Thanksgiving with my family(some of them anyway), Running 2008, Today, all 16 puppies in the house!
Well, it has been a busy week for us! My dad works on the slope & will not be here for Thanksgiving & Christmas, so we had a Thanksgiving dinner for him last Saturday! My brother, Shaun & sister Alicia & her 2 kids, Sterling & Kenzie can over & we all had fun playing wii! Then we had a good Thanksgiving dinner with John's family this Thurdsay! His sister, Sadie came over & we all played board games! It was alot of fun!
As I write this, it is snowing like crazy! We are expected to get 4-8inches of wet snow on top of the 7 inches we got 2 days ago! I guess it is suppose to snow & then cool down which will make the trails nice. Today we put out our fake people & an old sled on the trail for distractions for the dogs! All winter we move them all over the trail so the dogs don't get used to them in one spot!
Whippet & April's puppies are getting big!!! Each litter goes on a walk everyday, usually 2 different ones, but today they went on a walk together & them came into the house! Surprisingly 16 puppies & 6 house dogs sounds chaotic, but the pups are real good in the house.. They are almost house broke & have learned what they can & can't get into!!! So far Whippet's 7 have learned how to sit! It is so cute!
We working hard on the trails,well to be honest, John more than I am,LOL,:) & hopefully we can run on sled Monday! Right now we are running 14 miles going up to 16miles next week! The dogs are doing great. Last week we got the final 12 adult dogs spayed/neutered so our 8 best open dogs were out last week & the team wasn't as strong with out them.
Heather Mario( an upcoming leader) & Eli ( one of our main leaders) Tbone & John
Snow is here & hopefully we get more of it!!!!! We got about 2 inches last week & now we got another 3 inches so slowly but surely we are gonna get what we need to go on sled. John & I will go around our trail on Saturday to cut out any tree's that have fallen & look for some new interesting trails for the dogs!
Right now we are going 10 miles & will be jumping up to 12 miles on Monday! The dogs are looking great & today for the first time EVER by our house, we got to head on pass with another team! It was great to see a dog team out there besides ourselves... Usually by the time the Iditarod mushers start coming out by our house, we are on sled also so we switch to our winter time trails, but this year, the Iditaroders are on sled while we are still on 4 wheeler so it gives us a chance to head on pass...
A couple of leaders that will be racing for us this year( In order of how good they are) are Dexter, Eli, Whippet, Fry, Mario, Sausage & Landyn.... We have 3 REALLY good leaders (Tok, Swift & Marcus) that I wish I had for lead, but they area hair too slow for running in lead with a 16 dog team! April is running with our young team & is doing great, but is going to have a hard time catching up with the open dogs. Thats why I hate having puppies so late, but we had no other choice!!!!
As of right now, our plans are still changing it seems like everday, but we are for sure going to race this year with the open dogs. Another idea that we are playing with is just keeping the 22 open dogs & selling the 9 young dogs & 16 puppies, but we are still taking alot of tim on our decision. Its hard when 2 people don't agree with a decision....9:47 PM GMT | Read comments(0)November 08Finally got our dog box back!!!!
Training 2-10 dog teams this fall! Chilli sitting like a person on the way to grandma's! Whippet's pups by the woodstove!
Well, training is going good! We just finished our last 6.5 mile run & on Monday we will be going 8 miles! We have 21 open dogs & they are all running superb! The young dogs we have are also great too!!! We haven't made a full decision on what we are going to do yet , but I think we are going to at least race this season & go from there. John wants to get out right now before the season starts, but I would like to run at least for the next 3 years. I really want to race our pups from last year & the 16 pups we just bred up from Egil.... I am slowly talking him into it!!!
This past summer, I worked really hard on training leaders & it seems to have really worked. Alot of our upfront dogs are EXCELLENT gee/haw leaders which is always a concern of mine when training a big team by myself at a track... It is important for me to have great leaders & I think they are getting there!!!
All the pups are getting really big. We have been taking each litter on a walk every day & then after the walk they come in the house for about an hour to play with Elliot & warm up!!! The 2 litters love to play with each other!
The bear we had been seeing tracks from we think has went into hibernation....There has been no tracks since it snowed about 5 days ago so we are very happy to not have to be on edge about the bear!!!
This is a photo from last years fall training, I didn't have none from this year so I used this one!
We have been training on 4 wheeler going 5 miles, now they are ready to bump up to 6.5miles....After free running 12 miles before we left for Hawaii the dogs were super ready to run on 4 wheeler and they all did superb! We decided we were going to try something different with training & not get on 4 wheeler until later. Our dogs usually get too muscled up early in the year & it seemed to have worked! They seem alot stronger & faster than usual.
A grizzley bear has been literally circling our house over the last couple of weeks. It seems like we are seeing new bear tracks every day & closer & closer to the house. I am surprised that he is coming around with 7 house dogs guarding the place, he must be one brave or hungry bear!
Tonight it snowed about a 1/2 inch which is great because we were running on straight ice & it will be nice for the dogs to have some cusion!
All 16 pups are doing great & they are going to be super super good!!!The are built really well & have such great personalities, but they sure are a handful to raise!
John & I have been thinking about alot of things when it comes to dogs & the future & we are thinking about getting out of dogs & going to college. Its something that is up for discussion & we said we will take our time to make the right choice! It would be a big life changing thing for us because all we have done for along time is dogs, so it is a big decision!