Don't do a musher any favours.

First of all: if you are ever thinking about offering a favour to a musher, or anyone that has a few dogs, be careful. Us mushers are a tied-to-the-house lot and when an opportunity arises to spend some time away from the house and have our dogs taken care of, we tend to take it. Secondly: be careful what you volunteer to do for said musher or dog owner, because we don't generally ask our friends to help us move or to help build a shed or even help cut our firewood. We ask them to scoop poop.

A while ago, during the winter, a musher friend of mine offered to look after my dogs for the weekend, while Jenn, Hunter and I went down south to visit my parents. So when he asked me if I would be able to help him out while he went on a vacation, I was happy to return the favour. Since my friend already had somebody arranged to feed his dogs, and this is someone who has been looking after these dogs for many years so the feeding method doesn't have to be explained to me (we are also a fussy lot) I get to make sure they all have water and a poop-free area. It's nice though, to be able to see someone elses dogs in their yard and compare similarities and contrast the differences. It is also a good way to get another perspective on things, like better tie outs (more on this later) or ground cover and things that probably don't interest anybody but the mushers I know. In fact, I have discussed at length about water pails/cans/buckets and the merits of each with my dogsledding friends. "At length" read: over an hour. Most people would perhaps tend to think "It's a container. With water in it. End of discussion... what's for lunch?" but there are many nuances that escape the non-doggie set and so, to finally conclude my thought, it is nice to see how other people do things.

Lou's Dog yard:

It is also nice to spy. My friend has a dog (Boris) in his yard that is a pretty much a 'who's-who' of sled dogs. He has both Pluto and Burner in his pedigree, which, trust me, are great dogs. There are many, successful mushers who agree that any winning teams in either sprint or mid- to long distance have these two dogs in their bloodlines. I am keeping my eye on him because he is going to be the father of our next one, possibly two litters. The spying comes into play because my friend already has two litters of puppies from Boris and a female of great athleticism and intelligence and I want to more or less gauge their growth and development. This way, Jenn and I can choose who best to breed Boris to when next spring rolls around. We have a few dogs in mind, but with my new position on the inside, perhaps we will be able to control the results more. Boris is a larger dog than I like to have in the yard, but all his offspring seem to be fairly small, due to the size of the mother. If this is the case and his pups stay small, then we will for sure choose one of our better, smaller females to breed.

Boris

Boris, again.

Some of Boris' pups

I guess that is enough of the future plans for the kennel: any further writing and I'll start talking about coat, feet and genetics, so it's best left where it is, for the sake of any readers who are still here and for the sake of brevity.

Jenn and Hunter came with me to my friends place this morning. I will be doing this for a week and since I start work in the afternoons, I wanted to make sure I left myself enough time to get to work. In all, it takes me about an hour and half to do the rounds. This includes watering the dogs, as well. Hunter was pretty excited to see all the new dogs; my friend has about forty currently, having sold a few after the racing season was over. This friend is a very good racer and his dogs are sought internationally. How sought after? He sold a lead dog for $10, 000 (!) Once Hunter and Jenn had said hello to all the dogs, they went to look for frogs down the trail while I finished.

Looking for Frogs

I mentioned earlier in this post that I would expand on tie-outs and a better system. Here goes: I finish work at around 23h00 and get home half an hour later. Since I am away in the evening, but Jenn isn't, she feeds the dogs their evening meal. This particular night, she was expecting to be late and so when I arrived home and saw the truck parked all funny, with the lights facing the dog run, I just figured that she had arrived home later than expected and wanted the lights of the truck to shine so she could go to the run and feed the dogs. Odd, though, I thought, because I have lights in the dog yard for just this reason and I know Jenn knows this. Oh well. I went in the house and Jenn met me with the whole story. Dart (is it ever anyone else?) got loose that afternoon and was running around the yard until Jenn came home. He had actually pulled his post out of the ground (I buried them three feet deep) and was dragging it all over the place: in the dog yard and out. She wasn't sure what to do with him, so for lack of any better ideas, she put him in the free run for the night. That held him until about 01h30 in the morning when I heard the dogs barking and went outside to find Dart, loose again. This time, I untied one of our pensioners, Bug, and put Dart at her spot and brought Bug in the house for the night. It was now 02h00. Hunter woke up at 06h00 so I had a short night. I went outside to feed the dogs and to fix Darts area by driving a six foot long, 2 5/8" around, nearly solid steel section of drill-rod in to the ground and hooking his chain in a loop around the base. In just over four hours, Dart had nearly pulled Bugs post out of the ground as well, and he might have succeeded had it not been for his misfortune of wrapping himself around a tree. He has been at his newly improved tie out for almost a week now and it seems to be holding. For now.

Jenn and I finished off the day by worming our dogs. That was a chore and a half to be sure. Our wormer is a liquid and has to be fed to the dogs directly; it can't go on their food, so imagine holding a dog with one hand, trying to put a syringe in it's mouth with the other and all the while the dog is squirming like a stoker with a hot coal in his pants. The dogs don't get much of the liquid, either, so it is important to make sure they get it all. We were covered in mud at the end of it, but it was more or less a success.

I drove the new to me, old to the world tractor for the first time today, but since there are no pictures I think I'll leave that for another post.

One last shot of Hunter, looking around the corner of the dog barn:

Mill your own lumber! It's free! It's easy! (well, kind of)

There is a certain satisfaction that comes with being able to mill your own lumber. Last summer, we had a pretty wicked windstorm that brought down a lot of trees in the Sudbury and surrounding area. I was still with the tree company then and we were extremely busy with the cleanup. A friend of ours was able to salvage a lot of his wood and he sold it to a mill in Ottawa: they removed a double-bunk truck load and there is still more to be cut up.

Although we didn't suffer any great losses around here, we did get some blowdown and some windthrown tops; all of which I would like to get cleaned up at some point. Because so much of the damage is to good trees (those with large canopies were the hardest hit due to their sail effect) it would be a real shame to see them all go to firewood. Plus, I have a few projects to accomplish this summer, all of which require lumber and so it was this afternoon, I set up my Alaskan Mill to start milling some of my lumber.

In the course of two hours, I was able to get both these 9-foot six-by-six inch beams milled. It may sound like a lot of time spent milling these beams, but really, I was talking with my neighbour during the milling process and I also had to switch between my mill and my 'beam machine' rig because I don't have my guide rails set up yet. Without a long explanation, these guide rails provide a surface to make my first cut straight and even and although it is a bit of a pain to constantly switch between two different sets of chainsaw attachements, things seemed to go rather smoothly anyway.

I used the mill in Whitehorse to mill a bunch of poplar logs into trim for our kitchen in the cabin I built. The mill itself is fairly accurate and I expect that it is the most efficient way of making lumber until one moves up into the portable bandsaw mills... oh, to dream.

Below is one of the kitchen cabinet doors that I made out of the wood I am milling above. I treated the wood on the door with steel wool soaked in vinegar to age the wood and I added the patina on the copper insert using peroxide, vinegar and lemon juice. They are really nothing that spectacular, but since everything was an experiment, I think they turned out okay.

I don't have doors to build this time, though; instead, I have a drive shed to build and a frame for the dogbox so that I can take it off the truck. I'd better get milling.

Free-run-a-polooza

There is not much time for relaxing around here. Since the camera battery was more or less dead when Jenn tried to take pictures yesterday -- she was not happy -- Jenn plugged in the charger and bided her time until the battery was at full charge. Then, camera in hand, Jenn went out today and spent her afternoon and evening with the dogs, engaged in various activities. First, she and Hunter took some dogs for a walk down to the beaver pond, then it was free run time for those dogs that didn't go for a walk. Everybody was exercised today. I think that instead of rambling on, I'll just post the pictures in some semblance of order:

The walk:

The senior tour...

Triangle and Baby (Triangle in front)

Hunter, mid-stampede

The free run area:

How to win friends and influence people -- or in this case, dogs:

Step one: Grab a cookie from the bucket,

Step two: Give the cookie to a dog,

Step three: verify cookie freshness,

Step four: repeat step two as necessary,

Step five: smile, secure in the knowledge that you have made two new friends

When an Unstoppable Force meets an Immovable Object

It is rare that Jenn and I are home together, without one of us having to be somewhere, in the mornings; and it is even more rare that we should find ourselves in this situation without the kid. Yet, this morning, that is exactly where we found ourselves.

Hunter stayed the night at her grandparents house, and while we did sort of miss the little kidlet in the morning, Jenn and I were able to have a coffee in peace. Normally, I feed the dogs in the morning, after my first cup of coffee, while Hunter stays in the house and Jenn sleeps. Even though I tell Hunter not to wake Jenn up, the minute I am out of the house, Hunter runs into the bedroom and jumps on the bed, all the while shouting "Mommy, Mommy it's happy time! It's happy time! The coffee is ready!" And so it is almost every morning: Jenn is awoken in such a manner. Today, however, Jenn was able to rise at her own pace and we fed the dogs together. Jenn was anxious to see the newly completed free run area, so we weren't long having our first coffee before we were out of the house. I had been working on the run all week, which is the nice thing about going into work in the afternoons: I'm able to work a bit around the house before I have to go to my job. I mean, I'm up anyway...

Before I was able to grab the camera, Jenn had it in her hands and was trying to take pictures of us. Here is one of us:

Then, there is me in my 'feeding-the-dogs-and-whatever-other-chores-involve-obscene-amounts-of-mud' clothes. Yes, I am aware that the spring melt has been cruel and has not only created a mudhole that would rival the LeBrea Tar Pits, but it has also managed to put on display all the junk that was lost 'neath the snow. There is only so much photo cropping I can do. Anyway, I wear this outfit when I feed the dogs and go to church.

Once we were done feeding the dogs, Jenn let Horton go in the new free run. He lost his mind. He was running so fast that his back end was overtaking his front. You haven't seen funny 'til you've seen this. It was at this point that the battery on the camera died, so we only have the one picture of Horton, which in itself is impressive because I expected to find merely a blur. Jinx joined Horton and the two of them raced around the run for ten minutes or so, and then it was Darts turn.

I don't know how many of the readers of this blog have read the "Our Dogs" page, so forgive me if it sounds like I'm repeating myself. Dart is a goof. There are only a few adjectives to describe this guy. Lovable idiot comes to mind, as does brain-dead. He spends so much time running circles in his area that I think he is permanently dizzy. That said, though, I think I should take responsibility for what happened next. I really should have made the fence more visable. Perhaps I should have hung flagging tape around it at dog eye level. Maybe a warning track, like they have in the outfield of baseball diamonds. Something. Anyway, Jenn let go of Darts collar, and the dog, who only has two settings: "off" and "hyper-drive" and I've never seen him in 'off' mode, goes running full-tilt into the fence at the far end of the run. Never in my life have I ever (or will ever, again) seen a dog roll up a fence. But, Dart, once his feet touched the ground again, just kept on going. Sort of like a Weeble. Maybe that'll be his new name.

All in all, though, it seems like the free run is a hit. One project down, many to go.

Gurus and asanas

Here's a neat thing: I get Fridays off at work. The company that I work for lets us work what they call 'four tens' which is pretty self-explanitory; we work four days a week at ten hours a day. That way, we get our forty hours a week in, and we get a long weekend every weekend, too. I have tried to find something in this to complain about, but, try as I might, I can't. Another bonus for me is that I am currently working the afternoon shift, which is a rather euphemistic way of saying 'nights'. We are working at night because the company that I work for does commercial and industrial siding and glass work. We are currently replacing the windows in a school and have to work around their schedule.

The fact that I start at two in the afternoon and finish at eleven at night isn't the bonus, the bonus is that because we are on the 'afternoon' shift, we get an extra hour added to our time. Plus, because the group of people that I work with are unionized they don't miss a break. Ever. I'm going to get soft, I just know it. All that aside, however, the job is still pretty physically demanding: glass is heavy. Plus, it's not the sort of material that can be tossed around. And, too, there have been a few times already where I've taken out a window frame ten or so feet long and eight or so feet high and found myself standing on a ledge a few stories up.

I ordered some wormer for the dogs on Wednesday and it came today. Two litres of liquid Ivermectin.

I guess the one of the signs that you have enough dogs is that you are ordering wormer by the litre. Although, there is a lead dog that we are looking at right now and we have it on good authority that he is fast, responsive and inexpensive. I'm making room in the dogyard already.

Speaking of the dogs, I was out feeding them tonight and Hunter didn't want to help. She wanted to stay inside because it was kind of a miserable day with cool temperatures and misty/rainy/flurries. So, I left her in the house to play with her dolls and went out to feed everybody. I came back to her doing yoga, nearly naked, and watching herself in the reflection of the television screen. She and Jenn do yoga in the mornings sometimes and Hunter really likes it. She had gone and pulled out her yoga mat, undressed and was doing all the poses when I came back, so I had to take pictures of her. Here are some of her poses:

The Excite-o-meter reads "ZERO"

I have been wanting to post a new blog entry for a while now, but two factors have sort of stood in my way. First, I fired my boss last Monday and started a new job on Tuesday. I am not climbing trees anymore; instead, I'm an Apprentice Glazer. I don't really know what a glazer does, but it seems that an apprentice glazer does whatever the glazer says. I know it involves removing and installing windows in industrial and commercial settings and I also know that it doesn't involve climbing trees, so really, it can't be that bad. Plus, I get to hit stuff with a hammer and I get to, no, I have to, break the glass we remove. Secondly, I live a pretty boring life. I have not really had much of anything to write about lately, and you'll notice that this entry is suspiciously light on the pictures which means that anything I have done recently didn't even warrant bringing a camera. Step aside, everyone, Mister Excitement is comin' through!

If I were smart, I might have had some photos to post of my chainsaw mill in action but maybe it's best I don't; how exciting is that, anyway? I was supposed to be milling the timbers and lumber for the new shed/garage-thingy that I'm going to be working on but I managed to leave all my equipment in the truck, which Jenn took for the weekend. This also was supposed to be the weekend that I got the free run area for the dogs finished. It was also supposed to be the weekend that I cleared the area for the drive-shed and started on an addition to the feed shed so that I could store our sleds out of the weather. Last summer, I just stuck the sleds in the attached-to-the-house car port along with all of our other belongings that I brought back from Whitehorse. This year, however, that car port is slated to come off so that we actually get some sun in the house and I want to keep it as free of clutter as possible: which, if you know me, will be nearly impossible.

Instead, however, I spent the weekend moving the belongings of a friend half an hour down the road. I won't go into any details other than this friend has had a lot happen to him in a very short time and most of it has not been good. I figured that the dog run can wait. So can the car port.

When I do start building the drive shed though, it should look like this:

I'd love to say that I had the time to draw this out, all architectural-like, but I didn't. I have an idea of what I want and this is pretty close, except where the windows are is actually where the doors for the vehicles will be. In this drawing, the doors are shown on the side of the building, which is kind of silly: I mean, who puts doors under the slope of a roof? As if I need more snow to shovel!

And, hey! Look what landed in my yard today!

Three, ten-foot basket sleds. They are from my friends place (he builds sleds, but not these. His are better. Much better). He has been doing some repair work for an outfitter near us. These are the sleds the guests get to drive. I wonder, with sleds like that, if he gets any repeat business? Anyway, my friend has no room for them and they are mostly rotten, anyway, which is why there is a fridge piled on top of them. They are supposed to go to the dump or get burned or something, but I'm going to try and talk my friend into selling me or giving me these sleds. There is one decent set of runners on them and I'm hoping that I can salvage enough to modify one, maybe two, into a long freighting and training sled. A sled that size, with all my gear in it, plus a passenger and I'd be able to take all the dogs at once. Whoo boy! That'd be fun. Now that I think about it, it may be a bit dangerous. Most of the trails around here are designed for snowmachines which have a much tighter turning radius than does a team of 18 dogs. I'd be hitting trees all over the place. In case you were wondering, 18 dogs on a gangline is about seventy feet long, not including the sled.

The seasonal shift is underway

So, what do a pair of mushers do when the season finally melts away? Why, they go to a dog show in the morning and then have their musher friends over for dinner so they can talk about dogs. We manage.

The Coniston dog show was on this weekend and although I am not a really a fan of dog shows per se, I will go to gawk at the parallel universe. I say parallel universe because although dogs figure largely in the lives of these people, these lives are so far removed from ours. I have a whole tirade about dog shows and the Canadian and American Kennel Clubs and how their are ruining certain dog breeds by what they are selecting as Best in Class and Best in Show, but I'll not say more for now, except: you would be hard pressed to see a dog with any appreciable muscling on it at (this particular) dog show. Oh! to have the decadent life of a show dog. The primping and preening rivals the backstage of the Paris runways, I bet. We have a friend who raises Siberian Huskies for show and sale and he was supposed to be at the show but we missed the Working Group as the judging was held on Friday. I understand that there were only two Siberian kennels there, anyway, so I guess his chances of winning Best in Class were good; 50/50 odds aren't bad.

Jenn, Hunter and I wandered around the floor (it was held in the Coniston Arean) to get a better look at some of the dogs. A few folks were kind enough to let us take pictures of their dogs and others were too serious to stop to chat. We didn't stay for very long; there is only so much dog-and-handler prancing I can take. What a funny world.

Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I'm not trying to bad mouth the show circut. My issues lie with the Kennel Clubs and their setting of 'breed standards' but the show kennels themselves display a lot of committment to their dogs; I mean, some people drove for hours to sit in a dimly lit arena bathing, blow-drying and brushing their dogs. I don't do that at home.

Here are some of the dogs we saw at the show:

Hunter waiting patiently in the truck while a librarian that rivals a slug in speed 'helps' me find a book.

We had James and his girlfriend over for dinner. James had been Lou Serre's handler this winter and I met him while working on the race. He is an American who has wanted to move to Canada for quite a while and after meeting Monique, his girlfriend, this winter he has finally started to climb the mountain of paperwork involved in immigrating.

Monique and James brought Emily, Moniques three year old daughter to dinner. Hunter was excited all day at the prospect of having a new friend to play with. The two of them were immediate friends and happily played away together until 23h00 when James and Monique decided it was time to go.

James and Monique

Hunter and Emily around the fruit tray

Hunter and Emily, in serious pre-dinner conversation

Playing with bubbles

Until the frost comes out of the ground and we get our projects in line, I think our lives will be a bit on the boring side. Jenn is looking at different breeders of goats, however; who knows, maybe we'll have another kid around here soon.