Ravenwood Kennel: Mushing the Western U.P.: Few and Far Between...an update in photos.

Ok, I know it's been FOREVER, again. No excuses. Here's what we've been up to this whole time...

Lake of the Clouds, Porcupine Mountains-May 11th, 2014

Lake of the Clouds- August 9th, 2014


Lake of the Clouds-October 5th, 2014

As you can see, we love to go to Lake of the Clouds in the Porkies a few times a year! We also have certain photos we take every time we go to the Porkies!

August 9

October 5

August 9

October 5

In August, we got a new face in the kennel:


Bandit-leader

In lead with old standby, Thunder.

So far, Bandit has proven to be a solid, dependable leader. We're still working on the turn commands, but he's fast, focused and has shown he's able to help teach the young up and comers how to move the team down the trail at a good clip.

Elliot is on the Junior Varsity football team this year and has had tons of play time. He is in the game for pretty much the whole time because of the small size of the team. He's wearing number 84 this year and is playing tight end and defensive end. His season is wrapping up now and despite their not winning any of their games which were mostly against teams with at least twice as many players on them, they all worked and played hard and have nothing to be ashamed of.

He's also punting.

In early September, we added yet 2 more dogs to the kennel. One is our very first purebred, papered Siberian Husky. She is about 5 months old and we call her Fox:

She's joined our house dog "pack" which brings the number up to 7 living in our house. Some think that's too many. Those people might as well not come here. We are dog people through and through. Besides, more warm bodies indoors lowers the heat bill, right? :) Anyhow, Fox has so far been really great. It took a little while, but she's housebroken and doesn't chew things she's not supposed to. She gets along great with the other house dogs and her and Rukus, her older pitbull/border collie brother are best friends for sure:

And the other addition is Brown Hound, an Alaskan Husky whose brother, Boney Billy, we already had and really like. When we were asked if we'd be interested in him, naturally we were but when we actually saw him, there was no way we weren't bringing him home with us. Little did we know the adventure we were going to have with Brown Hound. He rode home approximately 2 hours in the truck so nice and calm that I guess we got complacent and did something that we would never do again. On the day that we brought him home, we had a high school football game we were planning on attending and we were already late by the time we got home and put away the frozen meat for the dogs that we had also picked up on that trip. Our son, who was already at the game texted us to tell us that our team was winning so we were extra anxious to get to the game. We didn't have Brown Hound's dog house and post/chain set up yet so we decided to put him in the kennel we usually use for puppies, which was empty because we don't have any puppies at the moment. We thought it was secure enough. We were wrong. He was still in the kennel when we got home after the game and he was still there the whole night, we know that because he'd bark a little every so often. But at 6 in the morning, the kennel dogs were barking and carrying on and when I looked in the direction they were looking, there was Brown, standing at the end of the driveway. I opened the door to call him and he walked out the drive past the garage and that was the last I saw. By the time I got my shoes on, alerted Jeremy and ran down the driveway (which is not long), he was nowhere to be seen. And thats how it was for the next 2.5 weeks! We drove around daily and let everyone anywhere nearish by know he was gone and then we got sightings. We even saw him a few times, but he wouldn't let anyone near enough to get hold of him. He wouldn't get in a car. Ran away whenever it seemed like anyone was going to come near. He started hitting people's bear bait piles and was caught on game cams. He seemed to develop a range of a few square miles where he would go regularly to check bait. Finally we went to the Sheriff's Department and asked if we could borrow their live trap. The Animal Control Officer hadn't wanted to use it because he was afraid he'd catch something he didn't want to, like a wolf or coyote or whatever. We couldn't figure how we were ever going to get a hold of Brown Hound without it. So we talked them into letting us use it (with a deposit, of course) and within 2 days we finally caught him. He was skinny, smelly and scared, but in good health considering and has since gained weight and after a few weeks to recover has now become a valuable team member and loves to run!

The day we brought him home, riding all calm and quiet...

Some of the bear bait. It was doughnut frosting. We'd check it every day to see what kind of teeth marks were in it to see if he'd been there that day. We figured we knew Brown's teeth marks from bears or coons or whatever.

We became obsessed with looking for tracks and then trying to figure out how fresh they were...


Caught in the trap. That was a happy day! (for us anyway)

Skin and Bone after 2.5 weeks on the run.

Couple weeks later, looking much better.

So, of course we've started fall training and it's going great so far:

And we have had many kittens this year from our barn cats and after placing almost all of them, we ended up with one lil guy left and have decided to keep him, in the house even! Of course, the house dogs are not into it and some of them would really like to end him, but he lives upstairs for the most part and the dangerous dogs are not allowed upstairs, so he's safe. His name is Monroe, and he's pretty much Autumn's kitty.