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NAME. Blue
AGE. 4 years
BiRTHDATE. Spring 2010
GENDER. Male
SPECiES. Siberian Husky x Australian Shepherd

PACK. NA
RANK. Stray
COLLAR. NA

HEiGHT. 22 inches
WEiGHT. 55 pounds

PHYSiCAL DESCRiPTiON. To say the least, Blue is a distinctive canine. Born from of husky and shepherd origins, Blue represents the best of both breeds. Blue merle markings cover a majority of his body, a carryover from his mother's Australian shepherd genes while he maintains the distinctive head and sturdy posture of the husky breed. Hints of light brown accent his underbelly, chest and chin and glacier blue eyes keep keen watch of the world around him. Roughly medium sized, Blue is far from the largest dog in the pack but he is without a doubt sturdy. He can travel miles at a time at a steady lope in nearly any weather and agile enough to make tight turns when at a run. However, running is a challenge for Blue. When he was younger, Blue experienced extensive smoke inhalation and as a result overexertion can cause him to wheeze. Most of the time it's not noticeable unless you have your ear pressed against his side but if Blue overdoes it in a long fight or runs for miles at a time he can find it hard to catch his breath. Day to day, it causes next to no trouble for him because he keeps his hunts short and maintains the steady ground-swallowing pace sled dogs used to cross arctic tundras and shepherds used to cross rolling hills chasing sheep. Most of the time, the husky side of his features is noticeable only in his posture and face but when he's not paying attention his tail tends to curl over his back in the characteristic sickle shape of a working husky.

PERSONALiTY. To be quite honest Blue is not a social dog. Poorly socialized as a pup, he has little interest in or competence with social exchanges. Frequently self-conscious, Blue keeps to himself almost exclusively and when he meets others tends to not know what to say. More often than not, he falls back on simply growling until the other dog decides to leave him alone. In addition, despite not being the biggest dog in the pack Blue is not afraid to get in a fight. He will fight almost exclusively to defend himself, weighing out the costs associated with each encounter to decide if he should fight or run. Being of fairly sturdy stock, Blue feels little fear when faced with bigger canines or even multiple canines. When he's on his own however, Blue is a fairly quiet dog. He is emotionally reserved and has a world class poker face. He plays his cards close to the vest and speaks very little because he feels he has nothing of value to contribute to a conversation.

What Blue does like, however, is listening. He likes to listen to stories and has a bit of a fascination with voices. He likes to listen to the low rumble of someone telling to a story, the lilt she-dog voices tend to get when they're happy. It's pleasant to listen to and stems perhaps from his time with his brother. Ash was always talking about something and more nights than not, Blue fell asleep with his brother's voice vibrating against his ear as they laid side by side for warmth. Unfortunately, Blue lives most of his life in solitude, going days at a time without speaking a word. He has a paralyzing fear of fire and not being able to breathe, both fears which give him horrific nightmares frequently. The smell of cooking meat makes his stomach turn and the crackle of fire makes him turn tail and run in a blind panic. These fears have left Blue with low-level anxiety during almost every waking moment but he does his best to smother and hide his fear behind a firmly unreadable facade. Blue is wary of exposing his weakness to anyone because he does not trust them to protect him or help him so he holds his silence.

Overall Blue has very little in the way of temper, almost never acting out in anger. He tends to let digressions go quickly and doesn't usually hold a grudge. Often physically distant, Blue doesn't like being snuck up on or touched without fair warning and never has. His family was not overly tactile when he was young, though he and his brother would sleep close together out of necessity. Deep down however, Blue loves touch and wishes that he felt comfortable enough to allow it frequently. He likes to curl up with another canine to sleep, likes to hear someone else's heartbeat ringing in his ears. It helps him feel safe and calm but due to his largely solitary lifestyle is seldom an urge he gets to indulge.

HiSTORY. Blue is a generational stray. Both of his parents were born strays and never knew anything about human affection or safety. Daisy, his mother, and Fang, his father, were less than ideal parents. Daisy was a young mother and birthed five pups in her litter, one of which was stillborn. Blue, his brother Ash and his sisters Bell and Lily, were born healthy enough but had to struggle to stay that way. Daisy had only a passing interest in her pups and Fang hadn't hung around after mating her. By the end of Blue's first year, both of his sisters had died. Lily starved and Bell was hit by a car. Blue and Ash eventually separated from their mother around the end of their second year, fed up with her absentmindedness and loose interest in them as her children.

As brothers, Ash and Blue got along well enough to stay together because they knew going solo would end in them both dying. Ash was brash, straightforward and a bit quick to action where as Blue was more antisocial, quiet and reserved but together they generally got along if only out of necessity. Together they roamed around the edges of small towns and primarily stayed well away from humans. They learned how to hunt together and relied on keen noses to sniff out safe places to sleep. For around a year, they were successful in keeping to themselves, save for a few scraps with other strays. One night, the pair bedded down in a barn on an abandoned farm not far from the outskirts of Sang City. It was a night like any other, the brothers were well fed and in good spirits since the weather was turning warmer. Neither suspected anything was amiss. They had no idea that some teenagers looking to cause trouble were approaching the farm and had come up with the brilliant idea to start a little light show. A can of gasoline and a match had the whole barn going up like it had been struck by lightning.

Blue remembers very little about the actual fire, just that he went from fast asleep to wide awake in the middle of the night with heat pressing in on all sides and smoke clogging his throat. In the dense smoke and heat of the fire, Blue ended up separated from his brother, stumbling in the gloom and struggling to breathe. He managed to escape the barn with burns along his flanks and haunches and much of his fur singed or burned off by breaking through smoldering wood paneling. There's a hazy portion of his memory between breaking through the burning wood and waking up the next day. He doesn't know what happened to Ash and wasn't able to make it far from the barn before he passed out. Blue spent several weeks in the overgrown fields around the smoldering barn ruins, laying low and licking his wounds. He looked quite a sight, half burned and unable to talk from all the smoke he'd breathed in but as time passed Blue gradually recovered. His fur grew back to cover the scarring along his haunches and flanks but his voice never totally recovered. He used to have a fairly average voice but since the fire his voice has become gravelly and rough. Blue, overall, is very self-conscious about his voice and as a result doesn't speak much when he meets other dogs. He prefers to growl until unknown dogs leave him be or snap his fangs so that they know he means business.

Since the fire, Blue has skirted around the edges of Sang City, to weary of heart to travel far. He feels his brother's loss sharply and struggles with nightmares about fire and dogs howling in pain. These nightmares leave him restless, irritable and heartsick but Blue refuses to find solace in other strays. He often catches whiffs of smoke, burning hair or meat and doesn't know if it's in his head or not. He swears it's his fur still burning, though the rational part of his mind knows it's not.