New HULA Members: Yuri, Sheba (and Cami)

Dear Meeshka,

I am sending an application for HULA membership on behalf of myself, Sheba and our sister Cami who is waiting for us on the other side of the Bridge. I think you will see that we have demonstrated our superiority over our humans during the past 13 years and have them tightly wrapped around our paws.

We have concluded our application with an awesome true story about something Sheba did that made the Hu-Mom freak out in a big way.

Aaarrrroooooos,

~Yuri


Demonstrating disruptive behavior:
--Yuri has the best Death Scream ever; he makes great use of it at the vet’s office!

–We clear the house if fed the Prairie flavor of Taste of the Wild! Dog aromatherapy!
--Getting the humans up in the middle of the night. We’re Senior Sibes; who can blame us?

Causing humans to freak out:
--Sometimes we hide in the yard and they panic thinking we have escaped. BOL.
--Yuri brought a dead squirrel into the house and dropped it at the Hu-Mom’s feet. A gift!
--Another time, Yuri brought a live bird into the house and put it into his crate. Again, what is up with the Hu-Mom?? She can’t appreciate anything!
--Remember the tainted dog food scare? That’s when we got put on Innova then Candidae and now Taste of the Wild, Salmon flavor.
--We gave the kennel staff a start when we escaped an outdoor run to request a return to indoor accommodations. Sheesh, it’s so hard to find good help these days! (Don’t worry, we had no way of escaping to the Outside World.)

Destroying something:
--Solar lights in the yard. You’d think the Staff would have seen that one coming!
--Mattress pad and sheet on the Staff bed
--Various dog beds and bedding
--Table leg
--Sofa cushions
--We love to destroy those flimsy PetSmart tennis balls, but refuse to play with the ball that even the lawn mower can’t touch. (The Hu-Mom wants us to tell you that she would never give us one of those tennis balls with out direct supervision.)

Human behavior modification:
--We’ve completely changed the way the humans live. When they buy a vehicle, they look for one that can hold crates and transport us safely. They have bought two houses that had to accommodate all of our needs.
--Cami was best Squeaker Killer - and to go with it, she had an awesome “that was my precious baby; please buy me another to promptly destroy” facial expression!
--When we moved, they naively thought that since we were older that we wouldn’t need a cattle wire around the base of the six-foot privacy fence. That didn’t last long! HAHAHA!
--We have been working on door training with pretty good success. Typically one bark is enough to get the door open for us.

--The humans are addicted to plucking our fluff and kissing our snooters. Not a bad trade-off for hand-and-paw service.
--Can we talk about the continual disturbance with the flashy beast? Next to plucking our fluff and kissing our snooters, the other thing the Staff can’t get enough of is taking our pictures. They leave the camera handy to capture all of our cuteness; no wonder they can’t get anything else done!

Humans dress you up:

Thankfully, the Staff have refrained from dressing us up. The closest example we have is that one time the Staff put an insulting bright pink harness on Cami and were dumb enough to leave it on her. The old girl chewed her way out of that thing in record time.

Love of Kleenex and all things paper. (Yuri’s speciality☺
--Dollar bills
--Paper towels
--Toilet paper rolls
--Kleenex
--Various paper wrappers
--Receipts and papers in the shred basket. (C’mon, the Staff wanted them shredded!)
--Toilet paper
--Items out of the recycle box


This story is true, we swear. We’ve let the Hu-Mom tell it from her point of view.:

One day in the summer of 1998 (when Yuri and Sheba were about 8 months old), a friend asked me if I’d like to go with her to the Humane Society over lunch. I am happy to enable anyone looking for a new dog, so was glad to make the trip. We played with some dogs, washed our hands, and were walking down a corridor to the exit, when my friend indicated a door to her right.

“There you go, Janet; there’s a Husky for you.” I looked in the window. And looked again. In the crate closest to the door, there was indeed a Husky. A black and white Husky with an open mask and a dot like a thumbprint on her forehead. I stared.

“That looks like Sheba!! That looks like my dog!!”

But it COULDN’T be Sheba! I had left Yuri and Sheba at home a couple of hours ago. Charlie would have gotten home from work shortly after that. “But that looks like Sheba!!!”

My friend did not believe that I was looking at my own dog, but recommended that I ask for assistance at the front desk.

“You have a Husky; I would like to see it!” The woman patiently explained that the shelter policy would not allow me to just visit the dog. I would have to file a lost dog report.

“But my dog isn’t lost; I left her at home just this morning!” Anyway, I proceeded to give the woman the information: eight-month old black-and-white Siberian Husky, blue eyes, female, spayed, wearing a green collar and tags. The woman silently completed her form and then turned back to me holding up Sheba’s collar.

“THAT’S SHEBA!! THAT’S MY DOG!!”

A more-experienced Siberian owner would have immediately understood exactly what happened. Sheba escaped her fenced yard just that morning and a compassionate neighbor called Animal Control. It took a moment for me to grasp what had occurred.

At eight-months old, Yuri and Sheba were just beginning to teach us the meaning of Hairy Houdini. It was not surprising that Sheba would escape; the amazing part was that I would just happen to visit the Humane Society shortly after she was brought in!

 

(Seriously?  Look at these innocent faces!)

Sheba was none the worse for her adventure and seemed glad to see her Hu-Mom. Having made plans to pay bail and retrieve Sheba after work, my friend and I prepared to return to our office.

“UH-OH! WHERE IS YURI??” He wasn’t with Sheba; had he also escaped? We swung by my house to find Yuri wailing at his misfortune--whether it was that his sister had left him or that he hadn’t figured out how to follow her under the fence, I’m not sure. Charlie was sound asleep and had missed all of the excitement and the phone call from Animal Control.

Subsequently, we had a cattle wire installed along the base of our six-foot privacy fence. Yuri and Sheba are now 13, but we know if we ever let down our guard or that wire, they will again look for adventure on the other side.

Congratulations and welcome to HULA
- Meeshka