What I learned from my dog about nature vs nurture

I have a Siberian Husky, you may have noticed if you follow me on Instagram - actually, if you follow me on pretty much any social network.She's a funny critter. I often say that Huskies act as if they are part wolf, part human and part cat. Wolf because they have a strong prey instinct. Human because they believe their families are their pack and truly believe they are entitled to use all human furniture. Cat because they have an independent streak a mile long.We've had Lumi (her name is the Finnish word for snow - I'll explain that whole story some other time) since she was six or seven weeks old. She's never been hooked up to a sled, but her every fiber knows she is meant to pull. I like walking her in the mountains because when we go uphill, she takes the edge off the slog, because she has the leash stretched taut, leaning forward as she drags us along.One day when she was about a year old or so, my mother-in-law took her out for a final potty break before bed. In the dark, on a leash, she suddenly darted into the darkness. Lumi had caught a rabbit. Before my mother-in-law was able to get Lumi under control, our girl had eaten all but the hind legs of that poor bunny. She'd previously caught a turkey and its five babies (what are baby turkeys called, giblets?), but let them fly away after a second that seemed like forever. She'd seemed uninterested in eating fowl. I guess she doesn't like the feathers. She'd also knocked birds out of the air in the backyard on more than one occasion.Another time, when I was walking her, she almost almost almost caught a chipmunk before it ran into a hole in the ground. She rammed her head into its burrow and resisted mightily as I tried to get her out. I was mostly concerned about her head being covered in dirt. I should have been focusing more on that poor chipmunk, which Lumi snatched and broke its neck.I say all this not to atone for Lumi's carnage, nor to brag about her hunting prowess.The thing is, Lumi is a sled dog. Historically, sled dogs (Huskies, at least) were let go in the summertime, left to fend for themselves in the off-season. They'd make their way back to their human as winter arrived because they knew they had a job to do and that was the best way to get food as it became scarcer.Lumi knows she is meant for winter. And knows she is meant to pull. She has never even seen a sled, but she knows what her job is and loves it. She gets upset if someone walks ahead of her. The world is out of sync and she has to fix it, and she'll pull, pull, pull until she passes them. It's a great way to get her to stop checking something out by the side of the road if she's taking too much time on a particular scent. "I'm ahead of you!" I'll say, sing-song, as I stroll past. She'll glance up and rush to get in front of me again.The most powerful exhibit of nature I have seen in Lumi, though, came when she was just four or five months old. It was her first winter, and it had snowed. She noticed the stairs out of the house looked different than they had earlier in the day. Why were they much lighter looking? She hesitated. I had to pull her, gently, to take that first step. I watched her as her paw sank into the snow and thousands of years of sense memory lit up her eyes.From that moment, Lumi knew exactly what snow was and couldn't have been happier. One winter, we made a snow pile on the back deck just for her, so she could sit on it when she was outside.There are times her pulling is annoying and I have to rein her in a bit. And when we're walking downhill in the mountains, that pull is sometimes a bit too enthusiastic.But I recognize that this is who Lumi is. She went through obedience training (and got sent home early a couple times because she decided she was finished with the training for the day) and is quite clever. She knows most basic commands, will high-five on demand (well, if she feels like it) and has a lot to say to us. It doesn't matter how much obedience training she goes through, she's a Siberian Husky and is never going to heel. That's just not who she is.So we don't try to make her be.