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My brother has a 2 year old female Siberian husky, I've been babysitting her since she was 9 months old. She spends majority of her time with me, my kids and pets. He picks her up every other weekend.

He had told me she won't eat or play when she's with him, even though we give her the same foods. As soon as she is back with me, she will eat and start playing. She has become very jealous and follows me everywhere I go. I love her like she was one of my kids.

If anyone can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

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    Welcome to Pets! Please take the tour and have a look at the help center. Which aspect of her behavior do you need help with? Stack Exchange isn't a general discussion forum, but a Q&A site and requires you to concentrate on one specific problem or question per post. Please edit your post to point out what you need help with the most. If you have several problems, you can post each in a separate question.
    – Elmy
    Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 12:46
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    huskies are known to be intelligent and with intelegence comes strong opinions,judging by what one can see on youtube regarding huskys the dog sounds normal.i am not a dog person so i might be wrong.wellcome to pets. Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 13:53

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I can't help but feel, first off: whether Husky or not, this is a dog with a strong bond to you; and really, you and your family and pets are her pack. I'm tempted to add, what else seems obvious. (And with the background story, you're probably her true and only Alpha.) Further seeming obvious, and so it feels, to this dog your brother isn't even part of her pack as she's not acting comfortable when she is with him.

Going from that, when your brother "picks her up", it seems, to her it just means that she is being taken away from her pack, which is where she belongs, where she is at home, and where she feels safe. Being taken away from home. And away from all the fun, too. Her behavior as you describe it seems very congruent with a strongly grieving, worried or offended dog. Grieving or worried, more like (she might eat if just offended, unless she also just refused to accept something from him, too.)

Now for the Husky part, I've never raised a litter of Huskies or owned one, but as the saying goes that Huskies are a breed in the range of the closest you can get to a wolf, the pack idea would surely apply even more, and strongly. And the idea of not accepting food from him under these circumstances, too.

One thing you didn't ask, and a potentially painful one - but I can't avoid the subject without feeling untrue (and I've already touched it anyway) - you may want to keep in mind that a dog's native language in every respect (perception, emotion, expression and so on) is well, Dog, not Human. This includes that what counts is what really happens. The being together, the even having been mostly brought up by you, the sharing of most all of her life. The human concept of isolated juridical ownership is not included in what's real or comprehensible to a dog.

This is painful but it feels so illogical to me to even expect that she would see herself as your brother's dog. From what you are telling us, this dog is rather apparently neither sharing nor enjoying life with your brother when she is made to be with him. I'm very sorry, but from everything you write, it feels so illogical to me how your brother could even be said to "have" this dog. How do you have a dog when that's supposed to mean you are with the dog every other weekend and that's not where that dog is at home, i.e where she spends all her time. It feels more natural to me to think that she really belongs to you.

When I was first going to write, "This dog's behavior when she is with your brother, ...", I had to physically restrain myself from not starting that paragraph with Your dog. As that is by all means in what I can see from your post, where she is bonded, so, where she belongs.

And I guess she is expressing that strongly. Which of course raises a completely different question that you didn't ask, but that's all I can see here, and so sorry, I can't hold this back.

(And I think she doesn't. What appears to you to be jealousy may just be putting much energy and vigilance into not being separated from you yet again.)

Coming back to your original question, what I think I observed from your post might be gradually different with a breed that mingles easily with just anyone (being very far from having retained a strong inner concept of pack), but then, how little of a dog must a dog have become for that? To the extent of things you describe, I wouldn't even know for sure whether such a breed even exists. Some breeds would sure mingle more easily than others, but then, that's not the same as being inconsistent as to where is home. And my take of this is, as for Husky specific, inconsistency in that quarter would surely go the least with a close-to-wolf breed dog.

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  • This is an interesting and informative but long answer. Maybe you could add one or two sentences "in conclusion" as last paragraph? Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 5:41
  • @Allerleirauh Willing but at a loss for how to write that. What gives? If you have any suggestions please do share them. Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 6:36
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    Try to bring your most important point(s) into one or two sentences :) my suggestion would be one for "the dog is home where it lives most time" and one for "Huskies are very close with their pack, more than other breeds". You could also do this as first paragraph. "Long in short: ..." and then give the full answer Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 7:45
  • You could look here how I did it ;) pets.stackexchange.com/questions/26115/… Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 7:49
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    I agree that this answer is very, very informative, but unfortunately hard to read. Maybe it's harder for non-native english speakers. To me this reads like a transcript of a spoken conversation. Your thoughts wander from topic to topic, and so do your sentences. I had a hard time extracting the most important information from all those words. Maybe take a break for a few hours, then have a fresh look at your answer and condense it down to the informative bits, while leaving out the chatty bits. (Take my +1 anyways)
    – Elmy
    Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 8:51

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