The horse trading (or, dog trading, in this case) has begun

There is a musher around here and everyone covets his dogs. Well, I do at least. Some will claim that they have seen better dogs, but really, they'd be pretty happy to have one or two of his dogs in their yard. He is a very successful musher and dog trainer; two traits that are often linked together but really couldn't be more seperate. At any rate I approached him last year, through a mutual friend, with the hope that he would maybe have a lead dog for me. He had two and was willing to let me try them out, keep them in our yard and run them, for the winter. As it happened, I spent last winter handling for a Yukon Quest musher and was up to my ears in dogs, barely having enough time for ours, never mind a third kennels' dogs.

And so it was that I found myself sitting in this mushers kitchen not even a month ago talking about dogs and which ones he'd consider selling me. We talked. We discussed philosophies of dog mushing, we covered topics minute and mundane to the exciting and implausible; namely, me doing the Quest. I say "implausible" because the more I learn about dog mushing, the more I realize I have to learn. At this rate, I may be able to run the Quest the year after I die. Someone once said that when they came to the Yukon, they were sure they could have written a book about it. Yet, after spending a year here, the were sure they'd at least be able to speak confidently on the subject. After spending two years here, they thought that they had maybe taken some good notes... so it is with dog sledding.

We settled on two dogs. Horton and Tarat. Horton was going to be free and he worked out well, we could discuss a price for Tarat. I thought that this was a fair deal. Here I was getting the so called "bottom end of my racing team," which is pretty much the top end of my racing team, for free and the possibility of getting another dog with great bloodlines for a decent price, too. I told him that I had to find a home for one dog and I had two, maybe three others that needed to go back to the lady who loaned them to us. Once I had a free spot in our yard, I'd come and get Horton.

Well, it has been a while and Bluegrass comes and goes. The girl that we had offered her to hasn't yet made a decision, but has come and taken her out on two over-night trips. As for the dogs on loan, I have not yet been able to get in touch with their owner. I was starting to worry that the deal I had made would fall through from a percieved lack of interest on our part...

...until last weekend. Our neighbour had just come from this mushers place and came by to tell us that if I was interested, this musher had a deal he wanted to try and work out. Was I interested? Of course! I think that I was on the phone that very second. I arranged a time that I could meet with him again, and we discussed the "deal."

It works like this: He will give me a core team of dogs, 6 in total, in exchange for some help around his house; namely, siding it. He has set a price for each dog and has set a hourly rate at which I can work. We both felt that this was fair and we moved from negotiations to selecting which dogs would comprise the core team. Well, can you do that without running them? He didn't think so, either, so today I went out with him for a ten mile run with six dogs each.

We screamed down the trail. The dogs screamed, I screamed, the sled screamed. I mean, we went fast. We came to a hill that I was sure I'd have to get off and run up but I kept waiting for them to slow down a bit and before I knew it, we had crested the hill and were looking for more. To say that I have never gone this fast on a dogsled is not an understatement. I felt like I had to re-learn how to drive a sled. We careened around corners and zoomed under tree branches. It was exhilerating. We returned to the yard at the same speed at which we left.

I was pretty happy with the choices that he made. I can't wait to call Bug, Minnie, Olive, Donald, Horton and Lacey 'my dogs.' I feel good about next winter already.