ALLENTOWN, Pa. – At four years old, a Siberian Husky named Kiska VI is the talk of the Dieruff High School community. She’s the school’s official mascot.<\/p>\n
“When the school first opened in 1959, the first mascot was a female Siberian husky named Kiska,” explained Curt Swoyer, Dieruff alum and owner of Kiska VI.<\/p>\n
From sporting events to welcoming students on the first day of school, celebrating holidays and sending seniors off to college–Kiska’s at it all.<\/p>\n
“The students absolutely love her,” Swoyer said.<\/p>\n
This happy husky is on the mend.<\/p>\n
“She was chewing a bone and I heard it break,” Swoyer recalled.<\/p>\n
Four days ago, she had emergency surgery after swallowing part of a bone that pierced her stomach, got stuck and caused internal bleeding.<\/p>\n
“She’s my baby and I cried,” Swoyer told 69 News.<\/p>\n
Swoyer started a GoFundMe to help with vet expenses and the cost of emergency surgery so Kiska VI can return to her Dieruff duties.<\/p>\n
“Any time they have any sort of event, it’s important for me to have her there,” Swoyer said.<\/p>\n
Kiska’s a little stitched up and has to take it easy the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
“She will be at the graduation to lead the class into the graduation. She’s just the sweetest dog,” Swoyer stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – At four years old, a Siberian Husky named Kiska VI is the talk of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,10206,76541,10063,22947,91847,519,46274,91848,59531],"class_list":["post-209071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-dieruff-high-school","tag-emergency-surgery","tag-gofundme","tag-graduation","tag-kiska-vi","tag-mascot","tag-siberian-husky","tag-student-community","tag-veterinary-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}