If the mal, husky, or wolfdog is contained properly, and given ample room to run, then a good life can be offered to these intelligent minds. Malamutes are not house dogs! If your thinking of owning a house dog, then don't get a Malamute. However, if you understand that a malamute needs to be outdoors more than 50% of the day, needs other .ordic breeds as social partners, are willing to supply a rather large wild-ish type living environment (such as a huge 3000-10,000 sq. ft. yard or several fenced in acres) with pack mates included 24/7, then your on your way to experiencing the true Alaskan Malamute. Then you can invite it into the house for parts of the day where it will willingly be a "great" partial-house-dog. A good time to let them into the house is frequent overnight sleep visits(not everyday), or during hot, even slightly warm days. Please don't get any ideas of torturing them by letting them in on cold/snowy/icy/rainy nights. If this is you, then please be sure to do your homework better for their climate preferences. These are just basic guidelines, but to have a malamute miss out on the outdoors more than 50% of the day is pure torture to the breed, and will cause them to NOT end up being a good representative of their breed type after this kind of treatment. In fact, with this kind of mistreatment, your liable to have a snappy fat whiny creature that seems to shun the world and exhibits symptoms of depression to a great extent. In the end, not really hard to set up the yard to offer a good wild-type setting for your Malamute pack and you will fare well in the enjoyment department, and so will your companion dogs. One last note to keep in mind, to deprive a Malamute of the wild, is to deprive it of its true life!