That's fine. I have heard of precautions taken anecdotally, but on that point I stand corrected. I have certainly seen it in so far as "not recommended for hot climates."

I don't personally think its a big deal. It's just an interesting ethical question to raise in this context of how I've framed it as a feature of the breed's structural function.

Uhhh.. I got Koda when I lived in Arizona. No issues, whatsoever. Both my dogs prefer AZ over CO and hate coming back here. We can't wait to move back next year.
I have spoken with a NUMBER of respectable breeders who know I may be getting another dog in 2015 and no one has ever cared I live in Arizona. Maybe if I locked them outside all summer with and never let them inside, they'd care, but if your dog has access to the indoors, who'd ever have an issue with it? Even in Colorado, the temps go over 100 these days. Isn't as cold as it use to be.

This is in AZ late June, well over 110 degrees, and we have a dog door so they can choose to be in or out freely.... and inside, we keep it about 67 degrees during the summer.


He chose to bask in the AZ sun. So, I'm pretty sure my dog does fine in the heat as do many others. They LOVE sunbathing. And we have a ton of huskies in Arizona.
Huskies were bred to endure harsh winter conditions. Doesn't mean they can't handle hot conditions as well. "Huskies should be in cold climates" is just an assumption made by people who don't know anything outside movies and photos of them in snow.

You can't compare uneducated assumptions with a breed trait..

Awesome Heather, so as you show, then there is no ethical issues involved with a Husky in the desert.

We could have came to this conclusion either abstractly through a more philosophical discussion of the concepts, or by concrete personal evidence.

I've been trying my best to guide this thread towards the former because it is not about my conviction or stance, nor about any of yours and its certainly not about judging anyone's choices.

It's about the concept of breed essence/nature and the subsequent issues involved.

I'm simply posing questions by thinking out loud......albeit typing on my phone

Oh and your dog looks like mine will eventually

Where is your dog from, if you don't mind me asking?

seattlesibe wrote:

Oh and your dog looks like mine will eventually

If you are still planning on the second pup from the left side, yours will have a much more open mask more than likely. Koda had a full mask as a puppy, more than the first dog on the left. He also was primarily cream with very little gray/black.
My signature is highly contrasted- better photo of him is https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/193526_1879062264564_4263119_o.jpg

Yeah, he isn't masked, but I just meant how light he is in his coloring in relation to the white. Their whole litter is on the lighter grey side, and only the one on the left is darkly masked. He's also got one blue eye.

They're from right outside Portland,OR.

I think she meant breeder. Koda is sable, not gray and white

Noted, thanks. In the grass pic Koda looks more greyish, but I'm on my phone and things are compressed and tinted.

We are getting our puppy from Shawna Garrettson, Kalara is her kennel name. She's been amazing to work with so far.

Won't know which one exactly for another couple of weeks.

PM me though, I'm gonna get this back to more philosophy sparring. But I need to soak it all in for a bit.

Nice! Huskavarna lines. Very nice dogs.

yep. can't remember right now if their dam or sire is from there........think it's the sire.

I just wrote this on another thread and it kinda hit me as an aha moment. It hit me hard. Since getting Link and thinking through my thought process in this thread, I had some insights into the issue of breed essence and how pertinent it is to our interactions with our dogs.

There is also a good thread going on about breed restrictions in apartment complexes, and this hit home with me as well, because someone rightfully made the parallel to racism: no Huskies allowed here because all Huskies.........clearly a form of breedism or "racism."

Anyway, this is pasted from the other thread I wrote in:


Yeah, keep in mind that you can't train away a dog's need for
exercise. That is the one thing they need from you the most, and
Huskies need a substantial amount. A bored, under exercised Husky will
literally eat through your house and leave you. It's just what they do.
If you are gonna have any attempt to control their behavior and have a
say in their state of mind, you need to start with exercise.

It's
quite a conundrum with Huskies: they are known for being independent,
aloof, stubborn, escaping from confinement, running away from you,
pulling you down the street, liking strangers more than you, and being
destructive and loud.

Controlling this type of animal's state
of mind is no easy task. When we want them for companions and pets and
have to limit their freedom and autonomy, we have quite a hill to climb.
Their very nature, on paper, doesn't seem to be very conducive to life
as a pet.

Productively draining their energy is probably the most critical aspect of owning a Husky.

Cheers.

................................................................................

This is what I was onto in not so many words with my original thoughts in this thread. Throw in the existence of exceptions (the couch potato lazy Husky), and I think my original thoughts take shape pretty well.

In what ways is respecting a breed's nature appropriate and in what ways is it inappropriate?? How relevant are exceptions to a stated nature or essence? How many exceptions are needed to negate a nature or essence in the first place?

Hope yall can chime in. And once again, let's try to be conceptual and philosophical, not anecdotal or personal

_________________

So i apologize. it tried to read through all of the responses but it got a bit long.

It seems like you are asking about how do we know the husky is going to have the traits of a husky, and if it is the owner that perpetuates traits or the actual nature of the dog. Which this topic goes back to whole concept of nature versus nurture - which in behavioral neuroscience it has been a long standing debate. It comes down to behaviors ARE genetic. Twin studies have been an excellent example of this. even though we still don't fully understand the mechanisms, even epigenetic changes can be propagated through the germline. Now if you compound that with the purely biological (i.e. the efficient metabolisms that huskies have), there are characteristics that will likely be found in most or all huskies.
Going back to the offleash conversation: yes, you can likely get rid of the predatory aspect, and you can train recall into them. but can you train out the fact that they love to run, that their bodies are suited to do almost nothing but run, that if they have too much pent up energy they will run, and if you take a couch potato husky and let them offleash they will almost likely run and run and run - absolutely not. there is a genetic component of their existence that will not change, unless of course you have a bunch that were inbred away from those genetic mental traits. we cannot discount that behaviors are genetic and i think in doing so and blaming it all on nurture would be a horrible mistake and a disservice to our animals.
going back to your question about how much of our animals personality can we ethically change or train out of them. no, their nature does not seem conducive to be a pet. i think some of the easiest classifications are they need their physiological needs met, at a bare minimum. they need to be exercised. they need to get a chance to run. they need to get a chance to explore. and they need mental stimulation. It might not seem like mental stimulation is necessarily a physiological need, but think about your own personality. if i am doing something mindless. if i am paying attention in class and a teacher gets distracted teaching the same slide for 20 minutes i fall asleep. if they have interesting topics, if they give me something to think about. if things move at a fast pace, then i am awake, i am energetic, i am happy. it is the same for them. they need to think, they need to figure things out. if you do not meet their physiological needs, then they will be unhappy. you cannot train out their personality - you cannot train out stubbornness - its in their genes. but you can train out destructive behaviors. you can teach them that being stubborn does nothing for them and that listening to you is good and positive.

i think the bottom line is you cannot change their genes. you can only change the way that their genes are focused. you cannot fear traits out of them - it will still be a part of them. and those are the boundaries that you have to respect.

also, i just want to point out that although pitbulls were physiologically bred to be fighting dogs, mentally they were bred to be loyal and to listen. pitbulls will fight something that they do not find a threat at their owners bequest to make the owner happy! they will inflict pain on themselves to make their owner happy! and they needed to know when they were being told to do something to the owner so they would not harm the owner - that owuld just be bad. they were not bred to be viscious. that is the major downfall with pitbulls. they are a lovely breed. they all still have the strength to hurt and cause pain. they still have quick reactions. but they are not inherintely viscous animals. rather, that aim to please their owners - and that is why they make great nanny dogs, etc.

This has been a fun read lol. I personally look at the whole matter this way. Every single species is born with instincts or "Essence" if that's what you would like to call it. You cannot refute this statement, it's how you, I, dogs, cats and every other species survives and lives. Huskies have theirs as many people have listed running, independence, prey drive, etc.

So if we were to look at dogs for a moment, some dog breeds naturally seek to gather animals such as sheep or cattle into a group. They are said to have a herding instincts.

But do you really think if I were to just drop a dog with herding instincts in an open field with some sheep he could herd them in the a pens that I need them in with those instinct alone? No.

That is where teaching/learning (dog training) comes in. There is not one supreme method to train a dog and nothing is impossible. But when you train you need to respect the dog's instincts and seek to use them for your benefit not try and eliminate them. You'll get nowhere trying to get rid of them , you can yell, scream or beat the dog you will achieve next to nothing because it's genetics. Behavior is often a reflection of the combination of instinct and learning.

So imo we as owners have to acknowledge our huskies instincts but at the same we should try and respect the fact they are not cursed by them.

Jordan and Christine, thank you for your posts! Now we're talking.

Jordan, your point about the herding dog is excellent. I do not buy for a second that nature, or essence, or biology, is destiny. There are some baseline attributes yes, but how those manifest themselves in the real world vary, obviously.

It's like that essence or nature is a suggestion.....albeit a convincing suggestion......but still a suggestion. With humans it gets really complicated, I mean look at dietary preferences, gender, and sexuality just to get started. There is a suggested essence or nature to our bodies and our species, but the real world manifestation is all over the map with variation and nuances.

It is interesting to think of a breed as "nature" or "essence" because a breed was a human design; our intentionality was behind what we know as breeds.

I can't get past the pit bull analogy. Is a couch potato, lazy Husky not the same as a sweet, harmless pit bull? If not, why not? Isn't the intentionality or essence of each breed obvious? Isn't the practical history or each breed obvious? When people who own pit bulls or Huskies can't get into apartment buildings and they cry fowl by virtue of a breedism/racism, are we supposed to justify these restrictions because we respect the breed essence or nature or do we allow exceptions to be convincing arguments against essence or nature?
It gets sticky.

So then what do exceptions like these say about nature or essence? How do these exceptions affect our understanding or nature or essence? What sort of ethical issues are involved in trying to intentionally create exceptions out of our dogs through training, modification, etc.?

This was related to me bringing up Huskies in Arizona. There is something to be said about the nature or essence of the breed and certain climates. This is where anecdotes come in though, so that someone might say "hey, my Husky loves the desert and is happy, so there."

Be that as it may, is it appropriate? If it is, then we allow ourselves to pick and choose which aspects of essence or nature we utilize or respect depending on how convenient it is in our given life.

(Again, for the record, I have no personal objections to Huskies in Arizona but in light of a conversation about nature/essence and ethics, it's worth analyzing.)

As Jordan said with herding dogs, there is a convincing possibility with nature and essence, but it seems it is one choice among several. We still need to have a say in how our dogs develop and mature.

This is the problem with ethics. We may conclude that certain ethical convictions are true, but then we also have anecdotal, real world examples of legitimate, happy, respectable possibilities that seem to work, but that does not negate ethical convictions made prior. Just because somebody does it different and it works and everyone's happy may not mean it is justified, in an ethical sense.

Nature and essence make for very compelling ethical arguments. Look at homosexuality and abortion, for example, to see how many dynamic ways this can take shape.

If Husky A is a typical Husky and Husky B is a clear exception, what then is Husky nature? Husky A makes a compelling case for Husky nature and our ethical responsibility as owners. But Husky B says Hey, that's just one possibility. Look at me! You should try to make yours like me.

What now? Is this a version of purists vs. reformists?