Husky Birthday: 14 Years Young

Today marks the 14th year since a remarkable Husky was born. According to her pedigree (the least of her value), Kyra was born January 16, 1998 of sire G’s Saxman Red Devil and dam Nikolai of Classy G in Charlottesville, Virginia. Last year she had to have a few rotten teeth pulled, and we’ve always paid attention to her sensitive tummy, but she’s outlived two Huskies we rescued after Kyra had joined our family and has always had a remarkable energy and contentment in the way she carries herself through her life.

In honor of her birthday, here’s an excerpt from what I’ve written so far of Sacred Whispers, a book about all of our various pets and animals I’ve known, remembering how we were introduced and how she settled in to our lives and our hearts:

Both of these experiences left me rather ambivalent about getting another pet, but having a life partner adjusted my thinking sufficiently that immediately after we returned from our honeymoon, we started scanning ads in the local paper for a puppy of our own. We made appointments to see three or four, and figured we would make the decision after having investigated all our options. We intended our first dog together to be our wedding gift to each other. Little did we expect that our new puppy would have been born within 2 weeks of our ceremony, and therefore all the more meaningful a tribute to our joining our lives together.

As it happened, we went to the Husky breeder first, on a Monday night after work. Kyra was penned up in the back yard with her four brothers and parents. When we arrived, and the pups were let out for our inspection, Kyra made a beeline for my lap, and crouched there as if she would need to be forcibly removed. The expression in her eyes, as we watched her rough and tumble brothers pile off under the porch, was pure “save me from these rowdies!”

The breeders took this as a sign that we were meant to take her home that night. We were in no way prepared to bring home a bundle of puppy energy… but the price was right, and Kyra had wormed her way into my heart with no difficulty whatsoever. So we made a quick run to KMart before all the local stores closed for the night, and picked up doggie dishes, leash, collar, and those few essentials necessary to keep the puppy fed and safe as we took her out to relieve herself in our unfenced yard.

She settled in as if she had always been with us: She slept through that first night, and was generally very loving and surprisingly easy to train. She soon acted as if she understood our conversations with each other, and her Husky vocalizations certainly sounded as if she had her own words to contribute.

Here’s to another year of happiness with our first baby. And here’s crossing my fingers that her good health continues to sustain her through at least several more years; the world will be a darker place without the light she embodies within it.