Sledding with Friends

  The little virus that we had in the dogyard seems to have cleared up, so we are back to running dogs.  Marenisco got a couple of inches of snow on Christmas Eve, so the trails are in pretty good shape, not that they weren't in okay shape before, but the new snow makes them nicer and, hopefully not just because the holidays kept people too busy to drive their trucks out in the middle of the woods, traffic has been down on the trails.
  Jeremy and I did a nice 19 or so mile run on Christmas Day, and our friend Matt had called and said that him and his daughter would like to hit the trails with us today, so we loaded up fairly early and headed up to meet them in Marenisco so we could show off the trails we love so much, as they'd never been over there.

Before hookup

 

 

Dude and Pinstripe getting anxious to go.

Almost ready...it was pretty cool hooking up four teams.

Leaders Thunder and Aspen.

Leaders Scout and Cherry.

I took up the rear-Matt was ahead of me, then his daughter, then Jeremy.

  Unfortunately, Jeremy's team seemed to "poop out" early on in the run, and we ended up cutting it short, only doing about 10 miles.  The temps were in the mid to upper 30's, which may have had something to do with it, or maybe they just weren't ready today, yesterdays run was a later one, finished about 4:30 pm, so maybe they were still feeling it this morning, or maybe it just wasn't a good day, it happens.  Training has not been ideal this year, and our miles aren't quite where we had envisioned them being.  The weather is so weird this year and we could really use snow and colder temps.  42 degrees on December 26 just seems so wrong!  What little snow we have is deteriorating in this weather.  We have ground showing in our yard, luckily Marenisco has a few more inches than we do, but we really need things to change soon!
  All in all, with good company and healthy dogs, it was a good time.  We really enjoy getting to train with and spend some time with other dog sledding enthusiasts, and will hopefully get to do it again soon.  Maybe next time the weather will be more in our favor.

  Little update on how things are lately...
We've been getting sled runs in, but we have to drive to Marensico to do it.  Not that big a deal, I guess, but it amounts to a lot of extra time and fuel spent driving.  Maybe I shouldn't complain, as I know that there's other mushers around that have it worse as far as snow goes.  We only have to drive 60 miles round trip to get on snow, give or take a bit depending on where we get onto the trail system over there.  The trails are not ideal, we could use about a foot or so to make it perfect.  Right now, its maybe six inches, and there's still a bunch of trucks using the roads, so not much base, but we've been running eight dog teams with only minor troubles, like green leaders not taking turns, and not being able to hook down very well to make the corrections.
  Our local trails are still unusable.  Not so much because of lack of snow, though we could use more, but more because of loggers and people plowing to their hunting camps. We've also been encountering locked gates in places that haven't been locked in the past.  We have spent a ton of time just driving around, checking the trails, and its pretty depressing, to say the least.  Starting to look like we won't be able to use any of our usual trails nearby this year.  It gets pretty expensive with the gas prices to always have to hit the road for every single training run.
  To top it all off, it seems that we have some sort of virus starting to make its way through the dog yard.  Seems to hit suddenly, hard, with lots of diarrhea and vomiting, but it seems like the first dog that got it was feeling better after only one day, so hopefully that's how it will go, so far two dogs have been hit hard, with a few others showing milder symptoms, so we are going to be giving them all a couple days off to make sure everyone feels good before we resume training.  Maybe it will snow in the meantime, although the forecast doesn't look good.  All we want for Christmas is some of the white stuff.

Puppy Fun

Elliot and the pups-now about five and a half months-having a bit of fun yesterday. 

Learning to pull?  Tug of war, of course...that's Storm and Rain.

They all want the rope.

An update on training:  we've been getting out there with the sleds, but our local trails we like are in a bad way because of logging operations and hunters plowing the roads to their camps.  We really wish those guys would use four wheelers or snowmobiles to access the camps-or even just drive through the snow which is easily doable in the trucks they are using anyhow.  But I guess that's all just wishful thinking.  They usually stop plowing by the end of the month or so, we just have to be patient.
On a side note, today the temps in the low 40's.  Wrecking the snow we have.  Back to wishing for more of the white stuff...

Season's First Sled Run

We finally have enough snow to get the sleds out, so we loaded up two teams and drove over to Marenisco to check out the trails over there today.  We are a bit nervous about our local trails because of logging activities.  There is no real base under the snow yet, so we can't set a snowhook to hold teams, and we don't want to get into any situations where it would be needed.  The trails in Marenisco are really easy to navigate and safer with no base.  Jeremy took an eight dog team and I took a six dog team. 

The sleds waiting for the teams to be hooked to them.  Stimpy and Cherry, my leaders, in foreground.

Waiting and ready...

The trails over there are actually forest roads, so there has still been some traffic on them, which gave us a broke trail to follow, and we did pass one truck during the run, but there's easily enough room for us and them, so its no problem, the dogs barely hesitate when passing vehicles.  Good training. The roads do not get plowed, so soon there will be too much snow for trucks to drive on them.  Then the low snowmobile traffic will break the trails for us.

Jeremy way up there...

Jeremy's team is usually most of the better, faster dogs in the kennel, so he goes a bit faster.  He does have two more dogs than me, but his sled is much longer and heavier than mine, and he's heavier than me, too, so we figure it should come close to even in the end.  He wants to race and I don't, so I usually get the slower and/or weaker dogs in the kennel.  My usual main leader, Stimpy, is about 11 years old or so, tends to keep my team slower-suits me fine.

Breaking trail.

We also use a stretch of snowmobile trail, which is getting no use right now, so we ended up breaking trail for the last three miles.  The snow is about six to eight inches deep, not too bad, but its still more work for the dogs, and Jeremy's team really drove nice though it, leaving me way behind.  I was pretty happy he did-faster is better for racing, obviously-really looks like he might have what he needs.
 We did 10 miles and most of the dogs weren't tired yet.  Sure was fun and nice to get back to real mushing, no more mud all over everything!

Puppies in the snow!  Breeze, Storm, and Rain.  Cloud refused to pose for me! Age five months.

More Truck Training

  We are still training off the truck.  Its going well, the dogs are enjoying themselves and we've decided that there's a few good things about it.  We always have the trailer with us through the whole run, so if one, or more, dogs seem to need it, we can just stop and load them up and keep going with the rest of them without any trouble.  We can train without needing to look for places that loop, which we always do with the cart (and sleds) because having to turn around is not fun with a dog team.  With the truck, we can just stop when ever we feel the dogs have run enough miles and water, unharness, and load up wherever we are. 
  On Thursday, we took Salt out for her first hookup.  It took a bit for her to understand how things work, but she figured it out pretty quick.  She ran about four miles before we decided it was enough, and loaded her up, which was easy, because the trailer was with us.

We paired her up with easy going Sweet.  You might notice that we got another two inches of snow this week.

She was trying to figure out why everyone was so excited!  Scooby, Hail, Brian, and Hoodscoop behind.

In action-hard to get a good pic from the truck.

  Lara has been doing really great.  We had her in point, right behind the leaders, on Tuesday.  She was doing so good that we decided to put her up front with Thunder for a bit just to see what she'd do.

Lara is in point, next to Aspen, who's a bit bigger...

Lara up there with Thunder.

  Thunder did a great job showing her what to do, we had one big turn while she was up there, and he kept her basically in place when we stopped.  She lasted about a mile until she started to get distracted and goofing off.  No big deal, at eight months old, she's got lots of growing up to do.  She's very focused and driven in any other place in the team for at least 10 miles, which is the longest we've been running right now, and she never seems tired.
  On Tuesday, we also decided to try a couple other dogs up there with Thunder, with not too much luck.

Frost looked good at the start...

Pulled like a champ for a mile or so, before starting to act like a doofus.

 By the end of the run, we were back to the old standby duo Thunder and Cherry.  When we are done, we expect our leaders to hold the line out till everyone else is off the line.

Leaders with a job well done.  Gets pretty lonely way up there.

No Snow

So, our snow didn't last very long.  We did get at least eight inches, but it quickly melted and we were never able to break out the sleds.
So now we decided to try something different.  Running the dogs right off the truck, meaning hooking the team to the front of the truck and letting them just run, keeping the tugs tight, but not actually pulling the truck, we mostly just follow them and keep them at around a 10 mile an hour pace.  It gets them out there and it gives us total control, which we've obviously been lacking with the cart.
Today was our first attempt at this and it went pretty well.  We only did eight miles because they've been off for a few weeks, but when we were done, they were all hammering their harnesses and barking, so we really could have done more.  Next time.

Cherry and Thunder, the leaders, ready to go.  Aspen, Stimpy and Traveler are visible behind.

 

The view from inside the comfy cab.  Mushing in luxury!

18 dogs.

It was pretty nice riding in this kind of comfort-no getting cold feet or hands for us!  But we'd still take some snow and sleds over this any day.  Gets pretty boring this way-10 mph feels a lot faster on the runners.  The road had some pretty slippery patches of ice on it, too, which makes us a bit nervous about possible injuries resulting from dogs slipping while pulling.  No problems today, though.  Everyone completed the run in great shape, including Lara, one of our youngest dogs, at eight months.  She shows real promise, and we are looking forward to a couple more hookups and then we'll try her up front with Thunder.  It'd be nice to have a few more leaders in the yard.
As for the snow, maybe if we say we don't want snow for a while yet, we'll get dumped on?  Apparently wishing for it is not working...so much for being on sleds in November.  At this rate, its looking like it won't be anywhere near the beginning of December, either.

SNOW!!!

Great news!  Its snowing!!!  Not our first snow of the season, but its still a sight for sore eyes!  Its supposed to snow through the rest of the day and all night, resulting in up to eight - 12 inches, hopefully.  Unfortunately, the forecast is saying that its supposed to warm up from Wednesday through Friday, with Thanksgiving day's high at 49 degrees.  If that happens, the snow will disappear in a hurry.  With any luck, that forecast will change by that time, it is five days away, so we might get lucky.  Fingers crossed.  Maybe we'll be on sleds by December first? 

Lately...

Good things and bad things.  The golf cart we use for training is having brake problems.  The brake shoes are done for and getting new ones is not that easy, it turns out.  No parts stores nearby have anything for golf carts at all, so we tried ordering some.  First of all, they are extremely expensive, considering that they are only brake pads, and are a lot smaller than something for like a car, say.  Fifty bucks per wheel, and the set is only the shoes, no springs or anything.  Then we were told that all we need to know for ordering is that the cart is a G9, which would be good, because we have no idea what year it is or anything because we can't find a serial number or model number or any numbers on the cart, which might have to do with all the severe abuse and dirt that accumulates with the abuse that the cart takes for its job of being pulled by teams of dogs for eight years or so.  Turns out you do need to know a bit more info than that, like that apparently its older than a 1994, because the part that we received was not the correct part. 
    So, naturally, because we were getting really impatient with the situation, and didn't want to wait for another part to be reordered and sent, we tried once more to find something that would work locally, as one of the auto parts store clerks had suggested that it might be possible to match the shoes for a four wheeler, if we brought the old shoes in.  Turns out that we could have found the shoes that we had ordered locally, as they did match four wheeler shoes, and it would have cost half as much, but obviously that did us no good.  Of course, none of those shoes matched the ones we actually needed.  But the guy at the store had one more suggestion for a place we could try, so we went there next.  He had nothing that was a perfect match, but he did have some that looked like they'd work with some minor tweaking, and they were very inexpensive, so we bought one set to try.  Jeremy was able to get them to work, but it was only one wheel.  We decided that we were pretty sure that we had been using the cart for at least a couple weeks with only one brake working (the cart only has brakes on the two back wheels), so thought that we'd be able to use it with the one done, and we were anxious because we knew that some friends of ours were running two teams up in Bruce Crossing the next morning ( which was last Friday), so we became too ambitious and went up to join them.  The hookup:

Turns out this was the best part of the whole run!  We quickly realized that we had made a big mistake.  It didn't take very long and the brakes stopped working almost entirely.  We ended up having to unhook almost half the teams tug lines in order to have even a tiny bit of control.  Thank goodness we have good, understanding and helpful musher friends who really saved our butts!  Thanks entirely to them, we were able to cut our run short and made it back to the truck with no real injuries (one dog had a rub sore one his rear haunch from the gang line after we had unhooked his tug).  The other two teams were able to continue their run a few more miles, but we felt horrible for having messed up everyones run, but they were nice about it and made us feel better about it.  But again, our apologies to them for such a lapse in judgement.  We should never have assumed the cart was ready, and are not running again until the other brake has been replaced as well.  The new parts are here and waiting to be put in, which has not happened because during this week, we got our first snow!  We have a couple inches on the ground, melting as I type this.  The cart has taken a back burner this week, mostly because once there is a couple inches of snow we can't use the cart anymore.  The tires and clearance do not work well in the snow.  The tires have no tread on them really, and it slides all over and then the brakes do nothing either, so once the snow is here to stay, we have to wait until there is enough of  it to run the sleds on it, which means we need a couple inches of base underneath so the runners of the sled are not sliding on the ground.  Hopefully by the beginning of December.  We should be able to use the cart if the snow keeps melting like it is today, once the brakes are finished, so hopefully training will resume soon.
   In other news, we managed to re home one of the Alaskan Huskies, Meg. 

She decided last season that she didn't want to do any pulling, just run along with the team, so she has not been training this year and we decided that it would be in everyones best interest to find her a new family for her to be a part of.  We listed her on Craigs List and quickly found her a nice family with 30 acres and children for her to play with.  So she left last night.  Now we are down to 28 dogs, including the 2 new dogs and the pups.  We do still have one or two more dogs that we'd like to see go to new families, and will be happy if we manage to find them loving new homes, but they are loved here, too.  They will not be race dogs, but we have been wanting to give rides and think they would do fine there, if they are still here.  If anyone reading is interested, check the U.P. Craigslist for pets in Ironwood.

New dogs and Puppy Update

Finally getting around to posting about the two new dogs we picked up about a week and a half ago.  One of them is about seven and a half months old.  We've named her Lara.  She has nice lines from Seavey and back to Mackey and further back to Gatt.  The other dog is about five and a half months.  We've named her Salt.  Her lines are Wang, back to Swingley, and further back to Saunderson, Wright, and Attla.  These names are easily recognizable to fellow mushers, but to those of you that are not familier with them, trust us, they are great lines.  They had never been run in harness yet and we've had Lara out on two hookups so far and are very impressed with her performance and energy.  Both of these dogs are VERY HIGH ENERGY!   We were only going to do about three and a half miles for Lara's first run, but she looked really good yet, so we went five and a half miles, and she was still raring to go and very hyper when we got done.  You couldn't even tell she had done anything! 

Lara before her second hookup.

Getting excited...

Luckily, no harness chewing, or line chewing...

Standing and waiting.  Her partner is Sweet, who lives up to his name and is a good, non-intimidating, easy going mutt for puppy training made easy.

In action.

Salt.  She should be ready for harness breaking soon.  We like to start at about six months or so, if they seem ready. No pressure.  If they're not ready yet, it waits.

I also wanted to give a puppy update.  They are now just over four months old and getting big!  No more loose running in the yard, because they have come to an age that they want to wander a bit and, true to the husky nature, they don't listen all that well when they are called back. 

Cloud

Breeze

Rain

Storm

Autumn and Rain.

Enjoying the grub.

They should be about ready to run with the big dogs by the end of December/early January, again, if they are ready...
Fall training is progressing nicely-got about 22 hookups and 137 miles total on most of the dogs.  Not too bad considering the time lost to bad weather (meaning too damn warm) in early October.  We are just REALLY looking forward to snow rather than dirt/mud!

Tahquamenon Training Session

Last weekend we loaded up 16 dogs, the golf cart and all the other necessities to spend two days training dogs with other mid distance mushers in Newberry, Michigan, which turned out to be about a six hour drive one way.  Totally worth it!  We had a blast, despite the lack of sleep due to many, many high energy dogs all in one smallish area.  There were maybe 15 teams there, including ours, and two kennels worth of resident dogs, which might have totaled around 200 dogs or so, give or take a few.  We had to sleep the two nights we were there in a tent, and that many dogs equals lots of noise!
    The purpose of this session, among other things, is mainly for passing experience for the teams outside of the pressure of racing.  It also is for the social aspect for the mushers.  A lot of mushers, us included, are fairly isolated from others in the sport for most of our training, so its nice to get together once in awhile just to be around kindred spirits, and it sure does revive the spirit to be around other people that have the "disease", as we affectionately refer to it.  Most of the people in our lives, at least, think we are crazy and really do not understand the commitment and sometimes sacrifice involved in this chosen lifestyle, so it sure is nice to spend some time with people who get it.
   Our dogs, in fact, had never actually been around any other teams at all, until Wednesday, when we took them up to train with our vet, so we were nervous and excited to get them around all these other teams in the camping area as well as the trails.  As it turned out, we really had nothing to be nervous about, as they performed easily up to and above our expectations and hopes.  It seems as though all of our hard work and time spent training and working with our dogs has paid off well.  We had no problems hooking up and running out of the camp even with all the other dogs and people.  Our leaders held the line out with no tethers and they ran out to the trail with no troubles.  On the trail, they handled head on passing and side by side passing like they'd been doing it on every training run.  In fact, it looked as though Thunder was enjoying leading the team past these "obstacles" and was always looking for the next challenge.  Needless to say, we are thrilled with our dogs and can't wait for the next chance to train with other teams!

Our camp-tent's behind the trailer.  Getting ready to hook up for the first run.

Another team getting ready.  They were in front of us, so we had to wait for them.  You can see our cart waiting in the background.

Other teams around us preparing.

Cruising down the trail.  They have a great trail system right out of their yard.  We are jealous.  We have to load up to go to any trails.

Had to stop once or twice for tangles and corrections, but none were mess ups during passing, which was awesome!

Giant puddle!  Two teams up ahead.

Passing a team.  Another team up ahead.

Here's a video to give an idea of what it was like.  The sound is no good, and its a bit shaky, and the end looks like it was about to be a mess, the team coming up on us was on the wrong side of the trail for what our leaders expected, but we ended up getting by okay with no tangles or anything.

All in all it was a great weekend and we'd like to thank Bob and Jan Shaw for hosting this wonderful event and we hope to attend it annually from now on.

Dropping dogs to stretch and pee on the way home.

Also thanks to the kids for staying home and caring for the dogs that were left behind so that we could go and enjoy the weekend with no worries!


Soon to come...updates on our puppies and the new young dogs that we just got last week.  One has been on one hookup, forgot the camera, but pics up soon...