Why we got a husky puppy when everyone told us not to

After claiming to be a cat person for over THREE decades, I ended up with 2 husky puppies in under 3 months. This is how it all went down.

Mishka, 9 weeks

Let’s get a dog!

On a particularly rainy February afternoon, I decided to impulsively offer my husband the opportunity to get a dog before I could change my mind and insist on a no-pets household. Neither of us had ever owned a dog and our lifestyle didn’t really suit one - I travel for work and he has a ton of social engagements. Sure, we love to hike but we aren’t necessarily the sort to wake up on a schedule to walk a dog. We had no idea how to train or feed one.

We had been looking for cats on Verhuisdieren for months but had no luck finding one. I had never been keen on a specific breed but when it came to getting a dog, I knew I’d want a husky. Don’t ask me why. Just a feeling. I knew my husband liked Shibas so I looked up Husky & Shiba pups on Marktplaats. Before he came home, I had reached out to a couple of folks on the platform.

“Do you want a puppy for your 30th?” I blurted out in the middle of dinner prep.

“Show me the pictures first,” he said.

We first made contact with the breeder on Wednesday and agreed to go meet the puppies on Friday. We were both recovering from sickness and decided to treat it as a fun playdate with no consequences.

First contact - meeting the puppies

The puppy we were went for.

The puppy we brought home 2 days later.

The breeders were a couple who mated their 2 huskies and it was their second ever litter. The mom was black and white with blue eyes and the dad was reddish-brown with brown eyes. The dogs were gated off in a part of the apartment and in the middle of our meeting, the dad husky decided he’d had enough, opened the baby gate and just left us to get some peace. Watching him casually unlock a baby gate and leave blew our minds and made us realise what we were signing up for with a husky.

asking reddit if we should get a husky puppy

Calling ourselves unprepared would be an understatement. Our house wasn’t dog proofed. We hadn’t looked up vets or vaccination schedules. We were 3 weeks away from our first ever vacation across the globe. Our house didn’t have enough room for us and now we had to section off an area for a dog. We were physically not ready for a 3rd family member. So we asked Reddit what we should do considering we had to go away for 2 weeks.

Most of the responses asked us WHY we were getting a husky in the first place. I felt a bit called out and fairly so. But after reading through the comments and asking a few friends, we decided to ask the breeders if they’d babysit our puppy for the 2 weeks that we’d be on holiday.

The first weeks of a puppy’s life are very important for socialisation and we didn’t want to risk anxiety or other fears by not bringing her home until she was 14 weeks old. We were positively surprised when the breeders agreed to our request and now we had to decide which puppy to get.

The puppy chooses you, not the other way around

On Sunday morning we went back to Amsterdam, having spent a fortune the day before at Pets Place. We still didn’t know which of the girls we wanted to get. Lily was the black and white girl with heterochromia. Daisy was the little white bread who kept coming to us for cuddles. Coco was the light brown boy with heterochromia who was playful when not hiding. We decided he didn’t like us much so we narrowed our choice to his sisters. But Lily didn’t seem too eager either and in the end it turned out to be Daisy who approached us on both visits.

On that Sunday, when she stole a second treat meant for her sister, I scooped her up in my arms and asked her if she was our Mishka. We had been thinking of names the night before. We wanted a name to honour her Siberian roots. But we didn’t want a common dog name. Because she looked a bit like a bear, we started to play around with these prompts in ChatGPT. And then we found the name Mishka, meaning “a little bear” in Russian. It was perfect because my husband affectionately calls me a bear and now she could be our little bear.

Mishka napping on my lap, age 8 weeks

But wait. Why do you have 2 husky puppies?

Remember the boy Coco? Well, it turns out that he did like us. On May 2, 2025 - 2 months after Mishka joined our pack - Coco came home as a foster pup. 2 weeks later we realised we couldn’t give him up to a stranger over Marktplaats. And now we are a family of 4.