Sugar Bear was the wife’s previous Siberian Husky. He measured six feet long from tip of his nose to the end of his tail. He passed away several years ago. He was a good dog.
I loved Sugar Bear, but he wasn’t the brightest of dogs. He was sweet and gentle, and loved being by his people, but he was not gifted with a abundance of intelligence. Let me explain.
Back in the day, when the wife’s other dog, aptly named Houdini, kept escaping from the backyard, she decided to get an electric fence to try and keep him from getting out. I spent an afternoon helping her husband at the time install the fence. It was a long wire that attached to an electric transformer which plugged into an electrical outlet outside. The wire ran along the fence line, connected to support rods. The idea was that the dogs would get close enough to the wire and receive a small shock if they tried to dig out.
After we had everything set up we decided to let the dogs out in the backyard, one at a time, to see if they would try to dig out. If they touched the wire we’d see their reaction.
We let Sugar Bear into the backyard. At first he wandered around, did his business, and didn’t get anywhere near the fence.
Eventually, he walk back to the concrete patio. I don’t know if the electric wire was making some high pitched noise he could hear, or if it was just something new, but Sugar Bear decided he would investigate.
He walked over to the wire, put his nose down to sniff it, then came in contact with it. It gave him a small jolt and he backed up. He seemed confused as to what had just happened.
He decided to test this new thing out again and bent down again to put his nose on the wire. Again, he got a shock and pulled back.
You would think he’d get the message and stop putting his nose on the wire. No. He bent down a third time and touched the wire again with his nose. Yep, it still shocked him.
Finally Sugar Bear got tired of this and walked back into the yard among the grass. He went over to the wire and bent down to put his nose on it again. He got another shock, this one bigger than the first because the ground is a better conductor of electricity than the concrete.
Apparently none of this was enough to convince him that putting his nose on the wire would be harmful to him. He put his nose down a fifth time and got another shock.
You would think he would have figured out this was a thing not to touch but he had to touch it five times before he stopped. Five times! I think all the other dogs stopped after two touches, at most.
Miss you, you big lug.
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