July 12, 1986 - June 20, 2001
Orion, whose registered name is Barnes Orion Tchaikovsky, C.D., C.G.C., came to join our growing family in September of 1986. He was a sweet, blue-eyed boy who kept Aurora company. He came from a kennel whose owners proudly informed us that they made their living breeding dogs. He was tick infested and had not had his shots until we said we would buy him, when the man got out a syringe and gave the shots himself. Something about which I have always wondered – he was larger than his sibling by quite a bit, and dilute black and white while they were all red. It took us 6 months to get registration papers on him. To this day I do not know if the papers we received were really his.
We began obedience training with Orion, and it eventually became apparent that something was not right. He had no attention span, a very bad, dry, coat, and was aggressive toward other dogs. All in all, not a good temperament for a Siberian. We had him neutered, and on a whim, had his thyroid levels tested. His thyroid levels were really out of whack! Our veterinarian put him on a maintenance dosage of thyroid medication, and he changed for the better. His coat became better, he began paying attention, and he stopped attacking other dogs! However, we did not discover the thyroid imbalance until he was 2 years old, and as a result he was smaller than most males.
Orion was a pretty special guy. When he was 7 months old he escaped from our back yard and was missing for 5 days. Fortunately, he was wearing his tags. He was located over a mile and across 2 busy roads away. The people who found him said he had been running around their house for 4 days, scared to death – they could not get near him. He had finally gotten so tired he could no longer run from them, so they were able to catch him and read his tags. He has been Bruce’s buddy ever since – he rode in Bruce’s lap the whole way home and panicked every time Bruce tried to set him down. We found out later that he had been shot in the shoulder with a .22. Because of this traumatic experience he actually bonded to Bruce (unusual for a Siberian).
Bruce showed Orion in Obedience and put one obedience title on him. He earned a qualifying score toward his next Obedience title. When he weighed 39 pounds, he pulled 1350 pounds in a weight pull. He ran co-lead on our recreational sled team until he was 11. Bruce backpacked with him. He was a wonderful bed puppy.
