The first taste of spring mushing

The sun rose in a nearly cloudless sky this morning and although it was on the mild side of below freezing, Jenn and I decided to take Hunter to her babysitter and then go run our dogs together. Something that we have done only one other time this winter. Totally kid-free. We were sort of squeezing in the run between me dropping Hunter off, some guests coming out to have some dogsled rides and then my business course. Yes, I said it; business course. Those that know me can stop laughing anytime now.

It was a pretty nice spring-like day; bittersweet in some ways because even though the weather was great it only drove home the point that there are a limited few weeks of good sledding left. We have borrowed some harnesses from a friend of ours and so we were able to take out ten dogs today. We could have taken more had I been more industrious and made another section of gangline. After hooking up the trailer, we loaded the dogs and drove to one of our longer trails. Jenn didn't want to go too far because she is working with a new leader who is a bit shy still and who doesn't have a lot of miles on her so her endurance isn't what the rest of our dogs have. We agreed to run up to the lake and back, about an eight mile run round trip.

When we arrived at the trailhead, which is pretty much where the plough stops and turns around, we unloaded the dogs and harnessed them. Here, on their drop-lines, is what our team looks like while they wait to be hooked up.






Jenn has been a little critical of my work with the dogs in that the leaders don't hold the line out like they are supposed to when we hook up. I kept telling her that I thought it was because she really only saw them around the yard, when they were more apt to mis-behave. Today I was let off the hook: my leaders were great and didn't move once I put them in place; in truth, both sets of leaders were very good as we continued to hook up our dogs. I took six and Jenn had four and it wasn't long before they were hooked up and straining to go.

I thought that Jenn was ready to go, so I pulled the hook and took off but looking back, I saw a knot of dogs and Jenn in the middle trying to sort it all out. My departure had spooked the shy leader and she had backed up into the dogs behind her, tangling the lines in the process. There was not much I could do, so I just continued on hoping that things were alright back at the truck. I guess what I should say here is that the brake on the small sled broke yesterday and we only have one prong to use instead of the normal two. I was in the process of fixing it this morning when Jenn assured me she'd be alright with just the one prong, "We don't have a lot of time," she said, so trusting her judgement, I put down the prong and haven't picked it up since. This would explain the body prints that I saw in the snow on my return run. Jenn had fallen off the sled three times in eight miles, but to her credit I never saw the sled without her on it, so she must have managed to hang on, ploughing snow all the while.

We had a less than stellar turn around partly because I made it to the lake before Jenn (a person dragging in the snow behind the team tends to slow them down a bit) and I ran out onto the lake to turn the team around. The whole trail up to the lake was just two tire tracks from a 4-wheeler and they went out onto the lake and looked like they turned around. I debated about following them farther onto the lake but we have had some snow and some mild temperatures in the past week and it looked like there was some pretty good overflow on the lake that I didn't want to deal with, so I just turned the team around where I was. I was just about to tie my sled to a tree when Jenn came around the corner and before I could do anything to help her, her dogs were past me and heading further down the trail. Jenn tried to get them to turn the proper way but they didn't listen (bad dogs!) and there was no solid snow for her snowhook so she had no choice but to run them down the trail further and then try again. About half a mile later we were able to get the teams turned around and we headed back.

All in all it was a fair run. Many of our dogs are still in heat and because it was a bit on the warm side, their focus was not what it noramally is. We let the dogs cool down and Jenn took some photos of them, individually, which I will use for the "team" page that I am working on. Then they got their treats and we loaded them back into their boxes and headed for home with less than half an hour left before our company was expected to arrive.

Our company, a co-worker of Jenn, the co-workers' sister and friend, arrived nearly right on time and we gave them a tour of the dog yard, the dogs, and brief intoduction to the basics of driving a dogsled. At first, only one wanted to drive their own sled so I took one other in my sled and we headed out down our trails for a quick run. It wasn't long before I was passed by two dogs, a sled and no driver. Jenn caught the sled on its way by and another guest took over the driving of it while the previous driver walked up the hill, a little sheepishly, to meet her friend and Jenn. Here in this photo you can see the big puff of snow as another driver doesn't make the corner. (That's her in the snow)



All of our guests took the spills in stride and tried again and again to make it around the trail without falling off. We even had two teams running side by side at some points, which isn't something we normally do, but the dogs surprised me at how well they handled it. We even managed a few passes without incident. Some surprises are good surprises.

With that, I suppose the post is over. Here are some more photos of our guests and our dogs.

This is what happens...

Yesterday was go-get-meat day. I drove to South River with a friend of mine, who just happened to be going there as well. I picked up 300lbs of specially formulated winter feed. It is supposed to be a good mixture and the people I bought it off of seem to have good results, but I thought that I'd just buy a small amount and try it out first. I was gone longer than I had planned on being away, and I felt a little bad because Jenn worked at night and she was at the house by herself. I had dropped Hunter off for a day of play with a friend of hers.

This is what happens when I leave Jenn unsupervised for the day.




Yes, the picture is a poor one; it is blurry and the background is a disaster, but that is a direct result of the circumstances: six dogs, at once, including two puppies, in the house. Even if they were calm pet dogs I think that most would agree six at once is perhaps excessive. Actually, there were really only five dogs to watch out for; Olive decided that she would rather keep an eye on the rabbit. She tells me it didn't go very far.



I came home to find Jenn gone, all the dogs back at their tie-outs and the house looking like we'd just hosted the party of the year. At least they got a walk to burn off some energy prior to coming into the house.







Today I left the house early and went to help set the race trail for the Markstay-Warren race. We finally have enough snow to try again. The difficulty is that the race is being held in a series of joining farm fields. There is not a lot of protection from the wind and the snow has a tendency to blow across the fields and away. At any rate, the bit of a base that we had managed to groom a few weeks ago was more or less intact and it helped us improve the trail to the point that the race would be runnable tomorrow. Jenn had told a regular customer of hers that we would be happy to have them come out and see the dogs today, so I left half-way through the trail work to come back and run two teams of dogs for these people. It was a very short trip, just around our property, but they seemed to like it anyway. I think that they were more interested in just seeing the dogs but let themselves be talked into going out.

Ruby sure was happy to go. Here she is showing her excitement. (She's the one in the air)



I hadn't noticed Jenn take the picture, but it is good that she did because it is interesting to see how high Ruby jumps when she's harnessed and on the line. Freak. The last photo is of one of our guests and I rounding the corner towards the dog kennel.



We have another person and his son(s) coming out tomorrow for a dogsled ride and lunch. I have just put some moose in a marinade for skewering. It's quick and easy and aside from making the actual skewers and cooking, it's done.

Not a lot to write this time. Hopefully, I'll do something exciting one of these days.

Here are a few shots of some of our dogs:


Taiga


Jinx


Baby - one of the puppies

Video

After an inordinate amount of time spent in front of the computer monitor, I think I have managed to post some video of our dogs and us. Admittedly, the videos are of three winters ago when we were still living in the Whitehorse area, but they are the only videos I have right now. Also, many of the dogs that are in the videos are not with our kennel. Some of them were given back to the musher we borrowed them from and two others we gave away because they didn't fit our kennel for a number of reasons.

This first video is of us hooking up the dogs. Jenn is seen dealing with a dog that wants to chew the gangline and I get to deal with a young dog that doesn't quite get it. She was new to sledding and had only gone out a few times. Before coming to us, she was a pet and we took her because Jenn has a soft heart. She is one that didn't fit our kennel. She is now a semi-pet, semi-skijoring dog with a young girl. They are both, at last report, very happy with each other.




The second video is of us coming onto the Watson river that runs under Annie Lake road. Again, Jenn's mother was doing the filming; it is the end of the run of the video above. I don't remember why we stopped, but we were only about a kilometer away from our house at this point.

Finally, some snow

I am just in from running the dogs. Jenn took the truck to work, so I am not able to take them anywhere and so I had to run them from the property. Not too bad, I guess. We are finally getting some snow -- now that it is the end of winter and the race I was helping organise had to be postponed due to lack of snow. For any of you who are interested, information on the Markstay-Warren Challenge the Champ race can be found here.

I guess just to update from the last post, Hunter has started going out with the dogs again. He problem was that she wasn't able to drive them. Her legs can barely span the runners, but she's mad because she has to sit in the sled. We have made a deal with her; she can take out Ruby, one of our more calm, non-racing dogs, on the small sled with one of us helping steer. She seems to like that.

I have managed to snare two rabbits. There are now skinned, cleaned, cut up and frozen. I debated about taking a few pictures of them, but in the end figured that people who wouldn't mind seeing a dead rabbit on this blog have probably already seen one before and don't really need to see one again; and those people who haven't seen a dead rabbit would likely prefer to keep it that way. I expect that this was the better decision. The first rabbit was a bit lean and I cleaned it outside because we had company with a girl about Hunters age. I wasn't sure if the parents would appreciate me dealing with the rabbit around their kid, so I stayed outside. The second one, however, was frozen (the first was caught on a relatively mild day) and I had to bring it in the house to thaw so that I could skin it. Hunter was facinated and wanted to help clean it, to feel its fur and kept asking when we were going to eat it. I was surprised at her interest, but decided that I'd not involve her right away. I let her watch what she wanted to.

As I started out saying, the dogs and I went out today on the river again. Risk and Dora were in lead, Blitzi and Lacey were in swing and Horton and Dart were in wheel. I only took one team out there, though, because we ran by a lot of open water and through some long patches of overflow. I think that the river is still safe enough to run, but the temperature is just below zero and the weight of the new, wet, snow is pushing the ice down a bit and creating the sticky overflow. I decided to get off the sled this time for a picture, so that people could see what my dogs look like coming, instead of going. I apologise for the quality of the picture; it was snowy and my dogs pulled the hook on me as I was taking this.



If you are wondering why the sled is on its side, it is because there isn't a lot of snow for the snowhook to grab and the sled adds a bit of weight on top of the hook. Still, they managed to pull it out. This is just a shot I tried to take while we were moving and from a different angle. It might have been better if I had a longer string of dogs and better scenery. I'll have to work on that.



The second team I took out was Olive and Mouse in lead, Moxy and Taiga in wheel. I have to work on some leader commands, anyway, so it was okay to only take out four dogs and a smaller sled around the property. I don't have leaders that hold the line out very well, and I spent a long time today working on this with Olive (yellow) and Mouse (the other leader). I think that these two are two of three of our best leader candidates, but I still need to work on their commands more. They are great at showing a willingness to run out front and set the pace and they do understand their commands a little but what I need is consistancy and no hesitation. It is coming. Here they are, after the run.

Jenn and I are thinking of starting a race for next year. There are not many mid-distance races around here and the races that are available to go to are often very serious because they are sanctioned by ISDRA and count for a lot of points in the sprinting season. I don't pretend to know anything about the sprint circuit, nor the sanctioning or point system of ISDRA but it seems to make for a very serious race. If anyone wanted to go to compete just for fun, they may have the feeling that they are in the way of more 'serious' mushers. So, in light of this, Jenn and I are planning on having a fun race series here in the Markstay area. We were thinking of a monthly race, where the milage goes up by ten miles each month. For example, Decembers race is ten miles, January is twenty and so on. If you are reading this and are interested, contact me.

Lastly, let me just describe my day yesterday. Jenn was off work and I had to drive 150 kms to get 300lbs of meat for the dogs, so we thought that we would make a day of it. After all, we had to go through North Bay and they have a mall. I get meat, Jenn gets to shop. On our way to North Bay, I noticed that the truck wasn't running like it should have been. It seemed to not have much power all of a sudden. I checked the transmission fluid, it was fine; I wondered if maybe we had some bad gas, but since we had experienced the problem prior to filling up and were still experiencing it after having filled up, I decided that wasn't it, either. The only other thing I could think of was that one of my plugs was missing. We drove on to get the meat and found, after an hour-, hour and fifteen minute drive, that the place had run out of meat yesterday. Great. So, we turned around and headed back to North Bay and stopped at the mall. It was just like all the others, so no surprise there. We piled back into the truck and drove back home. We were about half an hour from home when the truck blew something. I wasn't sure what but it sounded like a belt had gone and was hitting something every revolution. To spare you my diagnostics and cursing at not being able to source the problem -- it wouldn't have mattered even if I knew what it was because I was blessed with a complete lack of tools -- the mechanic who I convinced to drive out to my truck said that I probably blew a sparkplug. Somehow, the plug had been forced out of the threads that hold it in the cylinder head. Fantastic. "So you'll probably have to re-tap the threads then?" I asked. "Probably." I expected it to be a rather involved process, because, after all, how do you keep metal filings from the tapping process out of the cylinder? You remove the whole head and plug housing. Not a quick fix, I thought. Anyway, the guys were able to able to fix the problem quickly and we would have been out of the mechanics in less time except for the bird brained people who designed my engine. I mean, who buries sparkplugs so far in the engine block that you need a 4-inch socket just to get them out? 4-inches! Excluding the extension the guy had to use just to clear the rest of the engine. Oh well, it only cost $35 so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

Cheer up, Sunshine, it ain't all bad.

This is what my kid looks like when she is ready to go out with the me and the dogs.



She is wearing a helmet that we bought for her when we go on a snowmachine; we chose a hockey helmet over an actual snowmobile helmet becasue we were advised that snowmobile helmets are heavy and can cause neck injuries in kids. Hunter is wearing the helmet because Jenn was going to follow me on the other sled with a team of her own and wouldn't be in the sled to hold Hunter like normal. She looks pretty comfortable, don't you think, eating her salami and all bundled up in her sleeping bag and snow suit? I thought she was, too. So did Jenn. Hunter, however, decided that she didn't want to go out. After we had spent half an hour preparing her a snack, dressing her up and making her little area in the sled warm and cozy. Not only that, but she decided to have a screaming fit after all the dogs were harnessed. I had to take the harnesses off the dogs, who were pretty disappointed and a little confused, while Jenn took Hunter into the house. If ever I give the impression that my runs with the dogs are flawless and the image of perfection, just refer back to this post. There is more to come.

Let me start with harnesses. We own some pretty well used harnesses. We have nine of them and another dozen on order. I have had to repair the harnesses because we have some dogs who don't have an outlet for their excitement when they are harnessed but not yet on the gangline. Today was a stellar example of harness chewing. This is a good harness.



This one is not so good.



The other one is in better but still chewed condition. So, now an evening that I had hoped to get some reading done will be taken up by sewing my harnesses back together. When they said that I should have paid more attention to HomeEc in highschool, never would I have forsaw this as being the reason.

I took two teams of dogs out today, and for the first time this year, I was able to run from the yard because the river has finally frozen. My first hook up was pretty good. I had Risk in single lead, Blitzi and Lacey in swing and Horton and Dart in wheel. I only took five dogs because the first part of the run would be around our property and we have some pretty tight corners. Any more than five and I was taking my life in my hands, or less dramatically, risking a pretty decent wipe-out. This is us on the river.



The first run went really smoothly even though some of the commands were difficult for Risk to take: how do you tell a dog to take the middle of the three braided snowmobile tracks when they are all going the same way, anyhow? Better still, why would I give a command to follow a specific trail when they all led to the same destination? One of the trails had bare ice on it and I wanted to keep the dogs on the snow as much as possible. I thought it made sense. We came back to the yard and I put everyone back at their places and proceeded to ready the sled for the second run and then I harnessed the next six. This is where things sort of fell apart. Olive and Mouse were my two leaders and they were too interested in sniffing each other and everything else to hold the line out. One of the lead dogs biggest responsibilities, as far as I am concerned, is to always keep the gangline tight. It's okay, I thought, I can deal with this. I went up front and told the dogs to 'line out' -- my command for holding the line tight -- and Mouse more or less got it. I went for my third dog, Dora, and by the time I had her hooked up, I noticed that Jinx, one of our yearlings, had chewed her harness, so I ran over to her and scolded her and took the harness off of her. "You can stay right here!" I said. I went to get my fourth dog and found that Olive, Mouse and Dora were behind my sled in a big tangled ball, happily sniffing each other. I guess I should point out that of the eighteen dogs we have, thirteen of them are female and they are all either in, or just coming out of, heat. I finally sorted out the tangle, brought them all up to where I wanted them and told them to line out again. I went for my fourth dog again and saw that she had demolished her harness. Hers is the one in the photo above; and it isn't the good one, either. She got the same scolding that Jinx did and she was told that she was staying right there, too. So, my fifth dog became my fourth. I hooked Moxy up to the line and was left with either Ruby, who would have been too slow; Valley who tends to get growl-y when she's in season; or a repeat, I decided I would take Horton again, since he was closest and I had a harness that would fit him. Once we got underway things were relatively good. I refrained from giving any but the necessary commands this time and pretty much let the dogs choose what trail they wanted to run on the river.

Today was also chicken cutting day. This is a pretty boring but necessary chore but it is made a lot easier since I aquired this.



This comes from Jenn's grandmother. It is a pretty good meat saw and the only reason I include it is to show dogsled_stacie in the hopes that she is just a little bit jealous; after all, she gets to run her dogs in the Yukon, so she can brag ten times to what I can. I hope she hasn't got a better one. I used an old Black and Decker circular saw for this task prior to my aquisition, but it was horribly messy and I ended up wasting a lot of food.

Our two little puppies, born in the end of September, are getting pretty big. They were a litter of four, but we sold two of them and these two, which I don't have a picture of, were named by Hunter. "Baby" and "Triangle". Yep. I can't wait to go to races and tell my lead-dog "line out, Triangle." Speaking of puppies, if you were a follower of the my blog prior to us moving, you may remember we had a puppy-naming contest. This is the puppy, two years later.




Tomorrow Jenn and I are supposed to leave Hunter with my brother in law's girlfriend for a few hours while we try to take two teams out again. I hope that it goes better than last time. I also hope I can repair the harnesses in time. Maybe if I quit writing this thing...

I can't believe it! There actually exists an anorak that is exactly what I have been looking for! Here it is, with apologies to Northern Garments of Dawson City, Yukon for 'borrowing' their picture:



I am currently taking donations. They can be mailed to the address on the sidebar. If you work for Northern Garments and think that you would like to sponsor me, I'd like the blue one. If you are all out of those, then I'll take the tan one. I'm size Large or Extra Large, whatever you happen to have around.

It turns out that I am further behind than I thought. The pictures below are clickable thumbnails, and if you are interested in seeing them larger you will be brought to a different page. I'll work on this.

I'm not sure if I should really be posting this, but I went out and set some snares for rabbits today. I'm hoping that I get at least two because it would be really nice to have our neighbours over for dinner and I know they enjoy rabbit.

When we moved to this piece of property, our first neighbour was pretty much a shut-in. He wandered outside when the mood struck but that was not very often. Then, last winter, the house was put up for sale and our current neighbours moved in. At first, I was happy because that made them the newbies and the "you knew we had dogs when you moved in, so quit complaining" argument applied. Eighteen dogs barking and howling when I'm feeding them or loading them up for a run can get pretty noisy. Happily for us, however, they are both great people and both of them love being outside. They say they don't mind the dogs, much less hear them which is good and the other day we took them out on the sleds so that they would maybe understand the thrill of it. At any rate, it is nice to be on good terms with them, so let's hope for some rabbits.

Below is one of the only pictures of the first goat we had. Hunter, ever the princess, is out with him feeding him grass. He was about six weeks old in this photo.



Sorry if this post seems a bit random and boring. I was more looking for a test of sorts to try out my new changes.

one last photo of my goofy kid, for all those who haven't seen her in a while.



'til next time,

Dogs, dogs and more dogs.

It has been a pretty dog-filled day today. This morning was bright and cold; temperatures were -32C, the sun was hardly up and already there were shadows sprawled across the snow. I boiled some water for the dogs chicken broth and went out to feed them. Almost all of them had frost lines on their faces from where their expelled breath had condensed and frozen and the bucket of chicken was steaming as I ladled out the broth into each dogs' bowl. The dogs are pretty funny to watch when I feed them; most of them will put a foot into the bowl when the chicken is done and just a few leftovers are clinging to the side so that they can more effectively lick out the remainers without the bowl scooting across the snow. I'm not sure who the originator of this behaviour was, but all of them do it now. Surely holding a bowl is not innate.

This is the entrance to the dog yard:

The red shed is the feed shed and equipment storage;

This is the front of the dog yard

and this is the back of the dog yard

I went in for a coffee and then it was time to do toenails. We have eighteen dogs so that is two hundred and eighty-eight nails to cut. I'd like to say that all of our dogs are well behaved and stand patiently while I cut their nails, but not all do. I admit that I was not as thorough or regular as I should have been with our puppies of two summers ago. I should have been touching their feet and cutting their nails more frequently so that they would be accustomed to it but I didn't and I am now paying for it. The thing that I don't understand is this: why can the dogs figure out to hold the bowl when they lick it out, but can't make the connection that I don't cut their nails too short and am done sooner when they don't jerk their legs around? Anyway, an hour and a half later, I was back in the house for more coffee and to make the plan for the day.

When I came in, Hunter and Jenn were in the living room; Jenn trying to get some sleep because she was suffering the effects of being out too late the night before with some friends -- she drove in the driveway as I was going out to feed the dogs at 0730 -- and Hunter was climbing on top of her and playing with Jenn's hair. It was too nice a day to spend inside so I agreed to not bug Jenn for an hour or so and to let her have a bit of an uninterupted sleep and then we'd take the dogs out.

The plan for taking out the dogs this time was for Jenn to drop me off at the trail where I normally start and then drive to where one trail option comes out on another road, about twenty kilometers (twelve and a half miles) away. We were not planning on having a long run for a few reasons, one being that I only have enough booties for three of my dogs and the snow was really abrasive (more booties are on their way as I write this); and another being that Jenn had to work later on in the afternoon. Hunter likes a fire and hot chocolate so I got some wood ready for Jenn to build a fire that they could sit around, sipping their hot chocolate while they waited for me. This whole hot chocolate and fire thing started when we took Hunter out with the dogs one day. We hooked eight dogs up and Jenn sat in the sled with Hunter and off we went with no real destination in mind. We'd packed marshmallows, hotdogs and hot chocolate because earlier in the year, we took Hunter out and she was cold, bored and not having a good time. This time, she was laughing, calling the dogs names and saying "wheee-ee" a lot. We ran until the dogs looked like they'd need a break, so I picketed them and Jenn built a fire and Hunter ate hotdogs. It was great fun and Hunter hasn't stopped talking about her picnic since; and so it was that Jenn and Hunter set out to have another fire today. Here is a shot of the first picnic. It is terrible because Jenn's camera battery was too cold to take any more than one quick photo.

Jenn helped me hook up my dogs and I was off. I bet it was the fastest run I have been on with my dogs to date. What needs to be said is that we don't have very much snow. I have spent much of the winter running over snow, bare ground and then more snow. The plastic on my runners is nearly worn through and it is scratched beyond all reason and repair. Because of this, the majority of our runs have been slow paced and a little depressing to both me and the dogs. Today, however, the trail was awesome. I had a hard time holding onto the sled in some of the corners and the hills were heart-pounding. It is an indescribable feeling to be out at -20 in the bright sunlight careening around corners, holding on for all your worth while your dogs are all running as if of one mind. They were certainly having fun today. We did the trail in about 45 minutes and beat Jenn to the arranged meeting spot. It was great and the dogs knew it.

This is Hunter in the dog yard, waiting for Jenn to get back with her 4-dog team

Tonight, I have just come from a meeting with some mushers in the area. We are putting on a race in the community and have been planning it since the summer. It is all ISDRA sanctioned and counts for points and all that stuff that I don't even pretend to understand. Lou Serre is a world-class sprint musher and he is a resident of the small community we live in. The race is named in his honour and sort of tounge in cheek at that: Challenge the Champ. The small committee has managed to raise a purse of $10,000 and recruit several big name sponsors and we were looking at a pretty high attendance, based on early registration. It looks like we are going to have to reschedule the race, however, since the forcast for the 24th and 25th of February is rain and +5c. I spent a whole day Saturday putting in the race course with another of the organisers and by today, we don't have a trail. That is how little snow we have. It is a shame, too, because Lou was going to have some pretty stiff competition... just look at this 4-dog team go!

On that note, I'll leave it there for now.

And away we go. Again.

Here we are mid-way through February and I am finally getting myself organised enough to start my blog writing again. I'm not really sure how many people actually read this thing, so this may be an excercise for me alone; however, I shall endeavour to keep it posted regularly. Also, please bear with me as I re-learn the blog intricasies. Once again, I have no pictures to show, but that is more a result of my having the computer fixed and a good portion of my programs deleted in the process. Not to worry, I'm told, I just have to reload them onto my computer; a bit like being delivered all the ingredients for your meal at a restaurant and then being told it is up to you to cook it.

So an update: we no longer live in the glorious Yukon. Yes, I am still having a hard time getting over it even though it has been two winters now. We are living just east of Sudbury, Ontario in a town called Markstay. We have just under 40 acres of land on which we house the dogs and, up until the past fall, two goats. We didn't have them for long. Just long enough for Hunter and Jenn to get attached to them and then one of my dogs (they are all 'my dogs' when they are bad) got loose and killed them. The goats were just babies and I was nearly living on the street with my dogs. I will say no more other than it was totally out of character for this particular dog to act like this and I am just as surprised as everyone else.

Although we do not have the luxury of running our dogs from our yard I have been able to find some fairly decent trails within a ten minute drive and the dogs are getting pretty good at being boxed. For any mushers out there, the word 'luxury' is not excessive, I don't think. Oh! for the open trail out of my front door!

I will keep this post short so that I am able to write something and have pictures to accompany.

'Til then,
Evan.