The owner of a pair of Siberian huskies had finally had enough of her dogs’ daredevil escapes when she found herself running two blocks from her home, in her PJs, at 5:30 a.m.
The chain-link fence that Achilles and Maximus could see through, proved too much in the way of “interesting” things on the other side. And the excitable huskies couldn’t hold back.
However, the neutering didn’t work out the way she’d hoped it would.
“It seemed like that just fueled his desire to escape,” Ms. Andrade told The Epoch Times. “Within 24 hours of him getting neutered, he managed to jump the fence for the first time while still wearing his cone of shame.”
From that day on, Achilles could clear the fence in a single bound, leaving Maximus whining and crying—as huskies famously do—still inside the chain-link perimeter.
Maximus was not much of a jumper, but soon became a “great climber,” Ms. Andrade said.
Time and time again, the huskies vanished from the yard, only to reappear on the couple’s door cam in front of their house, in Minneapolis.
Until finally, Ms. Andrade and her husband, Leo Munoz, thought they’d found their dog’s Achilles’ heel in the form of a 6-foot (1.82-meter), opaque vinyl fence.
“The city we live in has a 6-foot fence limit, so we couldn’t go higher than that,” she said.
Up the fence went, in August 2022. And, for a while, its blocking out temptation on the other side worked like a charm on the husky duo, who are siblings but of different litters.
Before, with the old fence, as they could see through it, “they would go desperately crazy and wanted to escape right away,” Ms. Andrade said. Now, the new privacy fence “eliminated ninety percent of their escape attempts.”
The plan to end the escapes had worked.
Until it didn’t.
Just as the couple started to relax—they would stand and watch their huskies jump up and slide back down in vain—and as husband and wife grew confident that the matter had been settled, the pups found a weakness.
“About two weeks after we installed the fence, they noticed one of the panels slightly moving in the wind,” Ms. Andrade said.
The problem was, Mr. Munoz, helped by his brother and brother-in-law, had had to chop that panel to size, as the fence didn’t fit exactly. And this particular panel had not been securely set within the fence post like the others.
So, the determined huskies capitalized on the vulnerability, managing to push through and pop one of the vertical panels off, allowing enough room for them to squeeze out.
This happened twice, before Ms. Andrade finally fastened them down with screws, effectively securing the breach. It would hold—for now.
Yet, the saga of the huskies and their “Great Escape” continues. Today, as Mr. Munoz lays down concrete slabs to thwart their dogs’ newest tunnel under the fence, there is at least one silver lining.
As Ms. Andrade has made their Houdini-style attempts go viral on social media, Achilles and Maximus have garnered a level of fame. Their army of followers online now anticipate their next escape artist performance.
