Penelope, Husky of Evil

Someone posted this on a husky forum I'm a part of. It's hilarious and
makes Mommy thank my lucky stars that I'm not an overly smart husky, meaning
that I'm just bright enough to be very obedient and manage to learn
tricks, but not smart enough to need mental stimulation constantly without which I destroy the house. I disagree with this assessment. I am a very smart husky. I'm just lazy. I live to be spoiled and if I'm bad, the spoiling stops.

Without further ado, the story of Pénélope, the French Husky. Just to
prove to you that husky owners are NUTS. This story is written and by ans property of Sophie, Penny and Princess's owner, so please don't use it or reproduce it elsewhere without permission. Mommy translated it with Sophie's permission to post it here, so if there are a few weird turns of phrase, it's just because the translation is a little off.

Why having just one husky is a bad idea

I totally fell in love with Penelope the first time I saw her. I knew
that huskies were dogs that didn't do well being left alone and I had
already had a husky when I was young, Kim. She hated being left alone,
but had never really done any bad things, mostly because she was never
alone. We had another dog and my mother was always home.

So a beautiful Sunday in June, I adopted Penelope. Even if I had
already had a husky, I had never imagined the problems of having just
one, solitary husky could cause. No, I am not a pensioner and I do
have to work to pay for the dog food. I should have wondered at least
a bit. Penelope had already been abandoned four times in her two years
of life.

Monday, I went to work, slightly apprehensive. I naively told myself
that if I put everything away and picked up after myself well, the
risks of trouble were slim. For those who own huskies, you know that
this was a terrible mistake.

I get home that first day and I've barely opened the door when I step
in the nice, fragrant present she had left me right behind the door,
then I almost slip and kill myself in the puddle she left a little
farther. I enter the house proper and realise that all my curtains are
now... Well, curtains. On the ground. And in pieces.

I tell myself it's not too bad, it's the first day and she'll get used
to it. Hahahaha.

The next day, I go back to work and I barely make it there when I get
a phone call from a lady calling to tell me that she's found my dog.
So I leave work. Penelope managed to open the door's window and
decided to go exploring. The next day, I tell myself that since she
managed to open the door's window, I'll just close the shutters and
that way, she won't be able to get out. Well, she somehow managed to
open the door's window, then gnawed just enough of the shutter's slats
away so that she could go out. So I decide to solve this problem by
reversing the handle of the door's window so that she couldn't just
press it open anymore. So she decided to go out the other windows.
Same operation for the window handles. This worked up until she
figured out how to open them by lifting the handles.

After the escapes, the pranks (on days where there were escapes, there
was no husky amusement in the house)!

The kibble: Penny never finished her plate. To amuse herself, she'd
hide her kibble all over the house, mainly behind the couch cushions,
but also in the VCR. We decided to no longer leave her bowl out, so
she decided to go help herself directly in the bag.

The fridge: Penny finally figured out how to open the fridge. She
would steal food and instead of eating it, she would do as she did
with her kibble and hide it for later. We found:
- One Camembert cheese unwrapped and hidden in our bed, under the comforter.
- One chicken, minus a leg, hidden in a cupboard that she had
carefully emptied before to hide her booty.
- One stick of butter that disappeared in the middle of august and was
found several weeks later in a suitcase.
- Many different food items hidden behind the couch cushions.

I decided to "husky proof" the fridge by wrapping a strong cable
around it to keep her from opening the door. I come home to find the
fridge in the middle of the room (you know, just in case there was a
door behind it) and the joint torn off (just in case she could reach
food through this hole).

Since we had an unused room, we decided to lock Penny in there while
we were gone, hoping to contain the damage. Well, they were contained,
but more concentrated! The sofa's covering was turned into lace and
the foam cushions into swiss cheese. She made a huge hole in the wall
and of course, her water was always upturned.

One day, she tore all the electrical outlets out of the wall. That's
the day I really flipped out, since she could have electrocuted
herself. I put her on anti-anxiety drugs with, of course, no effect.

One day, she managed to make the TV fall. She has the habit of
climbing on top of the TV to look out the window. She must have fallen
behind it (the TV is in a corner) and the only way to get out was to
push it over.

So I resigned myself to at least an hour of cleaning up a night after work.

Then, being a crazy husky person, I decided that what she needed was a
friend. So we got her Princess and since then, oh miracle of miracles,
(almost) no more pranks!

Wooo! Isn't Penny great?
Louka