I am new at this blogging thing but i wanted a place to post all my adventures with my 9 alaskan huskies. I guess I will start with a little background. I have always been interested in dog sledding for as long as I can remember and had a few oppurtunitys (very few) to be close to the sport. Mostly this involved visting my kindergraten teacher and her very full dog yard full of sprint dogs. As I grew older a movie called Toby McTeague made it's debut on TV.... besides having a crush on the lead actor watching the dogs in harness was my favorite...I dont' know how many times I watched this recorded version on the ole VCR but I think I probably wore out the tape. In November of 1996 I had the oppurtunity to work for a neighbour who was training his dogs for the Iditarod....a dream come true. I had just a few mishaps in the 2 years that I was a dog handler. Like the brakes going on the qaud during a fall training run with 16 very excited huskies...I still think I was very lucky to make it through that incident without any hurt dogs or a hurt me....but I loved every minute of my job the best part was when it was just me a them in the quiet of winter someone would get to howling and the rest join in...It's a spectacular sound when 50 dogs all get to howling together. I travelled to Alaska twice for Iditarod 1997 and 1998. For those of you who don't know about the Iditarod it is a 1150 mile sled dog race across Alaska. You can't beleive the amount of excitement between dogs, handlers, mushers and fans. The atmosphere at the ceremonial start is incredible. I was able in 1998 to fly the trail and stay in different checkpoints along the way it is an experience I will never forget. Seeing Alaska this way meeting all different people in the villages as well as mushers and their dogs was just amazing. Now fast forward 11 years...I meet a musher training for Iditarod and offer to help him by walking his 13 puppies in the fall of 2008...walking puppies soon turns into going with him for rides on the quad during training runs to making neck lines and tug lines, cleaning the dog yard (or more formally known as "Scooping Poop") and there is alot of scooping to be done and an assortment of other chores that always need done when you have dogs. On one of these fall training runs I mention that I have always wanted a team of my own..6 to be exact and this becomes a running joke of sorts that turns into a serious conversation with my husband. The graph paper soon comes out and my dog yard is drawn up to spec. April rolls around and the dogs return from Iditarod and sled dog tours and the conversation soon turns to my dog yard plans. We stand at the dog yard gate as my team is being pointed out and then a BIG decision...I already have 5 and now I am supposed to pick 1 out of 3 of the girl puppies I walked and fell in love with the previous fall...well that's not going to happen and I end up with 8. I throw in my 93 lb pet dog for good measure and I have my team of nine...they move home to a newly constructed dog yard and I am the happiest girl in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment