Art and that awesome team finished Iditarod in just over 12 days. He did such a great job with that bunch of rowdy hooligans. I know it wasn't easy most of the time out there. Although he has said that this is the fastest team he's ever run!! They are one super bunch of dogs and although I am, of course, totally jealous that I didn't get that magic carpet ride with them, I am so very thankful that Art was willing to take on that challenge. The only thing that would have totally "ruined" the year for me would have been if those dogs had to sit this one out. Was actually more sweet than bitter getting to see them come down front street. Don't think I've ever been more proud!!!

Had my surgery last Thursday and all went well. Came home Friday evening and Rich has been taking great care of me; although I have to say both he and I are struggling with this "shoe being on the other foot" thing. Not the roles each of us are used to. Haven't taken a pain pill in two days and am doing OK. Want to get back to school on Monday. Getting around school is going to take some ingenuity, but I need to get back to the kids and their "harassment". We have some great friends here that have pitched in to keep us well stocked with some awesome dinners, visits, getting our mail, groceries, house cleaning....

I'll be in this brace for 6 weeks, then looking at 6 months of rehab to get back to being active again. It seems like it's almost insurmountable at this point. However, a couple of Iditarods have certainly taught me to take one "checkpoint" at a time and not look at the big picture. I'm ready to put the same effort into my rehab as I did into training dogs this winter, so it'll all be good!!! Just another bump in the road designed to build character!

Thank you all so much for your support and encouragement. I hope you are as proud of that dog team as I am! You should all be watching Martin Buser closely the next couple years!!!!!!

Once again the crew at Happy Trails and some "I'm sure would rather have been out enjoying the beautiful Saturday" volunteers made light work of 2010 Food Drops for me and Martin. Many, many thanks to Sean, Magnus and Martin for all the behind the scenes work getting ready for this day: powdering and packing 4,000 booties, cutting and bagging a few tons of meat, bagging dry food, rolling runner plastic, and the million other things.

Thank you volunteer packing crew....Rich, Craig, Matt, Ellen, Peter, Kevin, Caleb, Sean, Magnus, Martin. Special thanks to Kathy for the delicious salmon soup lunch for us all!

Things couldn't have gone more smoothly. We had just put the last bag in the freezer when the sun really started to heat up the day. Perfect timing! Icing on the cake.....I brought home another 12 trail hardened dogs to add to my pool of dogs for Iditarod. These are all young dogs that Sean and Magnus have trained all year. Most have raced and completed the Copper Basin 300 and the Yukon Quest 300. These are 2 of the toughest races, with the toughest conditions and trails, so I think these dogs have resumes worthy of an Iditarod run. I am either the most blessed musher in the world or the luckiest.

Tuesday food drop is due in Anchorage and I'll be taking 24 dogs to get ECGs and blood work done late Tuesday afternoon. I now have 3 weeks to narrow this group down to my final 16. That may be my toughest challenge of the season so far! What a great dilemma to have! Thank you Martin, Sean, and Magnus!!!

The puppies did great! We ran very conservatively the first half of the race up to Joe May's cabin for our 8 hour layover. The dogs got lots of TLC at a campout for 4 hours at about 50 miles and more TLC and lots of rest during the 8 hours at Joe's. I decided to see how well the dogs would respond to only a 2 hour break for some food and water on the way home. After 2 hours they got off that straw and were screaming to go. Had to work to slow them down the whole way home. We finished the race in 7th place and only dropped one dog. Martin stayed behind at Joe's. He had a bit of a sore and swollen wrist from a training run the week before so I didn't want to push it.

The icing on the cake was winning the humanitarian award for best dog care! Every musher wants to be recognized for good dog care! Thank you Don Bowers race crew for noticing!

Craig and Rich filled bags while Tony operated the vacuum sealer. Matt was a mad man packing fish and lamb. Magnus ran the show and trucked stuff to and from the connex. Delores helped Kathy fold t-shirts for the gift shop for open house, then helped Magnus and me powder and pack booties.

Kathy, as per tradition now, fed us all a delicious lunch of moose stew.

Today I spent packing some of my food drop stuff and getting ready for my run in the Don Bowers next weekend.

Did take an hour to take all the pet dogs for a hike. haven't hardly seen them the past few weeks with long dog runs. Besides, I wanted to check out the mess on the power line - aka my trail access. Great time with the pups and nice to get outside for a bit. Thanks so much to Magnus and Martin for taking care of my crew over at Happy Trails so I could spend the day working here.

Some work to do to get through this, but once we get a little snow....will be a beautiful trail. Most importantly, this will clear out most of the moose who have been parking on the trail the past few years. Should make things much safer.

Even fat Gabby joined us for the walk!

Tomorrow I'm getting my new sled bag; just in time to try it out on a couple runs before the Don Bowers. We're going to run the Don Bowers 200 this coming weekend, then the dogs will have 4 or 5 days off the next week while I concentrate on getting the rest of my food drop together. Then, the final training push to Iditarod. So glad we're getting more daylight. Makes things much easier to deal with, at least mentally!

Training has been going very well. Dogs are doing great; a few minor injuries that should heal before Iditarod, a few that won't heal in time to resume training. Radon has been having some back end issues that I just can't pinpoint. Xenon decided to play with the sharp edge of a can she ripped off her house. she's got stitches in her feet and won't heal in time to resume training this year. Both of those are big loses to our Iditarod this year, but bright futures.

Another snafu....our local power company decided now is a good time to hydro ax the power line and they are making a huge mess of it. My access to the trails is via 6 miles of this power line, so essentially we were cut off from the trails. So, we packed up all the dogs and gear and headed to Happy Trails. Have to say, I didn't really ask, just kind of imposed when I called Sean, Martin's handler and said....can you make room for my team? We're on our way. Martin and all the boys have been very receptive and a huge help. Now I head to Happy Trails after school to run. Takes a bit more time out of my day, but really enjoy being with the rest of the crew over there and having their support and encouragement.

We're doing 50 mile runs and the dogs are looking superb!! Here's some pics from our run today. Was cold, but absolutely gorgeous at every turn.

Enjoy!!!

That's Foraker, Hunter and Denali!!!

Sunset looking over my shoulder on Red Shirt Lake.

Sunset heading across Red Shirt Lake

Planned this to be more of a camping trip than a race with four 45 mile runs broken up with 4 hour camping trips on the river on the way up and back and the 6 hour mandatory layover in Skwentna.

Left Nikolai in Skwentna. He worked pretty hard on the way up and was having a bit of trouble keeping up the pace of the rest of the group. Didn't want to slow the rest of the team down, so he got to fly home from Skwnentna. The only other issue was Hasty with a sore wrist when we stopped to camp on the way home so she hitched a ride in the sled the last 45 miles. Was totally impressed with how well the rest of the team did with those big hills on the way home with her in the bag.

All in all....great trip, learned alot and will work on some things before Iditarod.

Big Su on Saturday!! Yep....a view to die for.

That light in the back ground is the light from Luce's Lodge on the Yentna River.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL FROM RICH, ME AND ALL THE DOGS!!!!

Taking advantage of being off school to get some longer runs in. Hope to be able to continue these long runs once I'm back in school. Guess that's all up to how late at night I want to be out running dogs and how much energy this 50 year old body has. The goal is to get as many of these young guys to Nome in 12 days as possible. So, it will be worth all those late nights if that happens.

Pics from today. Was a beautiful and cold day. Sorry I didn't think of taking pics until we were on the power line on the way home. Try to ignore the power lines.

Pics of the day....

Anyway, we have lots of snow now so got on a sled for a 25 mile run yesterday and 40 miles today. Dogs look OK after their 5 days off. Want to work them back in a little slowly. So enjoying being on a sled though!! Even got off the sled to take some pics today that weren't dog butts.

Flash and Abigail....leaders extraordinaire!

I know.....more dog butts, but it was so pretty out there today I just had to take some pics. The dogs looked great today for their third day in a row. Ran them 46 miles. Mixed the dogs up quite a bit for this run, so there was lots of playing going on. All the "playing" dogs, of course, are the Buser Boys. Put Martin in lead most of the way. He got pretty serious for the last 15 miles. I put him up with Flash and gave Flash a little longer tug. That took care of Martin harrassing Flash. Nikolai was picking on Drop Zone and then Hasty so he got to run with Aflred....gee, the picking ceased then. This was probably one of the most fun ATV runs I've had this year. For some reason, have rededicated myself to having the patience of Job with these guys, no matter what's going on and no matter how big the tangle....and we did have a rather large tangle today. I let 6 dogs loose, most of which were boys and they just milled around and had a grand time. Was just nice to not let anything stress me out. Now, if I can just bottle that patience and find it every run!!!!

Tonight's run was only 30 miles (we've been doing 40) but it was mostly on the river so it was a fast 30. The dogs thoroughly enjoyed it. They just flew. Tomorrow we'll do 50 miles and slow them down a bit.

This is us running down the Little Su River. We've had so much fog the past few days that there's tons of frost on the trees so it was beautiful out there today, especially at sunset. Tough to take pics when it's that cold and one hand has to stay on the throttle, but here's what I did get with my Iphone today.