Hello!
I recently lost my Service Dog (9 year old Lab) who was the Alpha in my pack that consisted of me, him, my 3-year-old Husky (Zoe) and 9-month-old Rott (Mia).

With this awful tragedy has come a tremendous shift in my pack's dynamics and I'm at a loss to understand and help Zoe who seems to be nearly as traumatized by this loss as I am.

With a heavy and broken heart, I MUST do everything I can to try to get my Zoe-girl back to the happy, affectionate little dope she used to be. Week 1 since Paddy died, she looked for him, began to whine a lot and distance herself from me and the pup. Week 2, she has begun to instigate fights with the pup and broke the No-Growling-At-Humans Law (for which there is Zero Tolerance).

As we begin Week 3 of the "New Order", I am hoping I can more fully describe how things were versus how things are shaking out now and get thoughts and opinions from Husky Lovers who can offer a greater insight in to what I can do.

(I have previously owned a Malamute and a Samoyed -- but that was many, many years ago and I cannot remember all they had taught me since I live with a Brain Injury, sustained in a car wreck in 2000, and have some pretty significant cognitive deficiencies... And, as you can see from this "short" introduction, I tend to get wordy and a bit rambling, so I ask for your patience and forgiveness of that in advance).

I have not advice or insight that would help you sorry just want tell you welcome and to hang in there and stick to the rules with you Zoe.

Good looking pack you have there..

Will you be getting another service dog or another dog??

It had been hoped that Mia (the Rott pup) would grow up with and learn from Paddy. Fully expecting to have a few more years with him, his unexpected loss has thrown the whole Service Dog training program into limbo. An while having a SD is fairly critical, it's much more important that I figure out what's going on with Zoe and try to help HER thru this loss that appears to have had a significant impact on her.

I will create a thread (in the near future) that more fully explains the whats and whys... I didn't want to go overboard in our introduction.

sorry for your loss and hope Zoe can get through this as well

welcome, and i'm sorry for your loss.


in my indirect experience, dogs grieve just like humans (i've never had a dog die yet... nor have i had multiple dogs.. but i have a lot of friends and family who have had similar issues to what youre seeing with zoe.) ... keep at it with zoe and enforce the rules. do not let her do things she's not supposed to or she will think its okay from now on.

zoe should be fine eventually. she just needs to adjust to life without a pack member, something that for a husky is very traumatizing seeing how they are very pack oriented dogs (when my girlfriend left for her masters degree, my khuno went through some similar grieving to the loss of having her around all the time). i just made sure i comforted him when he was sad, and enforced the rules when he was acting up.

good luck and keep us posted! i'm sure other members here will have more advice to give.

welcome