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.