So a few people have been wondering what's been goin on around here, and why Jeremy hasn't raced at all. This season started off so promising. Fall training went so well, and even the beginning of sled training wasn't bad, except for the lack of reliable snow early on. We were logging quality miles and things were progressing nicely. Then it just seemed like one thing after another started going wrong and the season just got away from us!
Things started with my main leader, Cherry, injuring her wrist. She was laid off training in the thick of things and had to spend a couple weeks on crate rest and her training fell so far behind, she was essentially done for the season. Then we discovered that one of Jeremy's main young leaders, Cloud, managed to get bred without our knowing. We are pretty sure who the father is and we now have three, eight week old pups out of the deal. Cloud was now out for the season as well, since she was unable to train for the last week of her pregnancy and the next six weeks. We are happy with the looks and promise of the new additions and they spend a lot of time in the house with us. We decided to go with a Star Wars theme:
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| Male-Luke |
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| The female-Leia |
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| Male-Han (Autumn is in the background) |
We also started having truck problems. The transmission is not working properly and is not shifting right in the low gears, so we haven't wanted to travel with it much. We pull our trailer, which is probably too heavy for the truck-it's only a 1500 class-a lot, and are sure that's why we are having problems again. We have actually changed the tranny once, to a used one, and then when that one went out, we had the old one rebuilt and installed, and now that one is malfunctioning, too. So, because we have to truck our dogs to training sites every time we run them, we fell behind in miles due to not really wanting to drive a lot. It would really suck to be broke down with a trailer full of dogs!
So, basically, what started out as the most exciting year we have had yet became probably the most trying for us as funds are of course always tight and we could not work out the finances for a replacement truck for at least a month, which left us way behind in miles. We have now managed to replace the truck with a 1997 GMC Suburban K2500, and after making some needed repairs on it as well, we now have a truck that should pull the trailer easily and also has comfortable room for passengers (our kids) and we are thinking we can even catch some zzz's in it at races or training camps.
So, by the time we could take stock of our season, we came to the conclusion that we are just going to write this season off for racing, with the exception that Jeremy is hoping to salvage one race, the
Copperdog 40, which takes place on March 1st. We have to get the dogs out for a couple nice runs to make a final decision, just to see if we're right and they're up for it. Otherwise, we are just going to enjoy all this crazy snow we've been getting (more on that in a sec.) and run the dogs for the rest of the season for the fun of it (my personal preference anyhow).
Now, on to the SNOW!! We've been getting dumped on lately! Early season was really iffy, and honestly, that played a role in our training woes as well. Now, we have more snow than we know what to do with! The dogyard is drowning in it. Our dogs all have raised platforms with their barrel houses on them, in part for shade in the summer, but also to make winter maintenance a little easier so we don't have to dig them out of the snow. Well, now we are digging some of them out anyhow and if it doesn't stop soon, we will be digging them all out!
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| A fall picture of the dogyard. You can see the platforms are raised a couple feet. |
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| Similar view from this morning. Buried! |
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| Lara and her igloo! |
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| Getting sick of having to shovel snow off all the time! Jeremy's sled buried on the trailer. |
But I'm not gonna complain too much, other than it would be kind of nice to have a day or two to catch up with the snow removal...
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| Still plowing with the old beater ford. |
