I realized that I forgot to mention in the last post about Autumn's Prom. It was on April 26 and she went with her long time boyfriend, Jerad. We drove down to Woodruff, WI, about an hour away, in the morning so that her Aunt Jennifer, who is a manicurist, could do her nails. They turned out really nice and then I did her hair. She got lots of compliments on her dress. I've been told she had the prettiest dress there!
Elliot is in track again this year and is doing the high jump again and also running the 400 meter and the 1600 meter relay. Unfortunately, due to weather-snow and/or rain, most of his meets have been cancelled, but he's enjoying it and has done well for the most part.
In kennel news, we just got done moving the dogs from their winter dog yard to the summer one. We were lucky enough to find some weld casing pipe for a really good price, so we now have enough pipes that we don't have to move them any more. The pipes are closed on one end and cut off at around 7.5 feet long. We decided to drill holes for the rebar swivels to go into on the closed end and drive the jagged cut off ends in to the ground. We also decided to sand the rust off and paint them in hopes that they might look better and last longer. It's been a bunch of extra work and we are hoping it's worth it.
First, drain holes have to be drilled below where the swivel reaches so they don't freeze up and stop swiveling in the winter
Closed ends
Have to start with smaller holes...
...
and work up to bigger ones.
Sanding...
and more sanding the next day...
and then painting
and more painting (I hope we're not wasting our time!)
We actually moved the dogs on May 7th. Jeremy's brother Tobi and his wife, Crista, came over and with the extra help, we managed to get all the dogs moved in a little under three hours! That was way fatser moving 23 dogs and their houses than I would have thought we could accomplish. Sure was nice having the help!
We figured it was time to get them out of this muck.
Crista and Tobi.
Elliot and Tobi hauled houses.
Jeremy and I hauled houses.
Crista and I hauled houses.
Jeremy had to do some repairs on a couple houses.
Crista watering dogs.
Now the dogs are high and dry.
Old Man Stimpy helped oversee the project. Still kicking at probably 15-16 years old (we're not sure of his exact age).
And Spike tried to supervise from the house.
Almost done!
We got the job done none too soon, as now all we seem to get for weather is either rain or pending rain and everything is completely saturated and the winter dog yard is like a giant puddle/swamp.
We were able to get out for a few more runs in late March and had fun (minus our very last run, which involved major tangles and fights, but we will try to forget it). Above is a picture from one of the last runs with a couple of ten dog teams.
Now we are having a very cold, rainy, snowy, crappy spring. Our high today won't even be 40 degrees (F), same as for the last week or so. With the cold, we are getting snow flurries and rain interspersed. Very muddy and messy. We haven't been training and are hoping to get the dogs out loose running soon, if the snow ever melts enough to get out to the area we run them with the truck and trailer, not to mention the mud that has to dry up at least a little after the snow melts and with the weather the way its been, the melt is very slow and the mud might never dry! We will soon be moving the dogs up to their "summer yard" where they can be at least higher and drier than they are right now. Very mucky down there...Luckily we got a great deal on some pipe so we can stop having to move their pipes for their swivels from one yard to the other and just have permanent pipes in both yards, saving quite a bit of work. We still have to move all of the houses, but we're thinking seriously about building enough dog houses to be able to have them permanent also, so all we have to do is move the dogs.
Yesterday, we took a load of 18 huskies and our pit/border collie mix house dog, Rukus, who's now 9 months old, down to Mercer, Wisconsin (about a 30-40 minute drive) to a vaccine clinic for their rabies shots. The Clinic is put on by The Fix Is In out of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. They travel around doing affordable spay/neuters and vaccines to anyone who wants or needs it. They were nice enough to do the shots outside for us, even though it was raining a little. They do a great job and we got a great deal!
We were quite the spectacle down there. People kept asking us if they were bear dogs or sled dogs. Of course they were extremely noisy because they were hoping that we hauled them to run them, but instead they got to be in the trailer for a 40 minute ride down there, got stuck with a needle and then got loaded back up to sit for another 2 hours or so due to having to finish paperwork (lots!) and then the ride home again. The young dogs got a chance to learn how to be in the dogbox for a while and they behaved well.
Rukus-pitbull/border collie mix house dog that we got around Labor Day when he was 6 weeks old. I realized I forgot to introduce him...
And a new addition to the kennel - Clint. We got him early March. So far he's fitting in well.
One more video of one of our last runs this season, I'm yammering on it about how proud I am of our sweet little tiny Leia, our "mini husky" pup from last winter. She's the closest to the sled little white dog on the right. We figure she might weigh 30 lbs. at the most and this was her first time running on snow. She kept up great and really didn't seem tired at the end. She seems to have great drive and even though she is strictly "my dog" (not Jeremy's) and most people (including Jeremy) think she might not be worth hooking up, I am in love with her looks, personality, and drive and have hopes of maybe getting a little leader out of her...
