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Dog Of The Week: Willie-Charlie

Sarah · January 19, 2015 ·

Willie-Charlie

Most dogs have one name but Willie-Charlie isn’t most dogs. When we picked Willie up as a young pup in 2011 he was extremely skittish. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with Travis or I. When Travis went to load Willie into the truck the first time, Willie bit Travis’ finger.

At the time, a popular video was making the rounds. You’ve probably seen it: It’s called Charlie Bit My Finger. Well, ever since that episode Willie, has been Willie-Charlie.

When we got Willie-Charlie, Travis was still working forDallas Seaveyup in Anchorage. Travis couldn’t wait to show off the lanky long legged pup he’d just gotten so he brought him to work. As Travis pulled “Willie” from his kennel, Willie got so nervous he pooped all over Travis. Travis never lived that one down!

Three years later and Willie-Charlie has blossomed into one of the most amazing dogs in our kennel. Although skittish, he has found his place at the front of the team. He effortlessly takes commands, working alongside his nephew, Wrangler in lead. They are a dynamite pair up front who’s excitement never ceases. Willie-Charlie still gets shy from time to time, but has learned to trust both Travis and myself. Although a nervous dog, he has learned to calm down when we have guests and does especially great with children.

In 2014, Wille-Charlie finished the Copper Basin 300 and started his first Iditarod. Unfortunately, Willie-Charlie caught a nasty stomach bug and had to be dropped due to severe diarrhea. Our friends Robert, Mary, and Carly Meachum who helped with our dropped dogs last year were kind enough to take care of Willie when he was under the weather.

Now a year older and newly trained as a leader, we are excited to have Willie-Charlie leading the team.

Willie-Charlie really is one amazing dog. His relatives in our kennel include his sister Fidget and his nieces/nephews: Wrangler, Trunk, Penny, and Meena. His other nephews, Levi & Carhartt have played a crucial part in Nicolas Petite’s kennel. We are excited to watch Willie continue to grow in our kennel and are looking forward to his continued progress!

Wrangler and Willie-Charlie from Travis Beals' 2015 Iditarod team. — Wrangler (left) and Willie-Charlie (right) exhibit some tangible excitement during the start of the 2014 Iditarod

Visiting Woody’s Thai Kitchen: A Little R&R

Sarah · January 18, 2015 ·

Travis came home for a few days of R&R for both him and the dogs. Saturday was the famous “Polar Bear Jump” in Seward — a well-known fundraiser for cancer research. We went down to watch folks plunge into the harbor and were surprised at the lack of crowd. In years past, it seemed that the event had many people. While still a lot of people, we only saw 2 or 3 friends who ventured out in the drizzly weather. Normally, it’s packed. We couldn’t find a good place to see people jumping from and, frustrated at our lack of view, we left and walked down to Woody’s Thai Kitchen the local Thai Food restaurant. We’d been meaning to go there for awhile but our schedules hadn’t lined up with their openings.

Our taste buds delighted in the wonderful food and we had a greater waiter. It was only his second day (apparently) but he allowed us and our handlers, Justin & Wyatt, a really fun lunch out away from the kennel. It was a nice treat.

Woody's Thai Kitchen Seward, AK - Bacon Fried Rice — Woody’s Thai Kitchen – Bacon Fried Rice

We got to talk and catch up. I learned about the adventure Travis shared with the boys while out on the trail and we ate some amazing ethnic food. The meals were perfect and well portioned. We were really impressed with the food!

woody's-thai-food-seward-alaska-ginger-beef — Woody’s Thai Kitchen – Ginger Beef

Travis looked at Kusko updates and we talked about our plan for the upcoming weeks in terms of training.

Woody's Thai Food Seward, AK - Panang — Woody’s Thai Kitchen – Panang

We had a blast and we’re thrilled we had leftovers to bring back home. If you come to Seward, make sure you check out Woody’s!

woody's-thai-food-seward-alaska-yellow-curry — Woody’s Thai Kitchen – Yellow Curry

Back at home, our house dogs and cats were thrilled to see Travis:

Now, we are getting ready to watch the patriots game and head up to the Denali Highway to keep training.

2015 Copper Basin 300 Wrap Up

Sarah · January 14, 2015 ·

It’s so hard to write about races when you aren’t at them. Travis and I have talked this over and are, all-in-all, happy with the fact that we didn’t run. The thing is, when you show up at a race it’s really hard to hold your team back. It’s not just the dogs who get excited: the mushers do to. When you go to a race, you race. You have trained all season for this, so you run a little harder than you would in training. That’s the nature of competition.

If Travis had run the Copper Basin, he would have tried to improve over his 5th place finish of last year. Conditions, it sounded like from the few mushers we talked to, led to more muscle strains in the shoulders. Allen and Aliy even dropped dogs due to shoulder problems. Shoulders are tricky in dogs. In general they are much more difficult to work through and for a dog to recover from. Even if a dog can recover in time to be on the Iditarod roster, the dog has a much greater chance of re-straining the muscle while out on the trail. So the question always has to be: what is your goal?

Dallas and Mitch Seavey have routinely made it a point of not competing in the races leading up to Iditarod. They aren’t interested in the little fish — they want the big fish. Over the last three years, this strategy has payed off, Dallas won the Iditarod in 2012 and 2014, and Mitch won in 2013. Perhaps not attending races during these marginal snow years has benefitted their kennels by allowing them to train when and where they want, thus keeping their dog teams in better shape. Having a dog team that is healthy and ready to rock in January is easy, having that same exact team in March is trickier. Undoubtedly, a dog picks up an injury along the way and suddenly you have to start making substitutions to your main team. The careful pairing of dogs you’d worked hard to accomplish is suddenly thrown slightly off. Everything changes.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have Aliy Zirkle and Allen Moore who, each season, run numerous races leading up to the Iditarod, including the Yukon Quest. They too, are doing well for themselves. I, personally, am glad to see them race. For one, they have an awesome crew that does great blog posts giving insightful updates during the race. If you haven’t already bookmarked their kennel website, make sure to check it out here.

Everyone trains differently. Everyone races differently. It’s hard to know what or if there is a right way.

But this year’s Copper Basin was interesting for a few reasons. We now know that even without one of their great leaders, Dingle, SP Kennel is still ready to rock in the 2015 Iditarod, with Allen taking 1st place and Aliy taking 6th.

Ray Redington put up one hell of a fight for second place and, for a good part of that last run, I think many people watching the tracker were thinking that Ray would pass Allen. It didn’t happen. Unlike Allen & Aliy, however, Ray will be heading off to the Kusko 300 in a few short days so it’s hard to say how many A-team dogs Ray left sitting at home. We’ve had the privilege of visiting Ray’s kennel a few times over the past year: he has a lot of really nice, well-built dogs.

We also saw Ryne Olson put on an impressive performance, taking third place. She isn’t signed up for Iditarod this year, but will be part of a very impressive field of rookies in the 2015 Yukon Quest. She’ll be up against Ray Redington Jr. who’s experience will be tough to beat as well as Jason Campeau who took over Apex Kennel last spring. Not to mention all the veterans: Joar Ulfsom, Jeff King, Brent Sass, Allen Moore, Lance Mackey — just to name a few. (Gosh, seeing all those names got me excited about Quest!) Having learned from Aliy and Allen, she know what it takes to run a competitive team and, now flying solo, she certainly proved she has what it takes. Expect her to do well in the years to come.

Two minutes behind Ryne in 4th place was Nic Petite. Nic put on a really strong performance with a young team. Out of the twelve dogs he started with nine were yearlings. A yearling is just what it sounds like — a year-old dog in their first season of training. Two of the three adults were originally dogs that came from our kennel. If you visited us before the Fall of 2013, you might have remembered them: Levi and Carhartt — big, happy, dogs who love to eat. They were great dogs but unfortunately Travis didn’t feel they fit in. Nic seems to be doing very well with them.

Rounding out the top five was Ben Harper. Ben ran a great race. It’ll be exciting to see how he does during Iditarod. He is going to be great competition for Rookie of The Year.

One of the things that has really intrigued me about the Copper Basin is that 8 of the top 10 finishers are training outside of South Central Alaska. They are all up north “near” Fairbanks. I use near loosely because, in Alaska, nothing is all that close. If you want to be really picky, you could say 9: Nic has spent so much time on the road chasing snow that it’s hard to say where he has done a majority of his training but I think it probably has been in the Copper River valley. It should be obvious, but if you want to succeed as a musher you need good training conditions…

Someday we will buy property up in mushing country where there is snow… but for now I listen to the rain hit our metal roof in a gentle lull as I get ready for bed and dream of snow.

A Tale Of Two Trailers

Sarah · January 13, 2015 ·

So this year we’ve made some major changes to the way we travel and we’re pretty excited about them. Our mobile setup is an important part of our success — especially given that our kennel is not located on a good trail system. Although we are hoping to buy property up near Willow or Talkeetna in the near future, for now, we live out of our trucks.

This year we have added a 24ft enclosed trailer capable of towing 23 sled dogs to our trainings arsenal. The trailer is set up so we can bring our ATVs or sleds — or both if necessary early on in the year or in years like this where parts of Alaska still hurt for snow. The trailer also has a separate living quarters “away” from the dogs that we can use while training.

Although we haven’t finished it yet, when we are done it will have a small wood stove to help keep us warm and dry out our gear as well as two bunks. This trailer will be primarily used for longer trips to the Denali Highway, Fairbanks, or Eureka, Ak when we plan to set up and stay some place for awhile.

What’s really nice is that the trailer has lights inside so we can operate without headlamps. We are hoping to add an outlet for charging our phones or cameras too — if we can do a little wiring.

We also just built two dog boxes for a 2-place snowmachine trailer. This will comfortably hold 10 dogs and has space to haul an atv or dogsled. This will be great for getting to and from races where we don’t need something quite as bulky. It also allows Travis and I to go train in different parts of the state. Here’s a quick video I took of my trailer recently in Turnagain Pass, about 1.5 hours North of Seward. In 2012 the snow was so high on either side of the highway it was like driving through a snow tunnel…not this year!

Each trailer has spots where we can “drop” the dogs — which is really just a fancy way of saying we’ve stuck a bunch of eyebolt into the trailer to tie dogs off too so they don’t run around and create chaos. We have had lots of success loose dropping our dogs in the past — meaning we open the doors and let the whole gang run around but mushers get uneasy if you do it around their teams. After last year’s Copper Basin, we loosed dropped the dogs because that’s what we’d been doing all season without any problems. It’s a lot easier with 12 dogs, however, than with 30 or 40!

Dropping dogs is important because the dogs need to be let out every 4-6 hours to pee, stretch their legs, eat or go for a run. In addition we also have an 8 hole dog box for Travis’ truck and are working on a small, 6 hole dog box for my truck. I’m not sure how much we will use the 6 hole box but if we need it, we will have it.

Mobility is import for us not just for training but also is an important part of our emergency planning and natural disaster preparedness. We love our home and kennel in Seward but are unfortunately situated in the middle of a flood zone. When we first moved in to our home in 2012 we were completely caught off guard when our home and kennel flooded, forcing us to evacuate the dogs. We watched the water level rise by the hour and at one point, after the dogs were out of the yard, had to go out and secure our dog houses so they wouldn’t float away. It wasn’t a fun time for us, that’s for sure!

Today, we have completed a few years of hard work to make sure we are ready in the event we flood again!

In total, we can now move 47 dogs without double boxing or using crates. Travis said, “seeing as we’ve had one flood and a couple close calls, I’m really grateful not to have to worry about how to transport our dogs anymore.”

We’re really excited about the freedom our two different trailers will give us moving forward! It’s currently raining in Seward (gross!) so Travis is living out of his trailer with his dogs and so you can bet I will be packing up and moving out shortly!

If you are interested in helping out our kennel and promoting your business, learn about our business sponsorship opportunities and learn how you can get your company’s logo on our big trailer!