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.

No pictures... again.

It would seem that it is time for my irregular update.

Still have no pictures to post. Actually, I do have pictures to post, but no way of posting them. Borrowed computer and all that. So, again, text will have to do.

Winter is slowing down. More to the point, I think, it has stopped. We were +11 yesterday and have had -- and will be getting more -- rain. Although the trails that we were running are still on waist-deep snow they are too punchy to run. Even on snowshoes I sink up to my knees when I'm walking on them. As well, the river that I used as a trail is now more suited to a canoe than a dogsled. Ahhh, life in the south. I think that we had one solid month of decent sledding.

I have started work on the new dog run. I am working on getting material together for a few sleds that I want to build this summer and I am looking for a good anorak. If anyone has any sources for the anorak thing, let me know.

Is it as boring reading this without pictures as it is to write? I do apologize again and promise that soon, in the near future, I will have pictures and more interesting stuff to write about.

After a long absence...

So, here it is almost the end of January and nary an update 'til now.

Thanks to all who have faithfully kept checking back here. I do apologise for taking so long to update my blog. The excuses are many, but as those of you close to us know, we have undergone a fairly substantial change in our lives. I'm really happy to say that it didn't involve getting rid of our dogs.

This is a short post with no pictures because we are not set up to do things properly yet, so bear with me just a little longer. I'll fill everyone in on our trip back, our new 'situation' and our dogs progress. I'll even have some pictures.

Thanks to all who have been kind enough to leave a comment and for those of you who want to see how things are in the Yukon, maybe Stacie will be kind enough to send me the address to her blog so that I can add it to my links section... (how 'bout it, Stacie?)

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.

The Contest is Over

Our "Name the Puppy" contest had ended and the puppy got her name late last night.

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I wasn't sure how many people would enter our little contest, or who they would be, but I was surprised at the amount of people who wrote in. I'd like to thank everyone who participated. The names that we received were varied and creative, but at the end of it all, we could only use one suggestion.

The winner of the contest is Cathy Parent who suggested that we name the puppy "Valley" because of her Valentines Day birth.

So, Cathy, please e-mail me your mailing address so that we can send out your prize.

Another collection of miscellaney

Things around here have started to slow down considerably in the last few weeks. Cold temperatures have made for some pretty icey trails, and although there are still mushers going out, they are doing so during the warmer part of the day so that the trails are a bit softer. The problem is, this is when I work. Or, they have switched from sleds to dry-land training rigs and 4-wheelers. Neither of which I have.

After some shameless hinting on my part, our friend Stacey has agreed to let me tag along on the camping trip. So far, there are going to be seven people going. I don't know all the details yet, but I think that we are headed to Haines Junction to go to one of the summits there. It is supposed to be a short twenty mile run and then an overnight and back again. I guess I'll have to get working on my dog-food cooker.

I would like to use the opportunity of the camping trip to teach our dogs how to behave while camping. I don't think that they will be tired enough to let them stay on the gangline, though, so I will have to picket them instead. Picketing is when a length of chain or aircraft cable is stretched between two solid points -- like trees or sled and snowhook -- and the dogs are attached to it with "drop lines" which are usually about 16 inches long or so and spaced far enough apart that the dogs can't really bother one another. They will be fed here and sleep here and then hooked back up to the sled when it is time to go. The reason that I don't want to try to keep them on the gangline is a two parter: Firstly, we still have Scroggy who is a chewer. He has already chewed through several necklines, a tugline and had started on the gangline. If he isn't tired enough, he will use this extra energy to chew, I'm sure. Secondly, the dogs will not want to stay where they are supposed to. They will get up and wander around and create all sorts of tangles in the lines. While it is a huge pain to untangle a team of dogs if it goes unnoticed for a period of time it could be fatal to a dog. Using the picket system, the dogs will get an understanding of what is going on and they will be of no danger to themselves or others.

Bluegrass has been taken to her (hopefully) new home for a trial run. She went yesterday with Kim, our friends daughter. Jenn talked to the previous owners of Bluegrass and they were very understanding of our reasons for choosing to not keep her. I haven't yet heard how Bluegrass fared with her new owner or whether she even has a new owner yet, but I am sure that I will hear within the next day or so.

With a spot open and available now, I am now looking forward to bringing home a new dog from a very good and successful racer. This dog, Horton, is just not as fast as this racer needs, but he will be far and away faster than our current team, so he will add greatly to our kennel, I'm hoping. While I'm on the subject of new dogs, I suppose I should also say that there may be a possibility of aquiring another dog out of Hortons kennel; and the partner of the person to whom we loaned our dogbox has offered us a great dog at an unbeatable price. It is looking like we will have a moderately competative kennel next winter!

We will be opening up spots in our yard for the new dogs because two, possibly three of our dogs will be going back to their owner, as was the deal this past fall. We'd like to make an offer on Ben, but Scroggy and Grizzly are just not going to fit into our kennel, either.

"Puppy," as she has become known for now, is growing rapidly. She is getting rather agile and confident when she is out and about. Her ears are almost completely up and she is beginning to look more like a dog. I can't believe that we have had her for 6 weeks already. This weekend is the name choosing and I hope to have the name and the winner published before Monday rolls around.

Here are some shots of the puppy, because I haven't any other shots of any other dogs right now...

I'm only holding her for size comparison. Really.



Furry close-up



The "Calander Shot"

A variety of subjects

After several weeks of near-spring to spring like weather, the temperature has finally dropped to a more seasonal -18 at night. As of yet, however, I have not managed to get out with the dogs. I think that the trails are a bit too icey to be safe right now. It isn't that we'd be going too fast, after all, I have a brake but more the case of risking injury to the dogs. Conditions like this can lead to shoulder and wrist injuries as well as cuts on the front of their feet or on the bottom of their feet. I have decided that since we are not training for a race I should maybe make the more judicious decision to stay home for now. So close and yet...

I had thought that since the dogsledding is at more or less of a standstill at the moment, I would post some pictures of the northern lights that we have been seeing these last few nights. However, my night-time photography is not what it should be so the photos wouldn't be much to look at. Take my word for it, though, the lights have been stunning lately. It makes a midnight trip to the outhouse a bit more enjoyable.

There is only one week left in our Name the Puppy contest and I can tell you that I am glad we have decided to pull the names from a hat -- there are some very good ones that have been suggested. I wasn't sure who would enter; I expected some family, some family friends perhaps, but I was really surprised by the entry from Texas and the classroom of kids from Sudbury, Ontario. Below is a more recent photo of the yet-to-be-named puppy.



As I learn more about this Blogging business, I am trying to make the site more user-friendly and treat it more like a website than a diary. Soon, I hope to have a link to our dogs, so that the team is easily viewed with one click. I also want to try and keep you, the reader, more involved. I hope to have things like this contest for you to participate in so that you are more than just a reader of the site. I would welcome any ideas that you may have, so please use the contact links on the right-hand sidebar.

I think that we are going to try and find a home for Bluegrass, our last aquisition. She is not a bad sleddog at all, in fact, we have seen a great improvement in her ability since she has come to us, but she just doesn't mesh with our other dogs. I have a person in mind who I would like to offer her to. He, his wife and his kids are all mushers of varying degrees and I think that Bluegrass would find a place there quite easily.

Our neighbour is planning a camping trip for this coming weekend. He is going to be going on the Yukon River from Dawson to Eagle, Alaska with his eight puppies. I think he said that he has a friend coming from his hometown who has not really been on a dogsled before. What a way to start! This section of trail is part of the Yukon Quest trail. We also have another friend who is planning a camping trip in April with her dogs. She is going with some of her friends for an easy-paced, try out the new gear trip. I wonder if there is room for another person? If she is reading this...

There is not much else going on with the dogs. We are back to kibble in the morning and evening feedings. I had been given about thirty pounds of fish from work that was a big help and the dogs got this in the mornings. And, speaking of kibble, the puppy has started to eat soaked kibble, too. I guess it won't be long before Ruby has her completely weaned.

Any training is good training, they say.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have made a few changes to the sidebar of this page. I am hoping to provide easier access to our kennel for the viewers of this site. I would welcome any ideas or suggestion and I will do my best to incorporate them here.

It has been pretty warm here these last few days. I have been reluctant to take the dogs out because of the temperatures but most other mushers around here seem to still be going out so tonight we decided it was cool enough to go for a run. Earlier this week, I made plans to take the dogs out with a friend and her team today, but it was 4 degrees above zero at nine o'clock this morning so we postponed the run to a later date... maybe next winter at this rate. It is a good thing that we didn't go out, because she lives about an hour away and by the time we would have been ready to go, it would have been downright hot -- it was 16 degrees in the sun today. It is also good that we didn't go earlier today because the dogs had a terrible run tonight and I think that the warm weather was a major contributing factor. I can't imagine what it would have been like with warmer temperatures and another team to distract mine further. My dogs were tired much sooner than normal, and they were looking for excuses to goof off; and this is before we met two other teams which we had great difficulty passing.

Our run started out okay, but by the time we were two or three kilometers into it, the dogs were starting to bite at snow -- a normal thing when they are warm -- and my leaders were disobeying commands and looking around as though they were on a pleasure walk. This is part of the frustation that comes with having a recreational team and wanting a serious, working/racing team: the dogs do not have a strong work ethic. Partly due to this and partly owing to my lack of good leaders, the two passes that we had to try today were disasters. We met a team coming on a fairly passable section of trail and we ended up with our leaders standing nose to nose at a dead stop. I think that Amber may have tried to pass, but Crystal, ever the social dog, wanted to visit. We got past the one team by taking the leaders by the neckline and walking them past the first team. Then I waved to the second team further down the trail to come and pass while I was still off the sled and holding my leaders. The other team, although it wasn't the cleanest of passes, managed to run past our dogs and continue on. Jenn was standing on the brake of the sled while I held my leaders. It is lucky that she was there. Many leaders find passing another team to be stressful, especially those that haven't any training, or experience in passing. Definitely time to work with smaller teams and get them used to passing obstacles and teams. Today's passing was not acceptable.

The rest of the run disintegrated from there.

Earlier on today, we went into town to pick up a few things and we decided that the puppy was should come. We packed her mother, Ruby, in the back of the truck and brought the puppy up front with us. This worked out quite well. Until we picked up the drywall. I didn't want Ruby in the back of the truck walking all over the drywall, so we brought her into the front of the truck, too. We had the baby in the back seat, Jenn in the passenger seat with the puppy and Ruby in the back seat, too. It would have been fine if Ruby had stayed put, but she kept going from side to side in the truck until Jenn had had enough. I pulled over, moved Ruby to the passenger seat and Jenn got in the back and things were fine from then on. Maybe we should have left Ruby at home, but I was concerned that she'd try to get out of the run and find the puppy, which she has done before. She chewed through the gate closure and ran at full tilt into our front door, which burst open and in came Ruby.

As for the puppy, she is doing great. She is now walking around the run, barking, growling and starting to play with objects. A little unsteady on her feet still, she will try to run a few steps and then lose her balance. I'm not sure how much she weighs. Because she is so fat, I'm not that concerned with her weight just yet. Ruby is gaining weight again, which is good, and she is in good enough shape to take out on a run although we won't be doing that this season. At four weeks old it is now time to start offering the puppy some food other than her mothers'. We soak puppy kibble in water and make a slurry which we set that on the ground in a wide, shallow pan for the puppy to get at. She has so far not needed much encouragement to eat, but she is not a big eater yet because Ruby hasn't started to wean her. It is unlikely that Ruby will wean her soon because, being an only puppy, Ruby isn't feeling the stress of nursing like she would if she had seven others to feed, too. We have seen many changes in the little pup since she was born and her development is rapid. Here is a picture of her, although it is a week old. It was kind of nice to get the kennel logo in the shot, too.

The makings of a lead dog

The contest is half over now. The puppy is three weeks old and getting big. Any name suggestions can be sent to nameoursleddog@canada.com

NOTE: Sorry for the lack of pictures. I have two videos that I would like to post here. Once I figure out how, I will. Hopefully, it won't take long.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to training lead dogs. The first are the people who feel it is best for dogs to learn from other dogs; they use an experienced, usually proven dog that knows its' commands and they run it beside a dog they feel has the potential to become a lead dog. The other side feels that there is no better way to train than personally and they will walk with the dogs, working on commands, or they will take an inexperienced dog out on the trail and reinforce commands using 'teachable moments.'

Most often, the latter method is used by people with: limited funds -- good lead dogs are expensive; limited resources -- trying to dogsled in an area with little to no sledding community; limited dogs -- small kennels with few dogs, or a pet or two and a borrowed sled. Not always is this the case, though. Some mushers with the ability to buy good leaders, who live in the middle of a mushing community and have many dogs still prefer to train the dogs personally. However, most use the following method.

Using a proven leader allows the musher to take his team out, knowing that they will be able to navigate the trail network without a lot of difficulty. This lets the musher concentrate on other things, like attaining a milage goal, or breaking in new dogs or practicing camping, overnights and so on. The inexperienced leader will pick up on commands through repetition and good leaders will nudge or tug the dog in the correct direction. This requires no corrections from the musher and the leader-in-training gets to see what is expected by the driver. If any of you have ever thought "it would be so much easier to train my dog if we both spoke the same language" the experienced leader is your translator.

I bring this up because although I would like to try the latter method, circumstances have me using the former method. I can't say which works better but our run last night is certainly an argument for personal training.

Amber has taken over the lead position with Crystal since Ruby has become a mother. At first, Amber didn't know the simplest commands; she wouldn't hold her line tight at hook-up and she would become very unfocused on the trail, wandering from side to side and goofing off. Gradually, though, she has become more serious and much more reliable -- to the point that she may be Ruby's equal, if not her better right now.

Last night we went on a run that took us off familiar trails and through a community center parking lot that had cars, people and confusion. I was expecting a big hassle at the community center, but Amber was flawless. She led the team around a few parked cars and between a snowbank and a van that had just pulled in and was still idling. Quite a progression for a dog that has only been leading for four weeks. She took commands very well, only missing two turns, one which was difficult since it was a snowmachine track that led off of a wide driveway and road intersection.

Today I thought that we should test her a bit more, although I was fairly sure that she would have difficulty. Jenn came with me in the sled so that I would have help if I needed it. We ran our normal trail, but instead of turning 'haw' to come home, we went 'gee' instead, and ended up on a river trail. There were patches of overflow and the trail was braided with snowmachine tracks, but Amber was able to focus on the main trail. Our run would take us right by -- thirty feet from, in fact, -- someones dog yard. I knew this was going to be difficult and Amber had a hard time passing it but once she got pointed in the right direction, she was off and running again. It is difficult for our dogs to pass by a distraction like a dog yard or a house because we don't normally run on trails where these are encountered. It is, however, important that the dogs know what sort of distractions are out there and become able to pass them cleanly.

I think that I would prefer the confidence of an experienced leader for training, but Amber has been very good so far. Tomorrow is supposed to be warm again and the dogs have done well running in this weather, but I think that they can have the day off. Amber could use the break, too, since leading and taking a lot of commands on a short run is stressfull.

A busy weekend

Two weeks into our "Name the Puppy" contest and we have received some great suggestions. We even have an entry from Texas! Thank you to all who have written in and to those who haven't yet, c'mon, what are you waiting for? We have decided that the prize will be a Nomad Kennel patch and the "Lone Trail" DVD which is produced by the CBC and follows the 2003 Yukon Quest. I've seen it and it is great. Even if you don't like dogsledding, the scenery is incredible. So, send your entries to: nameoursleddog@canada.com




Certainly a weekend that will require some rest afterwards. It is Rendezvous weekend here in Whitehorse and the town fills with people out enjoying the activities and events.

With the exception of today, I have been out with the dogs every day since my last post. Each time, I have taken a passenger which is great strength training for the dogs. On Thursday, Jenn's mother went out with me at night. It was an absolutely clear night with a bright full moon. Most of the run was done without the headlamp. We went about 12 miles and arrived back home twenty minutes faster than I had expected, even though Bluegrass, the new dog, didn't pull at all. To be honest, she was a complete bonehead. She was by herself in the position just ahead of the wheel dogs, which is the easiest position in the team. She looked around, she tried to turn around a few times, all the bad behaviour of a dog that didn't want to run. However, the temperature was only -13 or so; a really nice temperature to travel at because the dogs don't get as hot and yet it is comfortable for the passenger, too. Jenn's mother, Nancy, got to drive the sled across the lake which I think she enjoyed and I got to see the scenery from the bed of the sled for once.

On Friday, it was again too warm during the day to go out and because I had a big run planned for Saturday morning, Jenn and I just went out on a quick 6 mile run around 2200. We just went across the lake, through the bush and back down a laneway near our house... I don't even think the dogs knew we had gone out we went so fast. It is good for them to learn how to work hard, but they also have to enjoy what they are doing so a short, fast run is often benefitial to their mental well being. I took all seven dogs, even though I had reservations about Bluegrass. I thought that because it was such a short run, I'd give her another chance, so I put her in wheel with Ben. She was very good. She pulled the whole way; in fact, she loped the entire six miles.

First, in case the positions of dogs are not familiar to the reader, the order goes: Lead dogs, Swing (or Point) dogs, Team dogs and then Wheel dogs, which are the dogs just in front of the sled. Each dog has it's special task: Lead dogs are expected to keep the gangline strung out and tight, whether they are running or not. They are also supposed to take commands from the driver. They are not necessarily the strongest dog in the kennel, the most dominant or the one with the best relationship to the musher. Often, they are just like the other dogs. They are also not expected to pull the hardest, as long as they manage to keep the lines tight.

The Swing dogs are just behind the lead dogs and their job is to pull but also to help turn longer strings of dogs. A team of eight dogs is roughly 35 feet long and going around a corner takes practice, both on the part of the driver and the team. Basically, the swing dogs take the corner wider than normal so that the team stays on the trail.

The team dogs are the power. They are the ones who pull, pull, pull. That is all they are expected to do. Good team dogs can change gaits easily from a lope to a trot. Most distance mushers favour a trot because the dogs can cover a lot of ground without getting tired. It is the most energy efficient gait. As well, a good team dog knows how and when to rest when they are pulling. Most often the dog will stop pulling and just trot along with the team for a short distance and then they will lean into their harness again and resume pulling. There is a fine line between being a good, hardworking dog that knows how to rest and being lazy. Although the job of the team dog is to pull, there is one position on the gangline that is easier than the rest. Just in front of the wheel dogs is the 'resting position' and this is sometimes used for dogs that either need more than a few minutes break or dogs that are not as strong as the others but need the training to catch up.

Lastly, there are the wheel dogs. Their job is to pull and to help steer the sled. Because their lines come straight off the sled line, when they turn they pull the nose of the sled one way or the other. A wheel dog that is not pulling its' share is quickly noticed because it is more difficult to turn to that side. Also, the wheel dogs have to be tough both physically and mentally. Again, because their lines are attached almost directly to the sled, they get a lot of jerking on bumpy trails and downhill trails can see the sled creep up behind them. Some dogs cannot deal with this sort of pressure and they will not perform well in this position.

Fortunately, it was still cool on Saturday morning. I had plans of getting up at 0545 and feeding the dogs a broth before we were to leave. I like to give them water before we go so that I know they are not getting dehydrated and so that they don't 'dip' as much. 'Dipping' is when they grab at snow on the ground as they run. Some mushers completely discourage this behaviour, while others don't mind, their philosophy being any moisture the dog can get is welcomed. I don't mind the dogs doing this, as I share the above philosophy, but I find it can slow down a team if the behaviour becomes excessive so if I can meet their liquid needs with a pre-run broth I will. Anyway, I also like to give them about an hour between the run and the broth so they are not going on full stomachs, so I had set my alarm for 0545 with the hopes that we'd be able to get away by seven at the latest. I wanted to go early because of the temperatures, for one thing, and for another, we were going to Teslin -- a two hour drive -- after my run.

As it was, my alarm didn't go off and I ended up sleeping an extra hour so Nancy and I didn't get away until 0800. I was really eager to be underway, too, because we were going part way up the mountain and this was going to be the dogs longest and most difficult run to date. I have a lot of faith in our dogs, but I have not really pushed them too hard, so they have not really learned how to work hard and this run would require just that. I was going to put Bluegrass in the position just ahead of the wheel dogs because she would be going quite far, but I thought back to Thursday nights run and decided that I would put her in wheel to start and if she got tired, I'd move her later.

Nancy and I were gone for three hours. I would expect that we covered just over 35 miles -- 30 for sure -- and the dogs were great. Amber and Crystal were nearly flawless in lead -- even managing a head-on pass with a skier and their dog -- and I never did end up switching Bluegrass, who pulled solidly the entire run. I guess wheel is her position. I suspect that, being new to sledding, she is uncomfortable with a dog behind her and prefers the security of being the last dog.

I was very impressed -- and pleasantly surprised -- with our dogs. I wasn't sure how they would do on the long run, up a mountain, with a heavy sled. They were super tired when we got back, but they never quit. Of course they were given breaks on the way back, but we never stopped for more than thirty seconds and they were lunging at their harnesses to go again. I have to say, I think that the team has graduated to a new level. I was very proud of them.

The dogs get a day off now. It is +6 and lightly raining but they were going to get a break anyway. Hopefully tomorrow is a cooler day and we can go out again.