47 Fun Facts About Siberian Husky

The Siberian Husky was originally developed by which indigenous people?

Chukchi: this people of far north-eastern Siberia needed an enduring dog that could haul light loads over vast frozen distances.

What do mushers fit on their sled dogs' feet to protect the pads on a long, icy trail?

Booties: these little fabric socks guard the pads against cuts and sores, and they wear out so quickly that a long-distance team can get through thousands in one race.

When small Siberian sled dogs first reached Nome in 1908, locals mocked them as 'Siberian' what?

Rats: weighing as little as 40 pounds, they looked puny beside the local sled dogs, yet after their first race a rival musher went to Siberia and brought back dozens more.

The Siberian Husky belongs to which genetic family of dogs?

Spitz: the family of prick-eared, thick-coated northern dogs runs from sled pullers like the husky to the tiny Pomeranian, which was bred down from much larger dogs.

The AKC calls which larger sled breed the Siberian Husky's 'burly cousin'?

Alaskan Malamute: it was bred to haul heavy freight slowly and the husky to pull light loads fast, so a male Malamute weighs about 85 pounds against the husky's 60 at most.

Togo, hero of the 1925 serum run, retired to a kennel at Poland Spring in which New England state?

Maine: Togo lived out his days in comfort at Poland Spring, and the pups he sired there became part of the foundation of today's registered breed.

Which faster crossbred type, rather than the Siberian Husky, fills most teams in today's top sled races?

Alaskan husky: it is not a registered breed at all but a performance cross, bred for nothing except speed and stamina from whichever dogs ran fastest.

Which type of coat lets the Siberian Husky shrug off extreme cold?

A double coat: a soft, dense undercoat lies beneath a straight outer coat, and it sheds so completely that the breed standard tells judges a missing undercoat is normal in shedding season.

For a dog of its size, the Siberian Husky is known for needing surprisingly little what?

Feeding: its breed club calls the husky an 'easy keeper', because it was bred to pull a light load over great distances in the cold on as little food as possible.

Which coat pattern does the AKC standard disqualify in Siberian Huskies, along with brindle?

Merle: the standard defines it as a marbling of dark patches on a lighter ground and bars it from the ring, yet piebald, another patchy coat, is expressly allowed.

The AKC standard accepts a Siberian Husky with one brown eye and one blue; what is that condition called?

Heterochromia: rare in people, it is so common in Siberian Huskies that the breed standard simply lists 'one of each' among the acceptable eye colours.

The AKC describes the Siberian Husky's eyes as having what shape?

Almond: set a trifle obliquely, the eyes are what give the breed the keen, friendly and even mischievous expression the standard asks for.

The lighter streak that can appear on a Siberian Husky's nose is nicknamed what kind of 'nose'?

Snow nose, also called winter nose: the dark pigment gives way to a pinkish streak, and the breed standard calls it 'equally acceptable', so no judge may mark a dog down for it.

Which habit of the Siberian Husky does its breed club call the most dangerous for a pet owner?

Running off: the husky was bred to run and will bolt at any chance, so its club says it must never be let loose, because a single dash across a road could be its last.

What shape does the AKC say a Siberian Husky's tail should curve into when the dog is alert?

Sickle: the tail should arc over the back without curling to one side or snapping flat, and a tightly curled tail is faulted; at rest it simply trails behind.

According to the AKC, which routine care does a Siberian Husky need only a few times a year?

Bathing: the AKC calls the breed remarkably self-cleaning, with little of the usual doggy smell, so a few baths a year will do. The thick coat still wants a weekly brush.

Rather than its bark, the Siberian Husky is best known for its what?

Howls: the breed 'talks', sings and howls so readily, and so loudly, that owners are warned off homes with shared walls or close neighbours.

Which command does a musher shout to turn a team of sled dogs to the right?

Gee means right and haw means left, the same calls used for any animal pulling a load; 'come gee' and 'come haw' ask the leaders to swing the whole team round in a U-turn.

Siberian Huskies have some of the lowest rates of which health problem?

Hip dysplasia: only about 2% of the huskies X-rayed for the main US registry are affected, a record the breed club credits to breeders who screened their dogs for generations.

In a sled team, what are the dogs harnessed directly in front of the sled called?

Wheel dogs: their job is to haul the sled itself out and around corners and trees, while the swing dogs just behind the leaders bend the rest of the team through each turn.

The word 'husky' is thought to be a clipped form of which old term for the peoples of the Arctic?

Eskimo: the word was probably worn down to forms such as 'Huskemaw' and then 'husky', which at first meant any sled dog kept by the Arctic peoples; 'Siberian' marked the imports from Russia.

The Siberian dogs that made Nome's champion musher had been bought for a polar expedition planned by which explorer?

Roald Amundsen meant to drive them to the North Pole in 1914, but the First World War cancelled the trip. The dogs stayed in Nome, and their trainer raced them to three straight Sweepstakes wins.

Which musher, the foremost breeder of Siberian sled dogs of his era, drove Togo on the 1925 serum run?

Leonhard Seppala and Togo ran by far the longest stretch of the relay, including a gamble across the sea ice of Norton Sound, yet the newspapers gave the glory to the team that ran the last leg.

The 1925 serum run carried antitoxin to Nome to fight an outbreak of which disease?

Diphtheria: relays of sled dogs rushed the antitoxin more than 600 miles in five and a half days, and the headlines the run made around the world turned the Siberian Husky into a household name.

Which musher drove the final leg of the serum run into Nome with Balto in the lead?

Gunnar Kaasen and Balto became overnight celebrities, with a film, a vaudeville tour and a statue to follow.

Balto's bronze statue, unveiled in 1925, stands where?

Central Park, New York: the bronze went up just ten months after the run, with Balto himself reportedly among the guests, and its plaque honours every dog in the relay, not him alone.

Citizens of which city raised money in 1927 to rescue Balto and his teammates from a dime museum?

Cleveland: a two-week public appeal bought the neglected team for the city, where Balto lived out his days at the zoo; his mounted body is still on show at its natural history museum.

Togo, the great lead dog of the 1925 serum run, was named after a famous admiral from which country?

Japan: the dog was named for Admiral Togo Heihachiro, who had become famous around the world by destroying the Russian fleet at Tsushima in 1905.

Togo's mounted skin is displayed at the headquarters museum of which race in Wasilla, Alaska?

Iditarod: Togo stands in a glass case at the race's headquarters. In 2011 Time magazine named him one of its ten most heroic animals, long after the headlines had gone to Balto.

Which actor played Togo's owner and musher in the 2019 Disney+ film Togo?

Willem Dafoe: his film tells the serum run from the side of the dog that ran the longest stretch, a story that a 1995 cartoon about the same relay had handed to Balto.

The AKC places the Siberian Husky in which of its breed groups?

Working Group: the breed was recognised in 1930, and nearly every registered husky since descends from a small pool of sled dogs kept in two north-eastern kennels at about that time.

Which American explorer took teams of Siberian Huskies to Antarctica in the 1930s?

Richard E. Byrd took teams of them south on his expeditions, and within a decade the same breed was serving in the US Army's Arctic search-and-rescue unit during the Second World War.

Why did the last husky teams have to leave Antarctica in 1994?

A treaty banned them: an environmental protocol to the Antarctic Treaty barred non-native species to protect the wildlife, and the British Antarctic Survey's huskies left in 1994 after almost fifty years of sledging.

Before the dog teams took over at Nenana in 1925, how did Nome's antitoxin travel from Anchorage?

By train: the Alaska Railroad carried the serum as far as Nenana, the station nearest Nome. Flying it the rest of the way was ruled out in the depths of the Alaskan winter.

Which Hollywood actor voiced the title hero of the 1995 animated film Balto?

Kevin Bacon's Balto sets out to rescue a lost sled team and brings the medicine home himself, whereas the real dog led only the last of the twenty teams that relayed it to Nome.

A boom in pet huskies, and in huskies dumped at shelters, was blamed on which TV series' wolves?

Game of Thrones: its direwolves were not even played by huskies, but so many look-alikes were bought and then abandoned that Peter Dinklage fronted an appeal urging fans to adopt from shelters.

Which actor plays a Miami dentist who inherits a team of Siberian Huskies in Disney's 2002 comedy Snow Dogs?

Cuba Gooding Jr.: his character flies to Alaska to claim an inheritance from the birth mother he never knew, finds it is a sled team, and has to learn to race it.

The 1943 Allied invasion of which island was codenamed 'Operation Husky'?

Sicily: the landings began on the night of 9 July 1943, and within weeks the campaign had toppled Mussolini and reopened the Mediterranean to Allied shipping.

Which of these does the Siberian Husky's breed club say the dog copes badly with?

Hours on its own: a husky needs the company of people or other dogs at all times, so the club tells anyone who works all day, or has room for only one dog, not to buy one.

Jonathan the Husky is the mascot of which school's athletic teams?

University of Connecticut: every husky it has kept is called Jonathan, said to honour Jonathan Trumbull, the state's governor in the Revolutionary War. Students chose the husky as mascot in a 1930s newspaper poll.

In which 2006 Disney film are six Siberian Huskies left alone in Antarctica?

Eight Below remakes a 1983 film about a real 1958 expedition that had to abandon fifteen sled dogs; when a team got back almost a year later, two of them were still alive.

How is Balto portrayed in the 1995 animated film, unlike in real life?

As a wolf-dog: the cartoon makes him a half-wolf outcast living rough outside Nome, whereas the real Balto was a sled dog born in the town's leading racing kennel.

Skijoring, in which a husky tows its owner on skis, takes its name from which language?

Norwegian: skikjøring simply means 'ski driving'. The puller can be a horse or even a car as well as a dog, and the sport is said to have begun as a way of getting about in winter.

John Johnson, who drove the first winning team of Siberian sled dogs in 1910, went by which nickname?

Iron Man: Johnson's time over the 408-mile Sweepstakes course stood as the record for the rest of the race's run, and a modern champion who reran it in 1983 finished more than ten hours slower.

Arctic breeds including the Siberian Husky show genetic closeness to which extinct North Asian canid?

The Taimyr wolf: this Ice Age wolf of Arctic Siberia left a small share of its DNA in high-latitude breeds such as the husky and the Greenland Dog, which may have helped early sled dogs cope with the cold.

Sled dog racing was a demonstration event at the 1932 Winter Olympics, held in which American village?

Lake Placid: twelve mushers from the United States and Canada took part, and the driver who had run the longest leg of the 1925 serum relay took silver with his Siberians.

Everest the Siberian Husky is a pup in which children's TV series?

PAW Patrol: Everest lives up a mountain with her owner Jake and earned her place on the team by helping the other pups with a rescue; emergencies on ice are her speciality.