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Journey Continues
September 23, 2006
"Men occasionally stumble over
the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as
if nothing happened." – Winston Churchill
Dash seeking
solace from Dad while the
scary veterinarian touches her. |
Our veterinarian holds a kennel day where
you can bring your dogs for vaccinations without paying a separate
examination fee. It really helps for folks with more than a couple
of dogs. Bonnie and I dropped the dogs and Quark did something that
upset Bass, his dad. A quick snap and Quark has a small wound in his
left forearm. It’s really no big deal, but Quark keeps licking
it. I sprayed it with Bitter Apple and that helped for a couple of
days, but Quark either grew fond of the flavor, or just didn’t
care and kept after the wound. I have a homemade Elizabethan collar
(it used to be a laundry detergent bucket) and Quark is the lucky
recipient. The poor dog flipped out totally. He was still on his chain,
bouncing off trees, thrashing against the ground and trying to back
out of the bucket. I caught him and held him for 15 minutes to calm
him down, but as soon as I let go he wrapped around a tree (he hasn’t
done that for over a year) and started to panic. Finally I put him
in the puppy pen. Quark has gotten used to the bucket, but when I
load the other dogs he moans. He just can’t figure out why he
is in jail. Don’t you just wish these guys would speak English
once in a while so you could explain?
Quark trying
not to let dad know how much he weighs |
I’ve been walking with a dog from
home to the vet’s office just to bond with the dogs and get
me some exercise. As a side benefit I weigh the dogs while I’m
there. This seems like such a simple procedure. The scale is a long
low platform and you walk the dog onto the scale and ask him to quietly
sit or stand while the weight is displayed to the nearest tenth of
a pound. In reality my guys seem to believe that putting all four
feet on the scale violates some prime directive. Three feet are ok,
but four… Option two is to lean against the wall like an old
man that can’t stand on his own four feet. If that doesn’t
work jumping up against dad and begging for mercy surely must help.
It’s almost like they believe that if I knew what they actually
weighted I’d put every dog on a diet ;-).
Picard waiting
for dad to come close the door on
his box after self loading. Note the self-satisfied look
on his face for a job well done. |
Lexi Hill has been after me for years
to be more efficient when I load dogs. You see the big name mushers
like Martin loose dropping dogs successfully, but I had a dog get
loose many years ago. The guy panicked, ran flat out, and after a
mile chase, disappeared. I looked all over Eagle River, Anchorage,
the valley, and even Girdwood for a month but never saw him again.
So I’m a little paranoid about loose dogs. Given that, if I
turn some dogs loose in the lot they will run straight to their box
and jump in. Dash is very impressive, just leaving a grey streak through
the dog lot. But if I’m too slow she jumps back out and comes
to see if she got the location wrong. “Were we supposed to meet
on the back porch instead?” Balu and Picard are the exact opposite.
They will run to the truck, jump in and sit in their boxes with the
door open for half and hour waiting on me. Bass will run out into
the backyard and then check out the other dogs through the fence until
I come get him. Then he runs to the truck, detours to mark the bush,
back to the truck, off to a bush he missed, and finally jumps in his
box with kingly distain for mere mortals. I’m a lot more comfortable
unloading the dogs because once they run into the back yard I can
close the gate and they won’t run off.
Training is going well. The dogs moved up to 10 mile runs Friday.
I’ve been running Dijon in lead with Mocha, Rosemary, and Thyme
on the first team. Dijon drives hard and is very responsive to commands.
Bass has been leading the second team with Basil and Throttle. Next
week I’ll switch to Lycos and Platinum as main leaders and try
to get Balu and Dash some work as well. I still want to try Dukat
and Rom in lead this fall. I did offer Sisco a chance. Even though
he lead some last year he wasn’t interested the first time,
but I’ll offer him another chance later this fall.
Sunday is the first race of the season. Well ok it’s not really
a race. The club opens the season with a 2 mile poker run –
you pick up 5 cards at different stations along the trail and the
best hand wins. It’s a lot of fun and the only rule is that
you must go around the course with at least one dog. We had one lady
walk the course a couple of years ago. Then we have a barbeque and
swap meet. A good time will be had by all. I’ve been giving
Leslie a bad time. She will be driving one of the teams in her “First
Big Race”. I hope she does well – the honor of the kennel
is at stake.
Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
© 2006 All rights reserved
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