Snowy Days/ Starry Nights
Katherine and I have now combined our teams for training runs since she is down to 4 dogs. We now are running 16 dogs with our two sleds attached together by a rope.
Last night was our first 50 miler and the dogs did great. We actually also had our other sister, Genna in the basket of my sled for the first half as well. We run on a pretty hilly trail and the trails were hard and pretty fast and the weather was clear and about 20 degrees. At the halfway point, I dropped off Katherine and Genna and the extra sled and continued on. 16 dogs is the biggest team that I have ever run with the sled. It was awesome! We ended with an average of 11mph (by GPS) so I was pretty happy with that.
Long Time No Write!
I cant believe how lax I have been in updating this blog. Lack of internet access has been a real pain, but now I have a job working at the front desk of a motel, soo... now I do have time and internet access!
It will be impossible to catch up on everything, so I will give a brief rundown...
Charlie (husband) and I have parted ways, so Aurora and I have packed into my parents home and took over my brothers' bedroom. It is so awesome to have family to fall back on and help out like that. Thanks guys!!
I am just planning on doing one race this year- the UP200 in February. I am really excited since it has been a childhood dream of mine. I am currently doing 40 mile runs but dont have near as many TOTAL miles on as I had hoped, I have just been so BUSY!
I started out the fall season with a pool of 16 dogs that I thought could make my main team. I am now down to 12 great dogs and one inconsistent extra. I am hoping to change that to 14 great dogs soon, so that way if I have any unexpected health issues pop up in anyone, I will have backups. These are all great dogs and most have run the Iditarod, UP200 and/or Beargrease marathon. The two exceptions are Angel and Muzzy who have not raced yet.
My sister, Katherine has signed up for the Jr Iditarod!! I am so excited and I am hoping to fly up after the UP200... that will be a tiring week for me I think lol! I figure might as well stay for the start of the Pro Iditarod while I am up there too right?
We had our first fundraiser last weekend, a spaghetti dinner and silent auction. She and I went around to alot of local businesses and almost every one donated an item for the auction. It was wonderful! Also the local newspaper and tv station came out and did a story to help get the word out there. So far we have not scored any big sponsorships but are so greatful for all of the amazing support of the small businesses, especially at this time of the year. We had a good turnout, about 60 people and alot of people donated bigger amounts than was suggested.
I am planning on possibly doing a chili cook-off and sled dog rides in a few weeks to raise more money. We still need quite a bit. Most of it will go towards gas money since Kat will have to drive up with all 10 dogs. We are not real sure how this will alll happen. I have a dogtruck, but obviously I will be using it at the UP200, sooo... We have had a wonderful offer from another Jr Iditarod family in Montana to possibly travel with and share some of the costs. The biggest obstacle and frustration for me right now is the inability to get the me, Kat and our parents together for a planning session. We are all so busy, but this stuff needs to be figured out ASAP. I cant believe it is a few days until Christmas.. we havent even gotten a tree up and I just put a few sparkly things up the other day.. I love Christmas and decorating, making cookies, etc but I'll have to make up for it next year right?
Another issue that Kat has, is lack of good dogs. She will use at least two or three of mine but that still only gives her 5 at the most and barely any leaders. It looks like the Steilstras will be helping us out.. now to find the time to mesh OUR busy schedule with THEIR even busier one!
So anyway, I plan on writing often again... thanks for hanging in there!
Lance Mackey
September 21, 2008
I almost forgot to tell you about our exciting 4-day weekend downstate to see Lance Mackey. Sherry and Russ Sutherby hosted a group of us at their “Russ-stick Acres” kennel and campground. Katherine, Charlie and I went down there without knowing pretty much anyone and came home with a bunch of new friends. There was a small group of us that came on Friday. We got there and met Russ and he kindly gave a tour of their various campsites. We chose to stay at “trapper” campsite which was the farthest walk, but lovely and secluded. We set up our tent and then went back to the gathering site and visited and sat around the camp fire awhile we waited for Lance and Tanya Mackey to arrive. I finally got to meet Shannon Miller, whom I met on myspace this spring, and her daughter too.
The Mackeys came in around midnight and since they were still on Alaska time which is 3 hours behind us, they were still ready to visit for awhile. I was VERY excited to meet him and honestly was a bit shy, so I was content to sit quietly and listen. Lance and Tanya are extremely friendly and a lot of fun. You would certainly never guess by looking at him, that he is a 2-time back-to-back Yukon Quest and Iditarod champion. We all went to bed around 1am, but I still had a hard time falling asleep.
Saturday started out nice, but soon changed to dreary, misty rain and it started to get a little colder. We put a tarp over the tent in an attempt to keep it dry. A bigger group joined us and we all gathered around Lance and listened to him tell about Zorro and their snowmobile accident. He told us about some of his different dogs and a lot of funny stories about his life with the dogs. He definitely loves his dogs a lot. They have around 80 running dogs and 12 house dogs! Lance said that for every 10 new dogs he gets, Tanya gets a new house dog…. I didn’t point out that their math was a little off! He told us about his struggles with cancer and radiation. What an inspiring story. You really get a new perspective on how easy you have it just by being healthy!
That night when we finally crawled into the tent, it was pouring rain and there was an actual puddle under Katherine’s sleeping bag. Charlie had already gone to bed and was snoring happily in his army bag. We found out the next morning that HIS bag was waterproof . L
Katherine and I threw her soaking wet bag aside and covered up with mine. Luckily it was still pretty warm out and with our bodies together we stayed warm. As the night went on, we slowly got wetter and I tried sleeping curled up in a ball so that my feet weren’t sitting in the puddle at the end of my bag but my legs started cramping up. I finally decided that I’d rather be wet than awake any longer and stretched out. I felt like I was up all night, but I know that I must have slept. As soon as it was light out, Katherine and I got up and discovered that all of our clothing we had brought was wet except for a few odds and ends that we had left in the truck. Luckily, mushers aren’t fashion icons plus I was so damp and cold that I didn’t care. We tramped through the rain to the main tent and sat for the church service and listened to some wonderful folk singers, the Rowlands, sing some hymns. The wind started to pick up too at this point. I really felt a bit silly because I was so cold especially when I looked around and saw a few people in shorts or tee-shirts. Sunday was open to the public and despite the weather they had a good-sized group while Tim Riley gave a presentation on preparing for his first Iditarod and then Lance gave his presentation. In between speakers there were door prize awards and raffles. I really had my eye on the Wiggy’s sleeping bag and the Canada Goose parka up for raffle. We didn’t win them, but Katherine won a fleece blanket that she had wanted from the start and Charlie won Lance Mackey’s dvd so we did well. Almost everyone there got at least something, which was really nice.
As it headed toward evening, we decided that we definitely were not going to be able to stay in the tent for another night, so we were going to sleep in the truck. There were only a few of us die-hards left and Sherry and Russ treated us to a pizza party and we all gathered around and scared Tanya with stories of tree frogs and crickets. They don’t have these up in
Charlie and I were feeling pretty awake so we decided that we would head for home then instead of spending an uncomfortable night in the truck. Katherine stretched out in the back seat and I think she was asleep before we even left town. Charlie made it to just past
Start of a New Season
September 19, 2008
Our house is finally up for sale. We have looked for the perfect property to build on over the summer, but haven’t found what we are looking for yet. After trucking the dogs every time that I have wanted to run the past few years, my main criteria in a piece of property is that it have trail access… and a good spot for the dogyard! LOL!
So, in the meantime we will be living at my parents for the winter. They have a building called “the lodge” that they have been planning on fixing up to rent out anyway, so this gives them a little push to get it done. We finished making the new dogyard there a few weeks ago and the dogs have settled in just fine. The only place to really put them is in a small field next to their driveway so there isn’t a whole lot of shade, but there are a few trees to give some relief to the dogs and the cool weather is pretty much upon us anyway.
We will have two 12-dog teams for the beginning of training season. It looks like I will be doing the Beargrease Marathon and the UP200 as my main races this year. However, first I have to do a qualifying race in order to be able to run the Beargrease. It has to be at least 100 mile race, so I am thinking about doing the Moccasin Run in
We had to cut a new trail from the new dogyard up to the main trail, so we just went on our first run two days ago. Just a 3- mile run with 12-dogs, mostly the leaders, to show them the new trail and for us to make sure that nothing was going to break.. amazingly nothing broke, but we did discover that we seriously need more harnesses. It is pretty sad when you are trying to run only 12 dogs and you cant find enough decent harnesses. That is a purchase that needs to be made ASAP! The harnesses that I have now, I’ve had for like 15 yrs and they were hand-me-downs even then, so I think I got my use out of them. So, if anyone knows anyone that has good harnesses for sale for not a lotta money let us know! Also, going to have to make up another gangline, but that’s not that hard. I always say that next year, I will be prepared and have everything I need plus extra snaps, necklines made, etc but that never happens… it’s more of a tradition to be un-prepared! LOL!
Another new thing for us this year, is to have pretty much every dog in the yard able to race. We only need to find a home for
Beargrease 150
Beargrease 150
Duluth, MN
8 dogs, 150 miles
Team:
Tess
Socks
Ellen
Reggae
Dallas
Bandit
Madison
Goose
Alternate:
Fritz
I was very excited to be doing this race. I remember when I was about 8 years old, watching two musher friends of our family named Clay Rumph (sp?) and Bob Bright as they did the marathon. I don’t remember a whole lot about it anymore except I do remember being at a road crossing at the top of a huge hill watching Clay slowly make his way to the top. When he got to the top, he told us that he was scratching and couldn’t go on any farther, but his girlfriend wouldn’t let him. He did finish the race and was glad that she wouldn’t let him quit after all. I am told now, that this hill was probably Heartbreak Hill, but I am not sure. This was when the marathon was about 500 miles, it is much shorter now.
This race doesn’t start until Sunday afternoon but unfortunately the bib draw is Friday night which makes for a long weekend until you can even get on the trail. It wasn’t until we got there that we were told that we actually didn’t have to be there until Saturday if we had someone to pick up our bib for us. In any event, we did have fun meeting some new friends and visiting with old ones. I was excited to finally meet Jess Allen. We had been talking online via instant messenger for many months, but had never talked on the phone or in person. I also got a chance to officially meet Jim Methven. Jim’s team and mine have seemed so far to be pretty evenly matched. We ran most of the trail at the
Saturday was the vet checks and I still had not decided whether to run Bandit or Fritz in the race the next day. They both had been at about 90% at the White Oak race, but were both doing well in training afterwards. I did eventually decide to take Bandit since I had Socks and Tess slated for lead and Socks wasn’t always on the ball. Twice during training Socks had simply laid down on the trail at about 40 miles, but she hadn’t done it in about a month. Since I have such a small pool of dogs to choose from, especially leaders, I didn’t have much choice other than to use her.
The day of the race was warm at just over 30 degrees. We had to be at the staging area about 4 hours before our start time for the spectators so we had plenty of time to change our runners and get ready to go. Based on my bib number, we were supposed to park in the lower parking lot. When we went to pull in, the lady directing traffic recommended that we go ahead on up above the school and park up on the road with the higher numbers. She said that the dog trucks in the lower parking area were almost stacked up on each other. It sounded good to us and when we got to the upper area, we were pleasantly surprised to have a lot of room to ourselves. The only downside was that it was down a hill and quite a ways to get to the starting chute. The race handlers were very organized and about 6 young ladies came over about an hour before the start and let me know that they were my assigned handlers and would be there to help us get down to the chute when it was time.
Our Sponsors Tony and Rose Gemignani and their kids traveled all the way up to see me take off. They own and run Gemignani’s restaurant in
One of the teams that was parked next to us, was scheduled to leave about 15 minutes before us. They had commandeered a tree a little ways away so we decided that after they left, we would use the same tree. Unfortunately, even with all the extra time I misjudged my time to get ready and ended up with all of us scrambling around to get the dogs hooked up in time. As I went to leave, I realized that I had almost forgotten the first aid kit and ran back up to get it. Charlie grabbed the leaders and I was on the sled with the 6 handlers at various positions throughout the team. The way was going to be a little punchy but the previous team had already blazed a trail and I figured with the 8 of us we would be ok…. I am not sure how it happened, but it wasn’t long and the handlers started to fall by the wayside. Soon, it was just Charlie and I. He was valiantly trying to stay up in front with the leaders and I was doing my best to slow them down even the least little bit but these dogs had pretty much been in the dog boxes for 2 ½ days and had been hearing other teams leave ahead of them. We came booking around the corner of the school and on the downhill slope, Charlie fell and the team started to ball up. We were starting to run up on the back of another team, when Matt Weik came running up and jumped on the back of the sled with me and brought us to a halt. I didn’t even have my race bib on, it was still draped on the back of the sled. Officials were yelling at me to put it on but every time I would try to throw it on, Goose would lunge and the sled would jerk forward. I had to laugh at how ridiculous I knew I looked! I think I had about 3 other people helping me put my race bib on and tie it. We had started out with all of the dogs bootied, but by this time we had about half left on. I was mostly worried about Goose and Bandit since they were the only ones with bad feet, but I knew that we could stop at Billy’s bar about 10 miles down the trail and re-bootie if needed. Matt warned me that there was a sharp 90 degree turn right out of the chute and that there had been a bad crash there earlier. I found out later that Jennifer Freking had been the one to crash and had broken her hand there. We left the chute and as we came up to the corner, Tess swung out wide to the outside of the corner and we had no problems making it around.
The trail had been chewed up quite a bit by the teams in front of us, so I rode the drag pad constantly for quite awhile. Right away, I could tell we were in trouble. On the down hills, Reggae and
We set out down the trail again and the dogs seemed to be doing better, but Reggae was holding back on the down hills unless I rode the drag pad pretty hard. The good news was that I seemed to have figured out when to feed the dogs before the race and no one was straining to poop as in the last race. I had started out the race with Tess and Bandit in lead and figured that I would replace Socks up there once Bandit started to slow down. Bandit seems to not have an in-between gait, he either goes all out or he trots. Socks is a young leader and is fast as long as she keeps focused. We were about 2 hours out and I was looking at Socks and thinking to myself how beautiful she runs and the next thing I knew, she was laying down on me. I could not believe it! I went up and stood her on her feet and she looked fine so I gave her a pep talk and went back and pulled the hook. She lay down again. I went up and unclipped her and loaded her into the sled bag. She was limp but still looked fine so I zipped her in and thankfully she stayed put.
As we struggled slowly on, we were passed numerous times and I figured that there couldn’t possibly be anyone else behind us. I found out I was wrong when two more teams passed including Jim Methven. As one of the teams was going by they had a leader that didn’t want to pass and Bandit took the opportunity to try some romance which caused a bigger tangle. We eventually worked it out and they went by. One judge that I have of how badly we are doing, is how many people ask, “Are you okay?” as they go by us! That’s when I know that we must look like we suck! LOL!
Bandit started pouting and decided that he did not want to be in lead anymore now that we had stopped, so I tried Ellen in lead. She did ok for maybe a mile and then quit. I tried Goose in lead, but I could tell he was tired or sore and he was holding Tess back also. With Reggae and
The final stretch was pretty much just the three girls pulling me and Socks and the rest just kind of running along. I could tell that we were getting close to the checkpoint and I was surprised that I was a little disappointed. By this point I had resigned myself to something like last place and had been just enjoying the beautiful trail and nice night. Then Tess started limping again and I faced the fact that I may have to consider scratching. We made it into the checkpoint and Charlie grabbed the leaders and led us through a bewildering maze of teams and knee deep snow. Just when I thought that he didn’t know where he was going, we found our straw filled trench and came to a halt. By this time, Socks was franticly trying to get out of the bag and as soon as I opened it she started jumping around as though she had just had a 4 hr rest….hmmm.
Reggae immediately lay down and looked like he would never get up again. I was really worried about him, he is normally such a tough little guy. I had Charlie get a vet and she checked him over and confirmed that he did have a sore shoulder and an extremely sore tricep. That is when I realized what a truly great dog he is, I had known that he was sore but he never let on exactly how very sore he was until the checkpoint. I know now, to watch him closely in the future.
We put the dog’s coats on and they went to sleep. I realized that I was starving and got a bite to eat and curled up in the straw next to Bandit while Charlie went to grab his own blanket and by the time he got back I was frozen. I stumbled away and found the truck, started it up and peeled off my mukluks and propped my feet up on the dash. I had knee braces for this race and they felt like they were permanently embedded in the backs of my knees, but I was afraid that if I took them off then my knees would swell up; so I left them on. Maybe two hours later I put myself back together and made my way back to the team. Poor Charlie was now frozen himself so I sent him to find a hot drink while I evaluated my resting team. They weren’t even moving. I had never seen them so tired. Soon there were only a few teams left in the checkpoint. By the time it came to make my decision, there were only two other teams left with us. I got my dogs up and they looked better and were actually barking to go. The only problem was that Tess wasn’t even putting weight on her wrist although she was eager to keep going. That decided it for me. I had the UP200 coming up in 2 weeks and with Socks so unreliable, Tess was essentially my only leader. We were scratching.
White Oak 60
White Oak Classic
Deer River, MN
6-dogs, 60 miles
Team:
Tess
Ginger
Bandit
Fritz
Reggae
Dallas
Originally I was entered to run the 10-dog race, but as the date crept closer, I felt we didnt have enough miles on to do it and dropped to the shorter race. Then our funds were a bit short so I thought that we would have to sit out the race altogether. Luckily our wonderful sponsors, Tony and Rose Gemignani who own Gemignani's Restaurant in Hancock, MI and also Rudy's Spice came through and helped us out. So we decided to go about 3 days before the race.
I started out with Ginger and Tess in lead. Brian Tiura helped me get up to the starting chute since he had over an hour until his chute time. He held the leaders and took upon himself the momentous task of keeping Ginger facing the right way. After watching him struggle for a few minutes, I let him know that this was normal for her and that she would turn the right way when it was time to go.
I was a bit nervous about the start because there was not a whole lot of snow and I knew that we were going to have to do some turns to get through town. Tess has never been much of a command leader and in the past has tended to crumple under pressure. Ginger’s capability consists of a blank and adoring stare. The first hitch came at the starting chute itself when the sled handlers stuck my stainless steel hook that Charlie made solidly into the wooden post, not realizing how very sharp it was. The countdown… 3..2..1 and we are stuck! The man finally managed to get the hook out and all I could think was that he was lucky I didn’t have powerful Goose in the team or he never would have gotten it out!
Right away we were in some tight quarters going through trees and over a few snow covered logs as well. I was glad that I didn’t have 10 dogs as original planned. My old beater of a toboggan does not track well and makes a terrible slamming noise whenever we go over any jumps. I think we ran down a few snow-covered roads and I remember that at one intersection I had no idea which way we were supposed to go. I was amazed that there were no volunteers to help us out. There was no way to put the hook in on the road if I happened to choose the wrong way. I figured that the dogs would be able to tell better than I, so when Tess chose to turn, I let her. Thankfully, she chose the correct path.
Right away our problems started with Reggae constantly struggling to poop. He started out in swing and so he would drag the leaders to a stop in front of him. Then
I also want to mention that I was freezing the entire race. Somebody had told me that the race course was fairly hilly and so I dressed lightly in only a fleece pullover with a light nylon windbreaker on top. I had also forgotten my neck warmer back in the motel room, but I had confiscated Charlie’s knit hat and taken my knife and ripped out the top seam. It actually fit nice and snug around my neck when I pulled it over my head. There were hills, but nothing at all like I was prepared for so I ran whenever I could to help keep warm. I had to laugh at myself for wishing the dogs weren’t running so fast and hoping to see a hill coming up!
We passed a few teams and continued on. I could see a corner coming up and the trail suddenly turned to the right and we were supposed to take the trail alongside the road and next to the bridge. Naturally the dogs popped out onto the road and my leaders and swing dogs were out onto the pavement of the bridge before I knew what was happening. I had a few teams behind me and I managed to shoo them the right way. One of the mushers (I wish I knew who it was, so I could thank him) saw my predicament and jammed his snowhook onto the guard rail and started to come to my rescue. As my team saw the other teams running by on the other side of the guard rail, they were banging and screaming to go. In my mind I pictured how it would be if the other musher and I managed to get my team turned around. My team would end up right next to his and my sled would probably be slammed right into the guard rail. So I yelled, “Thanks, but I guess we’ll just go this way!” to the other musher and we scraped along down the bare pavement of the bridge. Looking up, I was relieved to see that the volunteer that was waiting to stop traffic on the other side was walking towards us. I knew that I would probably need help on the other side to get my team back down onto the trail. Unfortunately, he kept walking past me as I headed for the cars waiting at the other side. We reached the other side and I managed to scrape us to a halt as we watched the teams we had already passed, go by us again. Tess finally agreed to give up the nice road for the trail and we were back on track.
After we re-passed the teams directly in front of us, we ran alone for quite awhile again and I had time to enjoy the beautiful trail. We came around another right-hand corner and were on a trail that was split down the middle by power poles. Tess likes to run on the very left side of the trail so she chose the left hand trail. We ran for a little ways, but I could see that no other dog teams had run on this side. I was worried that eventually this trail would split off from the other and we would then be going the wrong way; so I stopped the team and dragged them over. I ran back to the sled, pulled the hook, and she jumped back over to the left again. Worried that I would be re-passed again, I decided that if the trail did split off ahead of us I would be able to see it in time so we kept going. After awhile I could see two teams coming frombehind us and gaining pretty steadily. They were ten-dog teams running on the right-hand trail. When they came up alongside of us, Tess picked up speed and we raced them for a ways, but they eventually pulled away.
I believe it was shortly after we left the power line trail behind, that Jerry Papke passed and we came upon a team stopped in the trail. It was JoAnn, who appeared to be having leader issues. I can definitely say that I’ve been there too and don’t wish it on anyone!
About 40 miles out, the two males finally seemed to have worked out their bowel problems and were finally running as they should. Tim Calhoun came up on us and his leaders insisted on trying to pass on the left even though we were hugging that side. He was running his leaders without a neckline and one leader went to the right and one to the left, so I stopped and helped the errant leader to the correct side. We were moving along at a good pace now and I was happy to see that it took awhile for Tim to pull away from us. Bandit was starting to lag a bit but was not holding Tess back so I left him up in lead rather than waste time trying another dog up there. John Hull passed next with his 10 dpg team, and he pulled away much quicker than anyone else had. It was starting to become dusk, so I stopped the team and turned on the blinker on Tess’s collar and also switched on my headlamp.
The final homestretch seemed to go on forever since it was a straight shot for quite a ways and I could see several of the 10 dog teams that had passed us way up ahead. It was pretty dark now and I could tell that the flashing light on Tess’s collar was annoying Bandit which I thought was kind of funny. About 2 miles from the finish, Bandit started to really fall back and I put Ginger back up in lead again. Ginger was happy with the slower pace now and also was not bothered by the blinker on Tess. It was fully dark by the time we came into the finish and there was a bright flashing red light that was a bit disorienting so I was glad to hear Charlie calling for Tess to guide her in. We stopped at the finish line and handed over our trap, which was part of our mandatory gear for the race and headed for the truck.
I had no idea where we were at in the standings, but was happy with how the dogs ran. With the exception of Bandit, they came in pretty looking good. Overall I was happy with Bandit too. He did well until the last 2 miles or so and he still made an effort to keep up even though he was so tired. I was absolutely freezing by this time, and could hardly control my shivering, but I made sure the dogs were taken care of. They all ate and drank well and were quite happy to be loaded up into their boxes for a much deserved rest.
We drove back to our motel with the wonderful heat cranked up. When I went to get out, I found that I could hardly move my knees without crying! I have always known that my knees weren’t real strong but haven’t had a real problem with them until this year. I felt like an idiot as I hobbled my way inside the motel and flopped on the bed. At some point that night, we were told by a fellow musher that we must be somewhere in 9th or 10th place. I was very excited by this especially after the stop-and-go first 40 miles we had! The awards banquet was not until the next afternoon and was about 60 miles away, but we decided to stick around.
That next day we were waiting in a parking lot for the awards banquet to start when Charlie got a call from Brian Tiura. They talked for awhile about the race and then Brain mentioned something about a 15 min penalty that I had gotten. We had no idea what he was talking about and figured he must be mistaken. We went inside to make sure, and were told that I had indeed gotten a penalty for having no blinking light on my lead dog! This penalty put us from 10th to 14th place and out of the money. We waited to talk to the race marshal, Dan Bergerson. He seemed to know what we were going to say before we could tell him and started shaking his head. We explained that we knew that the blinker was on because it was on when Charlie took it off at the finish line! Dan agreed that it probably was on, but he had to go with his race judges on the decision. I told him that I understood that of course it was my word against theirs, but my major issue was the fact that I wasn’t told right there at the finish line as I should have been. After all, the team was already stopped while I handed over the trap and my race bib. Then we would have had a chance to prove who was right! He agreed that this is what should have happened but then went on to question why we were so upset since after all, we only lost $100 for 10th place! No words can express our thoughts on this answer!!!!
In summary, the trail was nice on this race and I appreciate everyone’s hard work to keep it going.
New Additions
We got two new teammates in our kennel during the last week in December from Frank Holmberg. They are Ellen and Reggae.
Ellen is a small young female with abundant energy and seems full of good cheer. She does not have any race experience yet, but I have no doubt that she will fit into the team without a hitch. She has a very strange gait and looks like she is running almost sideways but her tugline is never slack. Using the spreaders on my gangline seems to help some and I would like to see how she does in a side-pull harness.
Reggae is a beautiful black male who also has a very happy personality. I can tell that they both have plenty of miles on them and have great muscle tone on them. Reggae does what I call “scooby talk” when he is excited. It goes something like this, “Roo, roo, ruah, ruah” in a kind of guttural exclamation. I just love it and he is already one of my favorite dogs. He has also fallen head over tail in love with Tess, who is making it a point to ignore his professions of adoration. This is the only problem that I have with him, I can’t run him next to or directly in front of her or he is completely distracted.
My sister Katherine, also got a dog at the same time from the Holmberg’s. His name is Hagler and he is Ellen’s sister although they don’t look anything alike to me. He has beautiful blue eyes and I am jealous of that because I never get any blue eyes in my kennel! Katherine is very happy with Hagler and she says that he is now her best dog.
I know that all three will have a long career in our kennels and we are lucky to have them.
Sorry!
Truckin' Down the Trail
We took 5 days off for the peak of rifle deer hunting season and I will return to hard training again tonight. I will continue to use the truck and see how it goes. Deer hunting was fun, but now it is time to get back to real business!
Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday and keep those tails wagging!
Training Continues