Our Siberian Husky Hates Tile Floors

by Jenna
(Wisconsin)

When we started looking at getting a puppy we weren’t necessarily looking at purebred dog breeds. Then we got a call one day from my sister in-law. She was going to pick up an AKC purebred dog she had found in the paper and wanted us to come along for the 3 hour drive.

What kind of puppy was she getting, I asked. Once she said a Siberian Husky I knew we had to go with her to check these puppies out. I had always been the kind of person who wanted to adopt animals in need and a purebreed dog seemed to have all the advantages in the world already, but when I saw these puppies I knew I had to have one.

The dog breeder was a professional dog sledder and in the off season would breed their huskies for extra income. My sister in-law took a puppy from a litter that had had 3 pups in it. One pup was already gone, she took one and there was one left. The breeder took that single 8 week old pup and placed him in with a group of 9 week old pups.

Right away you could see he was huge compared to the other older puppies, and they knew it too. As the large pup made his way to the food dish all the other puppies began to attack him. Wanting to protect him I picked him up, and as soon as I held him I knew he was My Siberian Husky.

The dog breeder had all her pups outside, in kennels, 24 hours a day. They never went in a car or even a house until someone came to take them home. The car ride went fine, but the introduction to his new home was another story. Our pup had a fear of tile floor, wood floor, vinyl floor, any type of floor that wasn’t carpet he was afraid of and would not walk on.

This was a major issue because we only had carpet in our living room and hallway and to get in and out of the house he had to walk on floors that were not carpet. Our new pup would sit and cry when he wanted to go into a new room, and we would have to carry him to the next room.

To try and make him get used to the floor I put his food in a room with tile floor. But he would hop from the living room carpet to the carpet under the dining room table and then hop onto the placemat we had under his food bowls. So as to not stand on the tile floor he would have his back feet positioned on the placemat and his front feet in the water bowl. He then would eat and drink like that and when finished he would hop back the way he came.

Never having owned a Siberian Husky we thought maybe they were all like this, sensitive to the floor type, but when I went to see my sister in-law and her new pup I could see her dog running and jumping and playing on the tile floor in their kitchen. To be less cruel we eventually moved the food bowls to a carpet area and had to install runners in our house. Till this day, 3 years later, he will still not walk on anything except carpet in the house.