A Rookies Journey
August 3, 2005

The season of the sleddog is almost upon us. You can feel the change is attitude when you walk into the dog lot. There is an excitement that is building and both the dogs and I can feel it. The older dogs are looking at me with that, “is it time yet” look. The younger dogs don’t have a clue but are picking up on the older dog’s excitement. Temperatures have dropped dramatically in Anchorage and the rainy season has begun. I expect it to warm up again before fall really hits, but we are definitely getting there.
Heat prostration is a major training concern this time of year. Just like in people, once a dog overheats, he is that much more susceptible to overheating in the future. You can completely ruin a good dog, or even kill him, by overheating just once. The specific temperature / humidity / work load combination depends on the individual dog, just like people. All mushers have a temperature limit above which they will not train, mine is 58 degrees if the humidity is low and 55 degrees if it’s not. Jeff King trains past 70 degrees, but only short runs (1 to 2 miles) and he has a pool of water that he crosses where he stops to let the dogs soak and cool off. The signs that you watch for are dogs that have their mouths extremely wide open and their heads tipped back so increase the air flow to cool off. It looks like you can see down their throats all the way to their tails! Also watch and see how fast the dogs cool down after the run – everyone should be breathing normally again in a couple of minutes. My main leader Bass, has a problem with overheating that makes me particularly careful.
To minimize the problem when we first start training I’ll train at the coolest time of day just before dawn. Official sunrise today was at 5:37 am, but the mountains to the east give me another couple of hours before the sun starts to beat down on us. I have 20 dogs to train. I’m keeping one dog, Tussock, for a friend, but if you’ve ever seen one dog left behind when everyone else gets to go, you’ll know why I’ll start him with the team.
In early training you want to start slow and build muscle to protect the joints. So I’ll break the 20 dogs into 2 ten dog teams. This also lets me work with more leaders each day. To avoid the sun I want to finish the run with the second team before 7:30. In the early runs I figure it takes 30 minutes to run the 2 mile track so the second team needs to be on the trail by 7am. It takes 1 hour to feed a 10 dog team, harness the second team and swap dogs, so the first team needs to finish their run by 6:00 am. That means the first team needs to start at 5:30am. It takes an hour to unload the 4-wheeler, harness the first team and hook everyone up, and it always takes a little longer the first couple of times while everyone tries to remember the routine :-). So I have to be at the track by 4:30 am – which translates into getting out of bed between 3:30 and 4 in the morning. I don’t know about you, but that is getting up before breakfast at my house! To avoid noise at that hour I’ll load the dogs the night before and they will sleep in the box. I’ve only got a 16 dog box so that means that 8 dogs will have to share boxes (two to a box). That’s never a concern in the cold weather, but on a hot night I’ll skip the next morning’s training to avoid getting the dogs that share a box too hot.
At the other end, after the run, you never box a hot dog because they can’t cool off, normally the hour or so it takes to feed the second team, load the first team and the 4-wheeler is sufficient, but if not you just patiently wait.
We will continue to train in the early morning until the evening temperatures are consistently below 50 degrees, and then we will switch to night runs. Typically that happens in mid-September.
The temperature has been cool enough these last few days to start training, but with all the excitement of being laid off and trying to reinvent myself, I haven’t finish all the necessary chores to get started. Primarily I need to replace the choke cable on the 4-wheeler so it starts reliably, and then I need to paint the dog box so I can put sponsor names on it. So soon, very soon I keep telling the dogs.
One of the interesting part of living with neighbors is that not everyone is as enamored of having dogs next door as we are. Jewels, acquired from Zack Steer in April, is a very nice dog, but if he thinks I’m late getting up he will bark. Not a relentless barking, but one woof. Then 30 to 60 seconds later another. He will repeat that until I get up and stop him. I think, primarily due to my stopping his barking, he isn’t convinced that I’m a good person and will take care of him. So to keep peace in the neighborhood, and to work on my relationship with him (by not having to correct him as much) I debarked Jewels Monday August 1st. Most of my dogs are debarked, I used to debark all of them, because of the neighbor problems. Now I only debark the dogs that I cannot train to be quiet. It still bothers me to have to do that to the poor dog, but it doesn’t seem to bother them and they are much happier without me telling them to be quiet all the time.
We are still doing Saturday and Sunday markets. I took Picard last Saturday as PR dog and he was wonderful. He really seemed to enjoy all the attention and wasn’t phased at all by the crowds. We saw old folks with canes and walkers, people in wheelchairs, youngsters, and infants in strollers and Picard liked them all. Picard is not my best sled dog, but he is an excellent dog and companion and I tell him he is the very best Picard I have ever had on my team! Just like people, a dog that feels good about himself does better work, so I tell all my dogs how much I appreciate the hard work they do for me an d what great individuals they are. Now I need to spend more time telling Jewels how good he is.
On Sunday I took Keiko to the market. At two she became one of my best leaders and I expect great things from her in the next few years. Right now Keiko and Bass are at the top of my list to lead me down 4th avenue at the start, and that is an absolute zoo so the more crowds they see now the better they will handle that. Unfortunately poor Keiko was pretty much overwhelmed. She accepted all the attention and never ran off, but her tail was tightly tucked between her legs the whole day. The good news is that while she wanted to hide she never left my side. She trusts me to take care of her and that is a good thing. I told her I knew it was scary, but I was proud of the way she handled it. We will keep working on her so 4th ave doesn’t scare her too bad.
That’s about it for this week
Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
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