Two new dogs and one ugly rig

So, what does a dog truck and trailer look like? Well, if you are us, it looks like this:

the truck


the trailer




The box on the truck came up here with us when we moved. So did the trailer. However, everything else has been added for our trip back. Most of the wood was salvaged from the dump, so some pieces don't really fit like they should; some were too short but I had no choice, I had to use them. The paint was the cheapest we could find (any wonder? Who would use that colour?) And, there you have it: one dog-rig.

Yesterday we picked up our last two dogs. Moxie and Mouse. They are sisters and they, too, are shy. The pictures of them are the best I could get since the batteries on the camera were running low. Here they are:

Moxie



Mouse

This will be the last post for a while because we are heading back to Ontario. We expect the drive to take a week. I will post as soon as I can, and I should have a lot of pictures from our trip. Also, I hope to better be able to describe our new dogs, so I'll have a seperate page for them. Watch for the link on our sidebar.

The addiction grows.

When I started 'dog sledding' it was with two Malamute brothers. They were from a friend who raised Malamutes for the show ring and to sell. I think it would be fair to say that this kennel was not a working kennel in the sense that none of his dogs were routinely put in harness and taken out on a trail. He did have a sled and there were harnesses laying around, but only once had I ever seen the dogs go out and even then, it was only for about ten minutes in a farm field. Needless to say, Hudson and his brother didn't have a very strong work ethic. But, disregarding this, I would take them out as a pair: pulling my bike, pulling me on skis and when I finally got a sled, they pulled me on that. Sort of. We did a lot of leaf-looking, a lot of scent-sniffing and a lot of peeing on trees, rocks and blades of grass.

Then, I went down to one Malamute; Hudson. We took the summer off while I thought of how I was going to put together a team of dogs. Originally, I swore that the Malamute was the only dog for me. I wanted a team of Mals but I soon realized that this was going to be pretty difficult to achieve. Firstly, there were not a lot of Malamutes available for sledding. Some that were had some pretty severe behavioural problems, not the least of which was aggression, and others were from show kennels, which I had learned don't necessarily produce the hardest workers. Secondly, Malamutes as a breed are dog aggressive, small mammal predatory and generally strong willed and stubborn. All of these traits have served the Malamute well during it's development and they can be bred out of a gene pool, but for the recreational musher who was just starting out and who had very little access to dogs in the first place these were traits I wanted to avoid.

So, there I was, standing at the proverbial crossroads and trying to decide which direction to go when I met someone who was not only willing to support my new-found obsession, she wanted to be a part of it as much as me. Jenn and I went to every pound, animal shelter and stray-dog accumulator that was in reasonable driving distance and began to amass a rag-tag bunch of misfits. We picked up pretty much anything that looked or sounded like a sled dog. Our major coup, though, were the three dogs we picked up from a musher and tour operator in Temagami, Ontario. Marten River, specifically. One of the dogs was supposed to be a "Seppala Siberian" -- a great dog from great lines for those that are not familiar with the history of of the sled dog. The second dog was supposed to be from Andre Nadeau's kennel. Nadeau nearly won the 2000 (maybe 2001) Yukon Quest with some pretty remarkable dogs. A lot of people laughed at him when he showed up because he had almost pure Siberian Huskies as his team and Siberians are known around the Yukon (by their detractors, I should point out) as "Slow-berians." Nadeau managed to shut a lot of mouths during the race and it was only a "mind-game" that lost him the race. Even still, a second place finish in a 1000+ mile race as a rookie is not at all a poor showing. So, one of our dogs was supposed to be from his kennel. We were understandably excited. Lastly, we picked up a houndy-looking dog who was supposed to be furred lightning. He turned out to be a great dog for us, but I don't think he was as fast as he was made out to be. We also bought two puppies from a local recreational musher. They were $50 a piece and of all the dogs we had that first winter, we still have these puppies. Ruby, the mother of Valley, is one of those puppies.

We spent one winter with this collection of dogs and had a blast. We knew very little. We made mistakes that, now looking back, were so silly and amateurish. We went on 1 kilometer runs and acted as though we were going to be out all day. It was really funny. We had a blast, though. The second winter was a little more serious. We went farther, we learned more and we said "if we had more dogs we could..." a lot. We began to notice other mushers in the area and we were not above following a dog truck to talk to the driver. We went to races, we visited mushers yards and we began buying dog food in bulk to get the discount. We also started collecting meat scraps from any source we could find and we began to make our own food concoctions. From here it was not a far leap for us to plan our first camping trip; one that in hindsight was a bit ambitious. We were going to do a 100 kilometer trip. From our house to a Provincial park where we would meet our neighbour and our truck to transport the dogs back. We only had eight dogs at that time six of which, it could be argued, should never have worn a harness. Both Jenn and I were going to go, so it would be four dogs a piece, and packing between us a wall tent (8'x10'x5' when set up and all canvas), kibble for the dogs, our food, extra clothing, and God-knows what else. We expected to take five days to complete this trip. Unfortunately, one of our dogs died before we could go, which really was probably a good thing as it kept us from getting into trouble, I think. As far as the dog, Coal, goes; I wish I knew him now, knowing what we know. I think he would have been an exceptional dog. He taught us a lot. Just for comparison: if we were to do the same trip with our dogs that we have now, it would/should take us 24 hours, including rest times.

This leads me to the present. Our dogs. I titled this post "The Addiction Grows" for good reason. Although we have returned three dogs -- Ben, Scroggy and Grizzly -- to the musher they came from, and although we have found a home for Bluegrass, we have just brought five more dogs into our yard. Four of them are from Brian McDougall and the other one is from Kiara Adams, an 18 year old musher who has already run the Junior Percy De Wolfe and the Junior Quest as well as many other races. I have taken their pictures and have listed them below. I plan on getting together a page for our dogs, but until I know more about them, they will be displayed here.

Risk



Risk comes from Kiara Adams. She is a 7 year old leader who we are hoping will help us train our future leaders. She is so far a quiet and happy dog.

Olive



Olive is one of the dogs from Brian McDougall. She is the most outgoing of the four we picked up. She was not one of the dogs I had a chance to run when I went out with Brian. However, she was on his racing team this year and she went to Oregon for a race there which I think means something.

Lacey



Lacey is very shy. She is also from Brian and although she responds to him very well, it will take some time for her to learn to like us. She is not really accustomed to strangers, but she lets me harness her and will come for a visit if I move slowly and don't startle her. I ran her with Brians dogs and she was one of the hardest workers.

Horton



Horton is another shy dog. He is, again, very responsive to Brian but I am confident that he will warm up to us in a matter of time. I am happy to have Horton because he is a fast, eager dog.

Bug



Bug is a nine year old leader. Again, we picked her up for helping to train our dogs. She comes from Brian and she is outgoing and friendly. She led my team of Brians dogs and did a great job. One may think that because I was following Brian, just about any dog could have led but we switched lead near the end and Bug performed for me very well.

We will be picking up two more dogs from Brian before we leave to go to Ontario and Blitzi should be pregnant by then, so in a few months, we should have a pretty good team of dogs: experienced dogs that have raced and some up-and-comers who should be ready to start training in February.

Truly nomadic

In a few short weeks, we will be on the road.

We will have 11, maybe 12 dogs with us, six that we have just aquired. Maybe seven (see below).

One of our dogs will (hopefully) be pregnant. (Also see below) (Further below)

We will be trying to do a 6000+ kilometer drive with a 14-month old in a week. And stay sane.

We hope to not look like a bunch of Gypsies or the Clampetts.

We are going to Ontario for the summer.

Our recently aquired dogs have not yet made it to our yard. Just yesterday, I returned Ben, Scroggy and Grizzly to Kyla Boivan. Bluegrass has found a permanent home with a friend of a friend who is interested in getting into sprint racing. That leaves four empty spots in the dogyard. I can fill all four tomorrow, if I want. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been able to work out a deal with a local musher. I think that he would be happy to have the dogs out of his yard because that is six less mouths to feed. It's not that he doesn't like having his dogs around, but when you have thirty or so, they go through a lot of food. Six dogs gone would be saving at least two bags of food a month. Although it would be financially wise to let the dogs stay in the other musher's yard until the last moment, I don't think this is right. Also, I want the dogs to be bonded to us before we leave so that they are more comfortable and have less stress on the trip. So that is six dogs. The seventh is one from another musher around here who has a leader up for grabs. The dog is six years old and that is all I know. I have to call and find out more... we do have an extra box for another dog.

Blitzi is the real reason why my departure date has been pushed so far forward, so fast. She came into heat and because we want to have puppies from her and "Jack" we didn't want to pass up this opportunity. Originally, I was supposed to stay here and do more work on the cabin. Make it more livable for when we return. I was supposed to leave for Ontario in mid to late May, although in hindsight, this might have been too late, even without a pregnant dog because the temperatures would have been getting fairly warm for travelling.

Anyway, I'll try and post a picture of our rig before we leave. If you see us on the highway, wave.

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.