what circumstances somebody would use that smiley, I guess you nailed it. ROFL

Dragonfly wrote:

Angela, I've been wondering under what circumstances somebody would use that smiley, I guess you nailed it. ROFL

Cause I'm amaze-balls like that!

LOL - Sorry - still trying to finish up work -- aaaargh

Just came across this thread. i wasn't a member back in January so I missed all the hubbub. I do not want to open any old wounds on this. I was just searching on recall issues today because I have had my husky for 3 weeks and getting her to come when called (in a fenced in yard) has been my biggest trial. I have been trying some of the training techniques that I am already familiar with and tried and true methods with my other girls. Not getting much progress. So I appreciate the links to some other training materials. They weren't much different from what my technique has been, but they gave me some good ideas on what to tweak to make some progress with Adelaide.