A slight identity crisis

After about 7months of being Blue’s mommy I did what I should have done about 7 months and two weeks earlier; I bought an “All You Need to Know Before You Buy a Husky” book. Mr. Big Prize can’t read, so it was left to me to do the educating for both of us. I suppose I should explain a bit further that last seemingly libelous statement about MBP. He can read; I’ve just never actually seen him do it. When we first met, and I expressed to him my love of literature, he gave me his best crooked smile and said “I can’t read”. Well, since he owns a company whose primary function is writing publicity materials, and he himself is head copywriter, I’m assuming he is actually capable of reading. He just abhors it. I blame it on his adult ADHD, and his refusal to seek medical treatment for it.
Therefore, I was left to do the Husky reading and research. We found ourselves trying ardently to parent a dog that seemed completely independent, bull headed, stubborn, and bothered by our existence. I’m convinced to this day that if Blue had been capable of opening the dog food bag on her own she’d have off’d us both and buried our stinking corpses in the back yard. This was not at all the snuggly, cuddly, anthropomorphic experience either of us had envisioned, and I needed to know if it was the breed to blame, or had we as dog parents done something horribly, terribly wrong.
So, into the book I dove, determined to find the answers. I was so anxious to see what this fount of knowledge had to share with me about our baby Bludie. I learned A) Husky’s are not an ideal dog for apartment living (no kidding..) B) They have an inherent and incurable urge to run (you don’t say) C) They are not affectionate by nature and do not bond readily with their owners (well thank God it wasn’t our fault) D) They can be extremely destructive if stressed (we’ll get to that later) and E) and adult female Husky should mature at around 45 pounds. WHAT??? Wait, let me read that again. An ADULT Husky female should mature at around 45 pounds. At the reading of those words my Bludie was 7 months old, and 50 pounds. According to our book she wouldn’t reach her full adult weight until a year of age, or even slightly after. At this point I can actually remember feeling faint. If she weighed this much at 7 months, how much was she going to weigh once she actually reached her full adult weight?? 105 pounds. Yep. 105. By the time she matured, my dog weighed only 5 pounds less than I did. I guess its good I got my bluff in on her pretty early.
But my question/concern when I ran in to share the dread news with Mr. Conveniently Illiterate in the other room was “how on earth is this happening?” Was there something terribly wrong with our dog? Some crazy thyroid condition? Some incurable elephantitis disorder? Contamination from a nuclear reactor? Mr. Big Prize looked confused with my concern. “But don’t you remember”, he said “her daddy weighed 120 pounds”. WHUUU??? No, I did not remember this. Her parents hadn’t been ‘on site’ as they say, so we saw neither daddy nor mommy dearest the day we took her home, so how on earth did he know that she was the spawn of some behemoth?? Well, gentle reader, unbeknownst to me, the owner of that now notorious Christmas tree farm had pulled MBP aside while I was incoherent from the stench of the place and had shown him a photo or two of Big Daddy. “Yeah, “ MBP said glibly “her daddy was a big boy. He had a bigger boxier head than she does and a longer snout, his coat was a little longer, and his eyes were brown, not blue, but he was GORGEOUS”. “HELLO” I screamed back “HUSKIES don’t weigh 120 pounds, have boxy heads or brown eyes. MALAMUTES do!!” And it was on that moment that we both realized why we had gotten our puppy for such a bottom basement price, why she’d come with out papers, and why those parents hadn’t been ‘on site’. We also realized why she just kept growing, and growing and growing. We were not the proud owners of the pure bred husky we thought we were, but the proud owners of a mutt- half Malamute, Half Husky. We had a Malamusky. Those suckers are huge.