I just happen to think that huskies are a cool type of dog, and I was wondering whether it would be possible to raise them away from an incredibly cold climate.
My parents have a spitz, which is another dog of the north. There were no problems that I know of, except they prefered to shave him in the summer. He always prefers cold, though. In winter, he will lay at the threshold of the front door because that’s where the most cold air is.
I live in Florida and have two American Eskimos, which have similar coats to Huskies. However, they’re miniatures (I don’t believe the standard AE still exists) so they have a greater surface area/body mass ratio.
They are both inside dogs too, so they get air conditioning, but neither seems particularly troubled by outside air temperatures. They were bred here, too.
I see lots of folks here in the East Bay (SF Bay Area) with Huskies. When I was a kid in Berkeley we had a Samoyed (big fluffy white dog).
Temperatures are generally “mild” (50 is cold, 90 is hot) so it’s not Florida but also a far cry from Alaska. All those dogs appear to be doing just fine, even on hot days.
My brother lives on the beach in southern California & has a husky that spends all day every day outside with him (he does construction). It isn’t all that hot (70s to 80s), but the sun is intense.
The dog sheds like mad, but seems perfectly happy. It has lots of energy for running & playing and doesn’t seem given to fits of panting or hiding in the shade.
We raise Newfoundlands in SoCal, and they do pretty well. If they are not showing, we shave them down to about 1/2 inch, because that double-coat does get warm in the summertime.
They look kind of silly, but they are much more comfortable and their real friends don’t laugh!
A few months before my daughter moved to Florida to a new job, she purchased a Sibe from a breeder in Minnesota. It was January when the pup arrived here in N.Y. In the two short months that it lived in my house, it developed very thick fur to compensate for the cold weather here. Within two weeks living in Florida, she shed like crazy. (my daughter said it looked like she lost a lot of weight) and that hair loss stayed the same for 5 years…the thickness never returned. A year ago, my daughter and Chloe moved back here to N.Y. You guessed it…winter rolled around, and Chloe looked like she gained 10 lbs. All hair. They will adapt to the weather, I think, no matter where they live.
Indeed. We had a husky-samoyan-German shepherd mix for about a dozen years, four of which were in the New Orleans area. She did quite well in the summer, although her winter coat had switched to summer for better protection from the humidity. Of course, she had become an old lady dog by then and mainly stayed in the house during the day.
I live in Fairfield, CA (smack dab between San Francisco and Sacramento) and we have had a Samoyed for about six years now. He is a BIG dog (over 100lbs) with a damn thick coat. It gets pretty hot here too in the sumer, well over 100 most of the time, and we’ve never had a problem with him. As long as he has plenty of water and someplace shady to rest. I wanted to shave him to give him some relief but we were told that was NOT a good thing to do with his breed. Guess they’re really prone to skin cancer or something. So the poor thing has to just weather it.