That cheating dog

A Siberian Husky, not a thinly veiled post about greedy officials or dumb boyfriends.

Here is the story as told to the K-landnews.

We had this Siberian Husky, and he was one cool dog. Very child friendly, I'll tell you about this another time. I can't recall how many old towels he shredded when we played tug of war, with me spinning around so fast that he was completely in the air, holding on to the towel with his powerful jaws, not one of his legs touching the ground, and I have no idea how many times we had to wash the beast with the garden hose after he ducked under the electric fence of the nearest cow pasture.

We had moved into a house on a fairly quiet residential street. The yard was fenced in, and the dog would spend some time out there without doing that sled dog thing: either burrow under or climb over any fence, just for the heck of it.

Everything was fine, the dog would have his walks, and he had taken to a regular schedule for pee-pee breaks in the backyard.

At 12 noon sharp, he would ask to be let out of the side door of the kitchen, turn right and head for the backyard.


He was getting old, was more settled, and he started to put on a few extra pounds.

Which we counteracted by putting him on a diet. When he failed to lose weight, we reduced the amount of food further.

Imagine our surprise when he was weighed the next time, and we found he had gained instead of lost weight.

Then one day, I let him out for his high noon pee break, and for no reason I can recall, I did not immediately turn around and go back into the house. I closed the door and stood there for a second longer than normal.

And what did I see?

The dog was coming the other way, passed the door, heading for the street.

I waited a little, opened the door and stepped outside.

There he was, his head over the fence, and five or six little hands were offering up sandwiches.

He had not only figured out the schedule of the kindergardeners returning home, but he had also developed an effective way around our prohibition: no food from anybody.

Go out, turn right, check if human was gone, do a U-turn and head for the kids.

We had a chat with the kids and the dog, and that was the end of it.

A few months later, the vet was happy with the dog's weight loss, and we had learned a lesson.