How We "Play"

Fu-Fu asked if the humans play with us. Well, they do, but its kind of a long story (which I'll interupt here to say that the human woman bought MORE sleepy pants today).

Unlike most dogs, we huskies are always plotting, planning, scheming, and thinking. We don't have time for "play" like other dogs who aren't trying to take over the world. We have devious things we want to do, so while we do "play" its actually covert training for our master plan.

For instance, some dogs like to play "tug o' war". Huskies will humor the humans for a bit, but generally we feel that if we want something, we'll just take it. There's no need to tug and fight over something with the humans, when eventually they'll go off and do something else, and we'll go steal a pot roast from a counter.

Some dogs play "fetch". Huskies feel that if the human didn't want the ball, they shouldn't have thrown it, and if they want it back, they can just walk over and get it themselves. Sure we may chase after the ball while its rolling, but that's part of our covert training to track down and kill small woodland creatures.

Here are some training techniques that are disguised as "games" that huskies will play:

• Gut the squeeky toy (bonus points for fastest times)
• Riccochet bed (leaping off and on the bed, using it as a springboard)
• Dig to China or freedom (whichever comes first)
• Sink Sucking (the humans leave so much good tasty things on their plates)
• Important Paper Shred (if its put up somewhere, it must be important)
• Cushy Hoarding (gather as many cloth items as possible and lay on it)
• Drop Kong on Bare Feet
• Wolf vs Caribou

Wolf vs Caribou is a very important training tool. In our case, we play Wolf vs Annoying Caribou. One husky is the wolf, the other husky is the caribou. In our case, Sam and I are the wolves, and Loki is the annoying caribou. The object of this game is to stalk, chase, drag down, and savage the annoying caribou. Per the human woman's rule, we can't savage him so much that he squeeks, so we'll give her that one, but sometimes its just too easy to get carried away with the game and we forget the rule.

So, the question was: "Do the humans play with us", and the answer is: sorta.
We like an audience when we do our training, so they are usually standing around watching us and saying things like "oh, look at them play, they're so happy". Meanwhile we're thinking "hehehe, we have them so fooled, we're on a training mission"

Meeshka
(Commander, HULA Forces)