SNOW!!!!!!

We've been getting hammered with snow for four days now, the kids had a snow day from school on Tuesday and are being let out early today, Thursday due to our crazy lake effect snow.  Still coming down hard with at least two feet on the ground!  Probably more like 30" really, plus winds causing drifting.  Now we're in for some pretty cold temperatures, too.  We've been living in the U.P. for 16 years or so and have never seen anything like this, especially this early in the season! Our training has been going well but now we will be at a standstill for at least a few days while we try to figure out what to do with all this snow!  We haven't even gotten the dogs to their winter dog yard, and we're really going to have to figure out how we're going to do it-they need to be down by the driveway and they need all of their houses in rows against the north wind, the summer yard is just random and haphazard and some of the houses are almost facing the north wind right now.  ARGH! 
  But at least we'll be able to get on the runners as soon as we get this all straightened out, maybe the earliest start to sled season we've ever had!

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

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.

And just some more photos...The first 4 are possible senior pictures for Autumn (yes, she graduates high school in 2015!)

Some of the kittens I was talking about.

Building a dog house for one of the 'newbies"

 

Rukus LOVES water. Here he's playing with a stick at the Porkies.

And swimming with his friend (a dog we dog sit for occasionally) Sam.

Sharing a stick with Sam.

We went to the Porkies on our 18th anniversary on October 5th, 2014.

Getting Out To The Woods

  Despite the misery of all the biting insects-the mosquitoes are plentiful and most of the time when you go outdoors you get immediately swarmed, along with a few gnats and biting flies mixed in (ARGH), we have started to take groups of dogs out to the woods to run around loose while we walk along.  We have separated them into two groups of 12 for now, one group of mostly girls-minus Lara, Cherry and Aspen.  We also added Billy to the female group because he seems to have it in for Clint, and then, of course, a group of mostly boys.  Obviously we know our dogs well and have to make allowances for personality clashes between certain dogs.  See, we know that Lara likes to "pick on" certain other females, but that she won't mess with males or with Cherry or Aspen we assume because they are larger than her or because they are getting older (like 11 or so) so maybe she doesn't see them as a threat.  We also know that Billy and Clint seem to despise each other (to the point that when Clint is in lead, Billy cannot be in point or first team because Clint will stop and there will be a fight), but Clint is very sociable with all the other males, so Billy gets to hang with the gals, which he seems to think is okay.  And oh yeah, Stimpy gets to go out with the ladies because he's an old man (like 15-16ish) and neutered so he gets to live it up.  In the end, making these switches evens up the group numbers, as well.
  Anyhow, we have started to take them out for exercise and are still working on a good schedule for it to get them all out as much as possible.  They get to go run and get all wet and muddy due to all the rain we've been getting while we walk along and get eaten alive by the bugs.  But it's a lot of fun to watch the dogs interact and get great exercise, so it's worth it for us.  We think this not only keeps them in a little better physical shape in preparation for our (hopefully) late August/early September training start, but it allows the young dogs to learn to articulate their bodies while they jump and run through the brush and trees, and it strengthens their pack mentality and closeness and they really seem to just work better in the teams together.

Girl group

 

Boys group.

We did learn a few things on our first walks this season.We had a group of relatively new dogs that we hadn't loose run before, so we called them "question marks".  We're always a little nervous when we have this situation because we don't really know what those dogs will do.  We've spent enough time splitting up fights and searching for missing dogs to know things can get frustrating, but we've never had any serious injuries and have never lost a dog for more than a couple hours.  This year, we had three pups (yearlings now) that hadn't loose run as adults and five newish dogs from other kennels and we didn't know if any of them had really done this before.  Well, we ended up having almost no real trouble at all.  The three pups all behaved and acted perfectly, running up ahead with the other dogs and coming back frequently to check on us. Billy and Lulu (father and daughter) we discovered are "Velcro dogs".  They never really leave your side or heels very much!  Nakiski was perfect and ran around with the other dogs, as did Clint, who blended perfectly and we suspect has probably done this before.  Mucho would NOT walk with us at all. She got as far as jumping out of the dog box, but wouldn't leave the vicinity of it.  After calling her and trying to entice her to come with us to no avail, we decided to just leave her and hoped she'd get curious and follow after a bit, but she never did.  She was in the dog box when we got back.  Frustrating because she didn't get any exercise at all!  So next walk, we are going to clip a leash on her and walk her that way until she realizes that it's a bunch of fun to come along with us!  All in all, we consider it a big success and will be doing this all summer this year.

Busy, Busy

  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.