Fabulous day with two Friends and 20 Dogs

Today I met my friends Scott and Linda Isabelle at the Hill trails.  Linda said she would help me anyway I needed, and I took her up on the offer!  She was a huge help, doing half the work of prepping first one team and then the other.  It was great, I was able to get both teams out today without exhausting myself.  Further joy was having an adult to talk to for HOURS!  Scott ran his team with us while we ran my A team.  We did lots of nice passing work on the way out and then we turned around at about 4 miles to head back.  We saw him again for a head on pass as we headed out with the B team.
It was a truly spectacular day, thank you Linda!

Clever Dogs doing Clever Things

Did that just happen?  How did those three dogs get out of their kennel into the play area???

Go and put them back in....
Put the little carabeener into the latch just to be safe....
And wow!  Looking over I see Java Bean on his hind legs, carefully and slowly manipulating the kennel door latch with his front paws and nose!  And I have an extra witness, KTST saw this too.

I think Java bean usually waits till I am not looking, but he must have been extra worried I was going to leave his group behind when I loaded the dog truck!

Christmas Mush - Dogs at the truck

A nice photo taken by Kelly Berg.  I love how Rainy is Howling away!

Kennels v Tie Outs

Now that we are into some nice chilly weather I am finding multiple dogs per dog house cuddled up.  Cutest thing ever.  Each dog has his own house, but I am sure it is warmer with two.  Tie out dogs cannot do that!

Holidays, ice, sick baby....brain wave

After many things conspiring to keep the dogs miserable in the kennel (and poor Emma pretty miserable too) we finally get an overall break.  Today we met the usual local folk at Hill for the Christmas Mush.  Not sure what was so Christmas-y about it besides a few bad holiday decorations!!!  But it was great to get out with the dogs, get a break from Emma, know Emma was recovered from being sick and to have great cold weather to boot.  The dogs did wonderfully, perfect passing, hard pulling, good behavior.  I bumped little Blossom up for a trial on the A team and she worked very well.  She was a little overdone afterwards, tired and a little sick to her tummy. I chalk that up to her not being as fit since the B team is not getting out much at all.

Someone told me today that the ban on mushing at Profile Falls/Shaw Cove on weekends before noon has been listed.  Hurray!

Today we saw many old friends.  I find it interesting that nearly everyone has moved to large ATV's.  I love my little ATV and it is a perfect fit for my 10-dog A team.  A little heavy for my older dogs (also a 10 dog team).  Ironically I am contemplating swapping out my sweet little honda 250 for my husbands beast honda 450.  I think there is at least at 200 pound weight difference.  What I am thinking of doing is changing my mind set from two 10-dog teams to 4 five-dog units.  Swapping out units, running 3 units at a time (15-dog team) I think all the dogs would get on average 3 runs a week if I myself ran 4 times.  It wont be as fun, it will be a lot more stressful and limiting, but if the conditions hold like they are now I can get more miles on more dogs.