Sorry, but it's darn near impossible to catch Smiley. She is a young spitfire, loves to play with all the dogs. When I let her loose after runs she goes right to Canon or any of our other pet dogs and just wants to romp and play. Gee, guess I'm not tiring her out. She does well in lead, but doesn't stress easily so sometimes in the team she gets bored and just wants to play. Smiley is sister to Happy.
Hence....the name!! She's the sister to Batman, Alfred and Rachel. She a stud muffin. Big girl, hard worker, a tad bit shy, but is all about going down the trail at moc. Turning into a good leader, but struggling with staying lined out when we stop. And.....she's fun to look at too!
Beautiful little girl. Same parents as River, for those of you who remember her from my 2008 Iditarod. Little girl, big heart and smart. Going to be a star!! Loves everything and everyone. Will curl up in my lap for a nap!!
Rachel . Sister to Batman, Alfred and TwoFace. She's a little girl, with big ears and fast legs. She's one of the fastest dogs on the team. Good leader. Loves people. Gives hugs on command. Very sweet.
Xenon is of the Noble Gas litter out of Pandora and Roy, born in the summer of 07. She's a tall girl with boundless energy. She's very fast and loves to run up front. I think she's going to be a go to leader. If she's running free you better be on your toes, she is the queen of the running tackle; just loves people and demands your attention.
Thought you all might like to meet the Happy Trails dogs I'm training this year. I'll post a pic and description of a new dog each day. Since we're only a month into training, I'm still learning each dog's strengths, weaknesses and personalities. I did run most of these dogs last season, however, they've obviously grown and matured, physically and mentally, since last year. I'll keep updating their profiles as I learn more about each dog. I can say this about ALL of them...they are all very friendly and happy. As a team, this is the strongest, fastest 16 dogs I have ever run.
Meet HASTY (21/2 years). She's a little girl with ADHD, loud, happy, friendly, quick footed and light on her feet, great swing dog, but a good leader too. You won't find her sitting still much. She even takes to wrestling with her dog house.
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Oh well, not much, well....nothing really, that we can do about the weather. The good news is, we're training every day. Just doing 8 miles but setting up lots of opportunities for learning. The dogs are doing great and still loving their runs.
Here's one obstacle that all Iditarod mushers should have access too...a culvert. During the ceremonial start there's a culvert all teams have to go through. You can imagine how that might freak out a team who's never been through one. It's dark and everything echos. The start of Iditarod is not really the place you want to have to deal with a dog team that's not wanting to go where your asking them to. Anyway, our dogs are masters at the culvert now.
Rich and Presto with some male bonding time!
NMM = No Motor Mondays. Tough work today since it was so muddy from the freeze and thaw. They did great though. Also took them through the creek to see how they'd handle breaking through the ice. Not a problem. Abigail and Twoface got out on the ice before it started to break through. They quickly regrouped and kept right on moving. Tough to move through the water with all those big chunks of ice. Was even tough to drive the ATV through it. This group of dogs just doesn't seem to get fazed by anything.
Here's a pic of them working hard to pull me up this hill. Wish I had a pic of them with the ice in the creek. Sorry!
Having trouble tiring the crew out these days. A couple more days trying to work them hard at 6 miles, then going to add at least a mlle. Have been concentrating on teaching them commands and varying speed. Keeps them listening. Snacked again tonight on the way home; a bit further from the house. I'm sure by tomorrow they're going to figure out what's happening when we stop and I'll have to work harder to keep them lined out. it's all good!
Too hot and sunny to run dogs tonight so Canon and I went out and did some trail work instead. Since we've gotten cut off from some of our usual ATV training trails, we're opening some older trails that have fallen victim to numerous downed trees. The area where these trails are suffered the 1996 Millers Reach fire. So, for the past few years the burned trees have been falling down. I got one trail opened up today in a few hours. there are some other trails I want to open so will spend as much time this week as I can with the chain saw. Will be nice to have some options and be able to get a few more miles of trails.
54 degrees this morning when we took off. If not for the creek, no way would we have run today. However, it was the perfect day for me to make the first run with all 16 dogs and my new gangline. The warm weather keeps the dogs a bit on the mellow side. The run was great; lots of breaks, no serious tangles and even had a perfect come from behind pass with another 18 dog team. Since I've previously only been hooking up 10 or 11 dogs, they have that timing down. After I had 10 dogs on the line today, they got a bit wild and were quite excited to go. They'll get the new timing down after a few runs and settle down till we're ready to go. I'm pretty excited about the power in those 16 dogs!!!
"This is MY house!"
"Isn't it?"
The only place that isn't sloppy and muddy is this 3/4 of a mile of our trail through the woods. It's the only time I take my goggles off. I guess the one plus to the warm, wet weather is all the puddles on the trail that help keep the dogs cool. We're still driving through the creek just to get them cooled off. I don't remember a year when we were still going through the creek this late. It's usually frozen over by now. Anyway, good run today. This is Abigail and Flash in lead. They are stars!! She's a little half pint but more heart and drive than any dog I've ever driven. Her feet are still not completely healed form her little "escape" on the very first free run so I protect her feet with booties. I've been running 2/3rds of the team every day now, so that makes 10 or 11 dog teams and 2 days on and 1 off for each dog. They're so young and still learning how to behave and how to handle trail situations so it's good to be driving a small team. However, I think tomorrow I'll pull out the 20 dog gangline and attempt to take them all at once. That would be 16 dogs. A few of the boys still get overly excited on take off and like to harass they're partner so I want to run them single for awhile longer. Thus, the longer gangline.
Since these are all young dogs with very little, if any, leader experience, it's quite exciting at times. If you're leaders don't stay lined out, or follow the commands or, in general, don't know what to do....well, that can lead to quite the tangles and having to deal with some major issues on the spot. Flash and Abigail are doing so well that I'm using those two to help train the rest. Happy, Two Face, Hasty, Smiley and Rachel have all been leading and doing quite well. One of Martin's goals for this team for Iditarod is for me to run every dog in lead on at least one section of trail. Kind of a tall order, but I think we'll get there. It's just going to take lots of planning, practice and willingness, on my part, to be out of my comfort zone on each run. That's why I love Iditarod! It's the training for the race (especially with these young guns) where your perseverance, courage and willingness to push yourself beyond what's comfortable, that helps you grow as a person. OK, who am I kidding??? The race is no piece of cake either. When all is said and done and you're heading down Front Street in March with a healthy, happy dog team....well, you get the picture!
I'll be posting pictures of the dogs soon, I hope.
Check out this video and you'll see why I love to run Buser dogs, work with Martin and why his dogs are truly "HAPPY"!!!
Training is moving along nicely. Today was the twelth day in a row in harness. The past couple of days has been pretty warm, but rainy. As a matter of fact it's nearly 20 degrees warmer than it was early in the week. No problem though. One nice thing about running the dogs every day is that it keeps that edge off and helps keep them from overworking and overheating. The other nice thing is that 2 miles into our run we can choose to run through a good sized creek. The dogs get to work on water crossings and cool off at the same time. Makes them love getting into the water! We're running 6 miles now and will probably hold at that for a week or so. I've been running two 8 dog teams every day to get everyone out, have control and be able to deal with typical young dog antics, and work on training more leaders. I have a few dogs that get overly excited on take off and like to latch out at their neighbor, so they need to run slngle for awhile, till the "mature" a bit. Tomorrow we'll start running a 12 dog string so every dog will get two days on and 1 off. If that all goes well, buy next weekend I'll hook up all 16 for runs. Do hope it cools off again.
I've never heard of anyone else doing this before and couldn't be more tickled that it's me these people chose to sponsor. Here's the story....
A month or so ago I got an email from a woman (her name is Karla) who lives near Seattle and expressed interest in "sponsoring" an Iditarod musher as a birthday gift for a friend. Karla said she had a group of people who wanted to sponsor me to secure a ride in my sled down 4th Ave. As much as i hated to, I told her that she could do that, but would have to do it through the Iditarider auction. Once I informed her that ITC received all that money, not me, she said, "we want to sponsor you". She said this friend, Arlene, would rather develop a relationship with me, then have the glory of the ride down 4th Ave....FOOL!!! Just kidding! I offered Arlene, Karla and any who are going to accompany Arlene to the start, a kennel tour here and an invitation to the open house at Happy Trails kennels on the Friday before the race. So, things got rolling and Karla got word out about the sponsorship. On the night of the big surprise party, last Friday night, I was set to make a phone call to Karla at precisely 7:45. By then, the party was in full swing. All got quiet, someone put a fur coat on Arlene and informed her she had a phone call. On speaker phone I said hello to Arlene and asked her if she knew who it was. She didn't recognize the voice....I said..."that's probably because we've never met." Anyway, I got to spring the surprise.....that all the people in the room and some from around the world, were sponsoring my 2010 Iditarod run in her honor. That she was invited to come to Alaska for the 2010 Iditarod start and would be accompanied by a group of those friends. She was quite surprised and a bit speechless. The phone call was short. I let her get back to her party. Oh and how much did Arlene's friends pitch in for a sponsorship.....$1800!! I can't wait to meet Karla and Arlene. They both must be very special people!!!
BTW, I think Karla chose to sponsor me because Arlene is a retired teacher and so am I. Well, OK, so I'm not retired yet, but I am a teacher.
These are some pics of the party!! Sure wish I could have been there. However, as all of you that know me can already figure from the pics.....I wouldn't have had a thing to wear! Doesn't look like your typical Alaskan party!!
For link to the web page for more info on Arlene's birthday gift.....http://www.bestmemories.com/arlenesbirthday/adventure.html
