Copperdog

  Jeremy participated in the Copperdog 40 on Friday night.  Its a six dog, roughly 40 mile race that starts in Calumet, Michigan and ends in Eagle River, Michigan.  He ran Thunder and Storm in lead, Hail and Salt in point, and Nakiski and Aspen in wheel.  Storm and Salt are yearlings that have never raced before and with the troubles we had the last month or so, we actually hadn't been able to get any training runs of that distance in this year, so we were a little worried that they might not even finish, but they managed and came in 10th place out of 12.  The dogs were tired, but not exhausted and finished looking happy and eating and drinking well at the end.
  Jeremy's chute time was 8:14 pm, and he finished at about 12:50 am.  The kids and I, along with our friend, Doug, who rode up with us, had to drive from Calumet to Eagle River, maybe 20 miles by road, to wait for and meet Jeremy when he finished. We have to give a shout out to the community of Eagle River, who had a nice spread for handlers and mushers at their town hall free of charge and set up till after the very last musher finished.  It was nice to have a warm place with great food to wait for the mushers and for the mushers, who came in tired and hungry to be able to warm up and eat their fill.  Afterward, we had to head home right away in order to take care of the dogs we left at home.  Thankfully, Doug was nice enough to drive most of the way home, so Jeremy could get some rest.  We got home about 4:30 am or so.  We all had fun and Jeremy is hoping to be able to do the 150 mile race up there next year.
 

Jeremy coming back from registration with his goodie bag.

From inside the truck during vet checks.

Elliot got lots of attention from his wardrobe.  He never wears pants, only shorts, no matter what the temperature is!

We brought the grill along and made brats and chicken legs for dinner.

Elliot and Doug carrying a big snowball over to break on the pavement.

Watching the front end loader filling the paved areas in with snow.

Sunset over musher parking.

Inside the truck to get warm.

In the chute.

Moving so fast he's a blur!:)

They had fireworks after all teams were safely away.

At the finish.  Had to quick snap a pic before grabbing the leaders to get back to the truck.


                

                                                                                                                                                             

First Dog Haul with the New Truck and a Trip to Medford Fur Foods

  We finally got the truck set up for hauling the trailer and hooking the dogs and the sleds up to it.  We took it over to Marenisco and of course had to take pics of the new setup.

  We had to make a trip to get meat for the dogs today, breaking in the new truck to that, too.  We drive to Medford, Wisconsin to Medford Fur Foods, about 120 miles one way.  They were nice enough to give us a tour of the plant today, too.

Thunder rode along.  The truck meets his approval.

Packing tubs to be frozen.

Turkey hearts.

Dumping skinless chicken necks into a hopper.

An auger that sends the necks to the grinder.

Going up the conveyor...

A flash freezer.

Inside a flash freezer.

Storage freezer.

More towers of meat in the storage freezer.

Turkey livers.

Breaking in the new truck-Thunder looks on.

and the ride home...

  Also, for those interested, Jeremy is officially signed up for the Copperdog 40 on March 1st.  We'll keep you posted on how he does...

Whats Goin' On

  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:

Male-Luke

The female-Leia

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!

A fall picture of the dogyard.  You can see the platforms are raised a couple feet.

Similar view from this morning.  Buried!

Lara and her igloo!

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...

Still plowing with the old beater ford.

 

Rides

  We tried giving some rides this last weekend-just short 2.23 mile rides at a local recreational trail site-because we had nothing else going on due to a race being postponed (the Ironline).  We only advertised online to some local targeted sites and didn't get much of a turnout.  We learned that locals around here just aren't that interested I guess.  If/when we do it again, we will try to advertise more to tourists I guess.  The few rides that Jeremy did give were enjoyed very much, though.
  We hooked up 12-14 dogs and it worked out really nice.  I took a couple rides myself-first one to check the trail with a rider, and then just to kill time and keep the dogs moving and occupied.  It was really fun being a rider in the basket for a change!

Storm and his dad, Thunder-leaders-waiting to go again.

View of the driver (Jeremy) from the basket.

Stretching Their Legs

So we've had some crappy weather again.  Temps were in the upper 30's to low 40's last week and we had some rain, so the snow melted a lot, and then it cooled back down to the upper single digits and turned everything to ice.  The trails in Marenisco still have cover, but its ice underneath about a half inch of snow, so its too dangerous for the dogs-they would be slipping and sliding and it could lead to injuries that would take them out for the season.
  We haven't been able to run them in a little over a week now, while we pray and wait for some snow, but the dogs really need to stretch their legs and hopefully keep in shape for when we can resume sledding, so we started loose running again, something we've never really needed to do in the winter!

Clayton-now six months old.