I HATE PORCUPINES!!!!

So we were out enjoying a beautiful day loose running dogs and then...

Hoodscoop-he got hit the worst.

Truk-13 years old and still too dumb to avoid it.

Two other dogs got it, too, but not as bad-forgot to take pics of them-Thunder and Brian, because by that time we were so tired of the job.  Needless to say, the rest of this lovely day-like five hours or so total, was spent pulling quills out of dogs, and we have been checking them over every day since and finding more quills all the time.  Then, two days later, we took another group of dogs out to the same area (duh) and two of them managed to find a baby porkie and got more quills.  Luckily, those two were pretty well behaved and only took like a half hour each to extract the quills.  We are not going back there again!  On the plus side, out of 26 total dogs, only six total got stuck. 

Still Loose Running Dogs...

Pretty much been loose running dogs on a daily basis, though now we've started running two groups of 13, so each dog is getting out more often, and they've been behaving really well.

Cloud found a deer hide "prize".

Down in a ravine by the Lake.

Old man Truk-age 14 years.

Foreground dogs Hail, Chico, Scooby Doo, Breeze(front),Cloud, Rain, Traveler.

Loose Running Dogs

We are back to loose running dogs now that sledding is all done.  We bought two four wheelers to train dogs with this year, but they both need a bit of work, so until they are ready, we are just going for walks with groups of eight dogs at a time. 

Angel

Cloud-now 9 months old.

Cloud.

Brian (white dog) and Lara.

Stimpy-we think he's about 13 yrs. or so.

Hoodscoop-he's one of my all the time wheel dogs.

Brian-my other all the time wheel dog.

Pinstripe-Hoodscoop's brother.

Elliot.

Porcupine Mountains Adventure

The spring thaw is majorly in effect here, and with the temps in the low to mid 70's this weekend-freakish weather-we decided to make the short drive to the Porkies today.  We went to the Presque Isle Park/Campground and walked across the suspension bridge to the little island.  The water was raging, giving us a nice show with the waterfalls that are normally pretty tame during the summer.

The summer view from the bridge.

Today's view off the bridge.

Looking straight down from the bridge.

We brought the house dogs with.  Thunder was pretty scared of all the rushing water.

The obligatory"standing on the rock photo"-Elliot did not come along.

Squirrel.

Today.

Summer



Today.



Summer.





Today.

Summer.





Summer.

Today.



Then we decided to check on South Bounday Rd.  Its a 25 mile long road that connects one end of the park to the other.  Its paved but is still in the wilderness and is a snowmobile trail in the winter-no wheeled vehicles can traverse it, its groomed by a trail groomer and not cleared of snow.  We've been wanting to dog sled it for a couple years now and never managed to do it.  This year, we checked on it late December or early January and there was really not much snow up there, so we just assumed that it wouldn't be sleddable this year with the low snow levels locally.  It turns out we were wrong.  We drove in maybe 10 miles and there was snow.  It didn't look like too much snow, so naturally, Jeremy figured our four wheel drive would get us through it.  No.  With the hard pack from the snowmobiles and groomer, all the truck did was slide to the side of the road and end up getting sucked down into the ditch.

Thankfully, shortly after we realized it was going to be stuck, a guy in a jeep came along from the same direction we had.  He tried to give us a yank, but it soon became obvious that it was too much, so he offered to give Jeremy a ride back to Wakefield, the nearest town, 25 miles away, to get a tow truck.  Autumn and I stayed with the truck because we had three little dogs and Thunder with us.

The view of the road ahead of the stuck.  Turns out there was quite a bit of snow and I'm bummed that we never checked back and ran the dogs on it.





We were lucky the weather was nice and warm and we made the most of it while we waited.

The dogs had lots of fun and gots lots of exercise.

Then the tow truck got there...

It was a pretty expensive adventure, to the tune of 100 bucks for the tow, but we decided to look on the bright side-after all, how many times will we ever get to walk down the middle of South Boundary Road with four loose dogs and not have to worry about any kind of traffic? (no one else is crazy enough to try to tackle the snow).  We were also pretty lucky that the guy in the jeep came along right away, or it would have been a LONG walk to get cell reception, and after they left to head to town for the tow, no other traffic came along at all.  

 After we got the truck out, we decided to go back to the park and cookout like we had planned.

Mmmmm brats...