Ravenwood Kennel: Mushing the Western U.P.: Copperdog 150 and Other Stuff

This last weekend was the Copperdog 150 race up in Calumet, Michigan. Jeremy chose not to race the shorter race up there, the Copperdog 35, which is actually closer to 40 miles. We decided that the dogs were not really up to that right now, as our training has been a little spotty with trailer issues and then truck issues, so we just went up to watch and support the people we know that were racing. Unfortunately, our friend Matt, who was racing the 150, which is a stage race that is around 50 miles a day for three days, ended up having to scratch about 40 miles into the first leg because he had a couple young dogs that were just too tired to continue and he decided to do the best thing for his team and end his race there.


Matt, right, getting his bag checked.

Some of Matt's dogs.

The race starts at 7:00 p.m. on Friday night, so its dark, but this is Matt shortly out of the chute.

A couple more not very good shots of teams heading out on the trail:

A nice little story about our son, Elliot this weekend on our trip to Calumet...he always wears shorts, all winter long, all the time, no pants, always shorts. We think nothing of it because we are used to it, but it brings lots of weird looks and lots of comments when we go to races. When we were at the Jack Pine 30, he helped handle to get the team to the starting chute and the announcer commented on how tough us people from Ironwood are, because obviously it was balmy to us in Gwinn, on account of Elliot wearing shorts. He got pictures taken of him by people who thought he was crazy. This weekend was not much different, but apparently because of the way he was dressed, some kind soul who was also there to watch the race thought he needed help, like maybe he was homeless or just needy? because she took it upon herself to stop him on the street and give him some money to buy some food with. We were not with him at the time or we would have assured her that in reality he is well cared for and actually pretty spoiled and certainly not going hungry, that he's just a bit crazy and stubborn refusing to wear pants. As it was, he was totally taken by surprise and really didn't know how to react, so ended up taking the money (he is a 13 year old boy, after all). Both kids were talking about it for the rest of the trip and now have a fun story to tell their friends. Luckily, it wasn't very much money, so we didn't insist on finding the lady to return it.

We've been training still, fun runs now that our race season is over. We'll hopefully have a longer season on sleds now since we got a nice dump of snow last week, like 16 inches or so. We're trying to work with the pups a bit more, Lara has been running lead for me, the chase team. She's great at it, but she only wants to chase lead right now, and is easily distracted and goofs off if there's not a team ahead. Hopefully, as she matures, that will change. She is only 11 months old, so is still just a kid, really.