News

Remembering Bode

Sarah · November 16, 2013 ·

This is not a post I want to write but not writing it, I feel, would be a great disservice to a wonderful dog taken all too soon from us. On Monday night, our dog Bode unexpectedly passed away. I don’t think I have ever been so stunned. For a long time, I simply held his lifeless form and wept hysterically. Bode didn’t eat his morning meal that day — but this is not unusual behavior when a bug is going around a kennel; I had several dogs who didn’t eat that day. Still, he seemed a little bit sluggish so I spoke with our vet when I went in to check on Flo and described his symptoms. We decided to give Bode the same antibiotics that I was using to treat my other ill dog at home, Grace. Flo continued to stay at the vet’s to be monitored as she was very weak. If Bode wasn’t back to himself the next day, I would take him in for further evaluation.

If only I had known…

Words cannot describe the sense of loss Travis and I currently feel. I last was with Bode at about 6:30 pm. I’d been working downstairs on our indoor dogbox. He had moved around the basement several times before finding a spot to lie down. He did not seem like he was about to die. When I went down to check on him after eating dinner at 8:30, he was gone. I still can’t believe it. We have not lost a young dog before and to have this sassy playful dog snatched from us so early in his life seems incredibly wrong and a gross injustice.

Bode was born this past February. His father Joe is the beloved cheerleader of our team and Mama B. a quirky surefooted female who we were sad could not race last season due to the fact that she was rearing pups. We had the litter inside the house for almost 10 weeks and grew very fond of the three dogs: Bode, Teddy, and Fergie. But Bodie always stood out from his sibblings.

2013-02-07 12.19.58

Once Bode was old enough to bark, it seemed, he never stopped barking. He is the loudest dog I have ever met. I keep going back to this idea I heard a few years ago: You only have so many heartbeats…… I know it doesn’t make sense but I keep thinking, does a dog only have so many woofs and barks?

I know that probably sounds stupid but my heart aches so deeply and I struggle to make some sort of sense of this terrible situation.

I often wish I could have taught Bode to be silent for at least five minutes but now the dog yard, without his endless yipping and yapping, seems too quiet: adjusting has been hard.

We have had several other dogs in the kennel who have been sick recently. Flo, another puppy, was hospitalized last Friday due to dehydration caused from uncontrollable diarrhea. I take comfort, though not much, in the fact that she and our other dogs have gotten well and the fact that our vet has said that we have done everything we could for our dogs, including Bode.

Still, we are left with the question: Why Bode?

It’s been tougher dealing with this reality with Travis gone. He is training out on the middle of the Denali Highway, hundreds of miles from here with little to no phone service. When I told him the news on Tuesday morning he was in disbelief. And to be truthful, I was too. Honestly, I think I still am.

Travis kept asking me if I needed him to come home. How badly I think we both wanted for me to say yes! However in no way would that have benefitted our kennel. We were not yet sure if the antibiotics we were giving were working and the last thing I wanted was our race team to get sick incase the bug was contagious.

So Travis stayed North and has continued working with his race team. I know these training miles have been particularly tough on him. The lone quiet of the trail can truly make your heart ache especially when something as heavy as this weighs upon it. “He was my favorite,” Travis confessed later. “I know we are not supposed to have favorites, but he was my favorite dog back home.” And how could he not have been with his energetic, happy-go-lucky, loud mouth personality?

It is always hard to lose the dogs we love, harder when they are taken too soon, and still even more difficult when we are left with nagging questions: What could I have done differently? Where did this bug come from?

Still, I have been told that I could have done nothing differently. And it is true that I always acted with my best judgement. The swiftness with which he died, my musher friends have told me, must have meant that he had other undetectable health issues that we never could have known about. His mother did not pass her EKG in 2010 for Iditarod but at the time it was thought that it was due to the fact that she had been ill as she has passed it since. Perhaps Bodie had some sort of genetic disease or mutation which made him more susceptible or weak that he possible inherited. I do not know. All I know is that he was my dog and that I loved him dearly…

I think there are many lessons that as young mushers we must learn. Grief is one of these lessons and loss, of course, too. Knowing that these things happen does not make it easy. We all know that we will (hopefully) outlive our dogs but we love them anyway. We give our dogs our whole heart knowing full well that one day they will leave us.

I will never forget Bodie. I just wish I could have got to know him longer… As Dee Dee Jonrowe once said the only flaw with dogs is that they don’t live long enough…

On a positive note, everyone is feeling better. Today we had our first play day in awhile and it was clear the dogs were feeling good. I took comfort watching them run loose and play together. I couldn’t help but feel that even though I couldn’t see Bode that he was somehow still there, running wild…

Bode is remembered in our kennel by his parents, Joe & Mama B, and by his siblings, Teddy & Fergie. He is also remembered by the dog box we are building indoors as he was the first dog to test it out.

Rest in peace Bode and keep us safe on the trail…

Fall Projects

Sarah · October 12, 2013 ·

The days go by — sometimes fast, sometimes slow. The leaves have all but disappeared off the trees in our dog lot and we are slowly preparing for winter. We spend long hours outside, splitting and cutting wood. It is a slow, monotonous task punctuated by the good friends and family who come to join us. The stack of wood ready to burn is now growing ever bigger. At night, we burn it and the house gets so hot you need to wear shorts; it isn’t even this warm in the summer. There is strange paradox of seasons for us mushers. Summer is our hibernation where we spend every waking moment at work, fall the long, bleary eyed wake up period where we prepare ourselves and then winter: fast-paced, day by day, doing what we love.

We have had family to visit too: Travis’ aunt Janell and his uncle Dwayne, who have helped us prepare for our busy season of racing. We repainted our kitchen red (see below)and have begun organizing our basement. We can’t do everything and at some point that part of the house became a collection spot for any belonging not having an official home. In our house, that means just about everything. The worst part is you can never seem to find what you need in all the chaos. But…slowly, we are improving.

My office is coming along slowly but surely and I enjoy looking out the window into the dog lot. Today, the boys are working out in it. We’ve ordered gravel and a bob cat. The dog lot is a never ending project. I think we are hoping that with enough dirt we won’t ever flood again. Travis and I both cringe when we see more than 3 days of rain in a row which is, unfortunately, all too common in Seward.

Mostly, the weather has been good and we have been fortunate to enjoy such a lovely fall.

Fall Training Update from Willow

Sarah · October 2, 2013 ·

The calls are few and far between from Travis, so I know things are going well and he is having fun. The dogs, he said, are enjoying the trails which are mostly soft clay. “Good for their feet,” he told me. “I can run them further.” He’s been putting on longer mileage, slowly taking the dogs further and further. It sounds like he’s camped quite a bit and has run in to many other mushers out on the trails. That’s the nice thing about Willow known as “the dog mushing capital of the world” there are mushers everywhere. It’s fun running down the trails and passing other teams rather than just passing cars. They’ve mostly been running at night, using the lights of the four wheeler and a head lamp to light the way. The weather is still pretty warm and with the longer runs he’s been doing it doesn’t do the dogs any good to run them during the heat of the day. These pictures look like they were taken early evening on a somewhat rainy day. I’ve had a few calls around 10:00pm just before he heads out to run though. I hope the weather there is as nice as it has been in Seward! Mostly, It sounds like it’s going well. When he isn’t running dogs he’s been visiting with friends in the area, no doubt talking dogs and the upcoming race season. And that’s how things go. One run and then another and then another. Back at home I’ve been staying busy catching up on projects. I finished painting our living room which I started during Iditarod and also somehow found time to paint my office. It’s amazing what a little bit of color can do to a room. The puppies have enjoyed plenty of play time too. It’s been fun letting all the dogs here run loose for an hour or so each day. Anyways, back to work for me!

A Day at Turning Heads Kennel in Pictures

Sarah · September 30, 2013 ·

A picture is worth a thousand words. I apologize in advance. I didn’t take pictures very regularly and often times started a project and forgot to show a finishing picture. Whoops! The things you learn…Anyways, without further delay…

****

In the morning when Travis is gone, I wake to Max. He never goes on the bed with me while I am awake but always climbs on after I’m asleep. Strangely, he never wakes me although our bed sits maybe 3.5 feet high.

Max, sleeping on my bed. I also wake to this handsome fellow. Although he does not like having his picture taken. Usually he is either cuddled in my arms like some weird alive teddy bear or he is cuddled up with Max. Midnight is a strange cat and so is his girlfriend Noon. Don’t worry Cat Tales: Stories Of Cats in Dog Land is going to be a series of blog posts when I can get around to writing it. You won’t believe half the stuff I tell you though. Fact really is stranger than fiction. In the morning when I wake up it’s sunny so I go outside. We have four puppies: Bruce, Marlow, Flo, and Aldawin who I need to tie up. Bruce is very, very unhappy with this decision. Growing up sucks Bruce, believe me, I know! At least you have someone who brings you dinner and cleans up after you. The pained look on his face is nowhere near as bad as the pained look on my face…this dog sounds like nails on a chalk board. If he tried out for American Idol they would show his video because it’s hard to imagine a sound like that actually existing. Yes, it’s that bad…he is very cute though! After I tie them up, I let my younger puppies loose to play. The little puppies come over to say hi to Bruce. Bruce got to run loose shortly after this and play too. I had all the dogs loose. It was great! Bruce is pretty popular. Marlow! He’s so happy. That’s Posey (TBD) playing with him. Max is always a crowd favorite. Travis calls at this point and tells me that their are fish. Great. I end up putting the puppies away (they protest) and heading out. We’ve been getting fish recently from the Bear Creek Fish Weir and the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association. They routinely help us fill our freezers and our dogs bellies with salmon. In return, we do our best to help them. Here are some pictures of us at work, gathering and freezing fish from the weir. We would like to thank both Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association and Resurrection Bay Seafoods for their help. We rely on these fish to help lower our food costs and as valuable food for the dogs throughout training and racing. Many of these fish will be cut up and sent out in our Iditarod drop bags as they are one of the dogs most favorite snacks. The salmon start off in this holding pen and are then taken out and are used for SCIENCE. When we get the fish, they are fresh out of the water. Sometimes they’ve been cut open. They are slimy. They are stinky. And you have to throw them. The tote below holds 197 fish. I know because we have to count them. The Weir writes us a ticket for the fish in case we get pulled over by Fish and Game. Also big thank you to Adventure 60 North and Rick Brown for letting me use their truck while ours is up in Willow! It was fun driving an old ford stick shift. You can see the fish below have been cut open. They were used to make baby salmon. They take the males and females, fertilize the eggs and then bring them to different hatcheries. They also have to check their kidneys to make sure they don’t carry a genetic disease that can be lethal to the young fry (what baby salmon are called). You can see that I have an empty tote in my truck. Unfortunately, the only way to move the fish is by hand. So I put on fish gloves and start huckin. It’s not long before I am knee deep in fish slime. The worse part is the closer you get to finishing the slimier you get because you have to reach in over the sides of the tote. It is pretty gross. It is daunting work. I come home to find the dogs relaxing in the sun, a tote of smelly fish in the back of the truck. They are not able to freeze them right away at RBS. The puppies are happy to see me, though I wake them from a very cute nap. And no, not all these puppies are from the same mom. They were born within 3 days of each other however and I like my dogs well socialized. Eep more fish! I had to go to RBS to drop them off for freezing…and you know what that means? Slime Fest 2.0! We have to take the fish and put them on trays to freeze. We freeze each fish individually. Pretty nice. It makes chopping them into snacks for the dogs a breeze! Then we have to take some of our already froze fish home…to do that we need a big box! We take all the frozen fish and put them in the box we made: That’s Kris, Travis’ brother-in-law. Without him it would be really hard to do this! His cousin Andrew is also a huge help. It really helps lower our dog food costs! Then we take the big box home: And then we get home and Sarah realizes there is no room. Anywhere…and I spend the whole day cutting fish up so I can fit it all in the freezer. Cut up fish takes up way less space then whole fish. A big thank you to Ian Beals, Travis’ younger brother, for coming over and helping me. Together, we probably cut up some 700 or 800 pounds worth of fish. Intense! What’s crazy is if I were to take a picture of my day tomorrow it would look NOTHING like today. I wasn’t very good at taking pictures at regular intervals. Maybe Next time I’ll do that…but I’m more of a writer anyways.

The Ebb and Flow of Things

Sarah · September 29, 2013 ·

It should be obvious enough that we are dog people. Our life revolves around our dogs: In the morning we wake to water and feed them, Then there is scooping the yard, running them, feeding them again, and if we can, running them again. At least that’s how the days go by this time of year. In the heart of winter it’s different, the days go by slower and longer, and in the spring it’s different too, perhaps more relaxed, but it’s not much different. Still even so time passes, not so much in the changing of the seasons but in the life cycle of our dogs.

We watch the puppies transition, first away from their mothers, then into the dog lot, and then, finally into harness. We watch their goofy progression as they learn how to manage their lines in the team and how not to chew on the gangline or their neckline and finally we watch as they come into a steady, rhythmic gate, their legs moving so swiftly and effortlessly you could balance a glass of water on their back.

The playful puppies Travis had when we first started dating now have the look of hardened athletes who know what competition. They are steadfast. They give their heart and soul on each and every run. They are more disciplined this year — and so are we. As they grow up and learn the rhythm of training, we grow up and learn how to train and live and balance running dogs with running a home and managing two businesses. I am honestly still not sure how we do it. I guess the way you do anything hard: one step at a time, then another, then another, then another. Progress seems slow but we are always moving forward.

The older dogs who once ruled the dog lot — Pilot and Hope — have gone on to help a neighboring musher and have left our yard for the winter.

When we dropped Pilot and Hope off Travis said few words, his sadness greater than my own for as many times as they had come to my rescue, I knew they had come to his more. Together they have travelled countless miles not only across the frozen wilderness but also across his childhood; Pilot and Hope had run almost every junior race with Travis and had helped him qualify for the Iditarod.

Last year, when picking out his Iditarod team, Travis choose to take Pilot despite the fact that he thought Pilot wouldn’t finish. “He always has my back,” Travis said when I questioned the decision. Pilot, sure enough, ran 700 miles with Travis and then broke out of the checkpoint when Travis left him behind. “I guess he wasn’t as tired as I thought,” Travis told me. “Some guy from the checkpoint had to go out on a snowmachine and bring Pilot back. He wanted to keep going with the team. I thought he hadn’t been feeling well. Guess I was wrong.”

As we drove away from Pilot and Hope’s new home, my eyes were full of tears. Travis told me, “Pilot and Hope are teachers.”

I nodded, thinking of all the fantastic dog runs I’d had with them both and everything I’d taken away from my time with them. How do you measure what a dog has taught you? Pilot and Hope got me through my first 200 mile race, The Tustumena 200. They were the old solidified backbone to my otherwise young, rookie dog team. They encouraged not only the young dogs who would later form the core of Travis’ Iditarod team to keep going, but they also encouraged me: I was intimidated by the intensity of what I had undertaken — two hundred miles of unending hills, without sleep, with only my dogs.

He continued, “They need a new musher, new dogs to teach. They know they are getting old. Would you rather sit around remembering all the awesome times you had when you were younger or would you rather keep having them? They aren’t fast enough to keep up with the young dogs they’ve trained anymore. I think they will be much happier here feeling like they are still A-team stuff.”

We’d seen this throughout the summer on tours and we’d seen it last winter too, especially with Hope. They weren’t running in the front anymore and though excited to go anywhere in the team it was always obvious to me that lead dogs, even when not up front, never stop leading.

Our dogs grow up and grow old and one day, we always hope its a long ways off, they pass on. We measure our lives by our dogs presences and their subsequent absences. Pilot and Hope are not gone; they have simply moved on to another kennel but I can’t help but feel that we are growing up and growing older too: we are no longer uncertain in ourselves or our young team — we are confident in what we have built.