Never, under any circumstances, trust a dog with personality.

Lately, my time has been taken up almost entirely by my job. I have not had much time at all to get out with the dogs and even if I did, our four wheeler is in kind of sketchy condition with brakes that don't brake, a starter that doesn't start and an engine that needs more coddeling than a Hollywood starlet. This combined does not a happy musher make.

Today, however, was my day off. I had made arrangements the night before to borrow a friends four wheeler and to use his trails too, so I was up at the crack of dawn -- which, around here isn't at all as early as it may sound -- to feed the dogs so that they could digest their soupy meal before heading out on the trail. It was going to be a great training day, since my friend would be out on the trails with his dogs, too, and we'd get to practice passing head-on which is something our dogs haven't had much experience with.

Let me describe what a good team does when it meets another good team and has to pass: picture driving down the road. Any road. In a car. You see another car approaching and what happens? It just keeps on going. It doesn't swerve into your lane; it doesn't suddenly throw itself in reverse and cower on the shoulder, it doesn't honk it's horn at you and thereby distract you. It does none of these things. So, too, the well trained dog team passes without incident.

Now, let me describe MY team. Or, at least Ruby. Ruby was second from the front of the team ('swing' position, to those who know) and on the inside of the trail. She was doing wonderfully. She was working hard, she was keeping up the rest of the team, she was even refraining from checking out the side of the trail by sniffing or wandering. I was thinking to myself: 'why did Ruby stay home so much last winter? She's doing great.' And she was. Then, around the corner and onto the straight stretch we came and met my friends team head on. He was about twenty yards in front of us and closing and as he and his team neared us, I could see Ruby's thoughts, as though she had one of those cartoon thought-bubbles over her head:

"HEY! I didn't know there'd be other dogs out here! I can't believe it: other dogs! Out here! Did you know there'd be other dogs out here?" this last bit she says to her neighbour. Then, to the dogs as they pass: "Hi!MynameisRu..." then to the second one: "Hi!MynameisRub..." and the third one: "Hi!Myname's..." and so on, until my friend and his team had passed. That's right: I'm the car that swerved. I'm the one that went into oncoming traffic because I had the social butterfly of the canine world. The other dogs, who were trying hard to pass properly, who were behaving and trying to avoid a train-wreck (imagine the tangle that could have -- would have -- ensued, had we run into each other), strained to pull Ruby away and eventually succeeded. For the rest of the run, Ruby kept trying to find the dogs again.

"And now," to use an oft-quoted Monty Python line, "for something completely different."

Hunter at ballet class