What Age Do Huskies Calm Down?

Do Huskies ever calm down?

Are you tired of your Husky doing the zoomies around your house non-stop? You might be wondering, what age do Huskies calm down? We’ll share the answer and our guide to helping them be calmer every day.

The majority of huskies tend to possess massive energy so it’s impossible to keep up with their pace and speed of activities. You might be in this scenario right now that you’re wondering if the dog will ever mellow out or if that’s how things will be for the rest of your stay together.

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By the end of this post, you won’t have to wonder anymore. I’ll answer that and other related questions you may have regarding the level of activities for your husky. 

What age do Huskies calm down?

The truth is, there aren’t any specific age huskies begin to calm down. Generally, it’s expected that the husky will mellow out in old age just like most dogs. 

But I’ve got some good news for you. There’s something you can do to help your huskies mellow out faster. I’ll use my experience of raising my three huskies Laika, Nova, and Leki.

How to Calm Down a Husky

But first thing first, let’s look at some reasons that could explain why your husky hasn’t yet calmed down. 

1. Not enough exercise

Huskies are energetic animals by nature. They were initially bred to pull sleds in areas with freezing temperatures. But due to their friendliness, people started domesticating them. In fact, more people keep showing their interest in huskies as pets as time goes by. 

You need to ensure that your dog is active on a daily basis. The best way to do that is to exercise them so that they’re well-stimulated. If you don’t do that, they will be extremely hyperactive and that might have some consequences.

In most cases, they’ll have destructive behavior like tearing into your couch and everything else around and howling at night. They’ll also start chasing around and terrorizing other smaller animals around them. To avoid that, engage them in activities that will help them to vent the excess energy. 

The amount of exercise needed for huskies will vary from one dog to another. However, with time, you should be able to tell the amount of exercise that’s appropriate for you. For instance, if you realize that your dog is restless even after exercise, you can scale up the level of activities.

But if you notice that your dog spends the rest of the time sleeping, it might indicate that you’re exercising them too much.

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2. Attention seeking

Huskies can be good attention seekers if they chose to pursue it. But you can’t blame that on them. Although they were initially working animals, they’re proving to be good companion animals as well. They’ve got plenty of love that they believe they deserve to share with their human companions. 

But if you keep bowing to their demands every time, you could be the one that’s spoiling them too much. That was the exact behavior with one of the huskies Nova, who realized that I couldn’t turn her down when she sought to have my attention. With time, this became a bad habit and so I knew that I had to do something about it. 

I started ignoring her whenever she behaved crazily. The more she persisted, the more I pretended not to be aware of her presence. Of course, you can imagine the chaos and tantrums that Nova could throw.

But that didn’t deflect me and with time, the dog learned to behave itself. Nowadays, if it signals me, I know it’s something serious and so I have to turn and see what’s happening. 

Huskies are highly intelligent and they might somehow discover that you’re deliberately ignoring them.

They’ll also decide to play you by persisting with their nuisance behavior. Heads up: don’t give in, even a single time, or otherwise, you’ll mess up any progress you could have made. 

3. Boredom is too much 

If your husky doesn’t exercise enough, then it’s definitely struggling with boredom. But one thing that huskies don’t know is to stay put especially if they’ve got massive energies burning within them. The solution here is simple; let it exercise and get rid of the excess negative energy. 

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4. More training

At this point, I need to ask you if you’ve given your husky sufficient training. Yes, you could be doing some training at the moment but maybe it isn’t enough. Start with the basic training that involves common commands.

Don’t introduce too many commands at the same time. Pick on a few, run with them and when you’re convinced that your dog has fully grasped them and internalized them, you can introduce a set of new commands.

While at it, don’t use long phrases. In fact, I would recommend that you use one-word commands. For instance, instead of “sit down”, you can only use the command “sit.” If you like, you can beef that up by using signs. The command “sit” can be accompanied by a sign where you point to the spot where you want it to sit down. 

5. A new location

Huskies can also get restless especially if they’re in a new environment. The reason is that there are many distractions around it that it is not familiar with. Since huskies are hyperactive, they’ll want to have a feel of everything that they see.

That’s why when they see a lot of life happening around them, they’ll respond by being hyperactive. You can deal with this by taking the time to show the dog around new environments.

Do this as soon as you can so that the dog can become familiar with these areas. That will help it calm down and behave according to how you’ve trained it. 

6. Could you be the one encouraging this behavior?

Believe it or not, you could be playing a big role in encouraging your dog to misbehave. Here is what I mean. Huskies can get quite demanding at times. But depending on how you respond to the demands you’ll either encourage or discourage the dog from such behavior.

For instance, if you give in to its demands, then you’re spoiling the dog. When you reinforce such negative behavior, it sort of confirms to the dog that you like the behavior. It will thus keep on displaying the same behavior over and over again even if you don’t like it. 

Don’t give your husky treats as a means of calming it down. Instead, try using positive reinforcement as a way of training it to behave properly.

For example, if your dog keeps on throwing tantrums every time you leave or come back home, give it a treat on the day that it behaves itself. You see, that’s different from giving it a treat so that it keeps quiet. 

How to train a Husky to be calm

Here are some easy methods you can use to help your husky calm down.

1. Training

The purpose of the training is to help the dog be responsive to commands. If effective, the training can also help the dog to know that it always ought to seek direction before doing something you might not like. 

The good news is that the training also makes the dog expend a lot of mental and physical energy. By the time it is through, it won’t have the energy and time to cause chaos.

For starters, you’ll need to teach it basic commands such as “sit” and “stay” as well as not bolting out the door the minute you open it.  

2. Exercise

Exercise helps your dog to get rid of excess energy. You can start by teaching it to play fetch, which will keep it running around. Apart from that, the game of fetch is also an opportunity to bond with your dog and teach it commands that can help it to become a more responsive dog. 

Another technique is to walk your husky alongside other dogs on a daily basis. This also works on the same principle of helping your dog use up its extra energy. 

3. Distractions

If you realize that your dog has a lot of free time that makes it become idle, you can get toys that the dog likes so that it plays with them whenever it’s free. 

4. No reward for misbehavior 

Don’t give your husky whatever it wants when it’s misbehaving. Even if it wants your attention, don’t focus on it if it’s demanding it the wrong way.

Simply ignore it and let it howl till it realizes you won’t attend to it unless it’s something important like letting it out to pee. 

5. Crate training

Start crate training your husky. Ensure that your husky has a space it can call its own in your home. Put the crate there so that whenever the dog wants time out, it can head straight to the crate and relax there.  

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