Dog Biographies

Rest in Peace Noon

Sarah · March 5, 2014 ·

We lost our beloved cat, Noon (pictured on the right) this morning. For anyone who has ever visited our kennel, you’ll remember that she was the sweetest, most affectionate cat. She loved children and didn’t care if they held her up by her tale. She never bit or scratched. She was simply a good cat. We adopted her after Iditarod last year to keep our other cat, Midnight, company.

Noon was never my cat. From the moment she came home, she was Travis’. She came when he called, curled up in his lap, and often slept on his chest at night. We knew something was wrong with Noon early last week. She stopped eating and had lost weight. Our local vet has been out of town for some time and after consulting with another vet we started her on some treatment. Her health continued to decline.

On Friday, when we left for the ceremonial start of Iditarod in Anchorage, Travis and I agreed that she needed to come with us. We spent Friday night before the race, typically a time when mushers are trying to stock up on sleep, in the vets office trying to get her better. We didn’t leave til about 2:00am. The vet was flummoxed by her symptoms and having worked with so many animals, Travis and I knew that the prognosis was not good. On Monday morning, I received a phone call from the vet. Test results were back and it looked like she had cancer.

I have spent the last few nights sleeping by her side trying to make her comfortable. But I’m the consolation prize — she wanted Travis. Cats don’t understand Iditarod and I know she wanted her dad, meowing to look for him. She slept on one of his old shirts last night and it immediately brought her visible comfort as she closed her eyes and rested.

This morning, shortly before she passed, our 3 inside dogs, Archie, Betty and Perry as well as our other cat, Midnight, all walked in and gathered around where I was holding Noon. They each took a turn nuzzling her. Midnight licked her ears and put his paw on her forward. I am amazed by the compassion and friendship animals show one another in times of need.

She crossed over surrounded by her friends and family. I am certain that wherever Travis is on the trail, her spirit is flying towards him, and in the moment where they meet, I am sure that her arrival there will lift his spirits.

Watch over us, sweet Noon. You will forever be in our hearts!

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.

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…

Joe

Sarah · October 27, 2012 ·

Joe is the energy, and enthusiasm in our dog team. When we were evacuating the dogs for the flood, all the dogs were calm: they knew, somehow, that they were not going for a dog run. Not Joe! He started barking and screaming his excitement. When we unloaded him, he was clearly disappointed that we were not hooking him up to go running.

Joe at his house, excited to have his picture taken.

He is strangely delicate: his long wirey legs are propped up by four of the tiniest dog feet I’ve ever seen. Most of our puppies have feet bigger than his. But perhaps it’s those tiny feet that make him move so effortlessly. His brown, beady eyes protrude from his rather pointy head. He looks like he was built for speed. He’s fast, but that’s not why we are honoring Joe. Joe is the cheerleader. He’s the one that gets the team going. Every team needs a dog like that (or two or three!).

“Joe you ready,” we’ll ask and it doesn’t matter how far we’ve run or how many times we’ve been around the trail, Joe will lunge into his harness with all get out. He is one of the most excited dogs I’ve ever seen. Most dogs settle down after running for a little while. Most dogs, don’t continue that enthusiasm day after day after when they are running the same 2 mile loop over and over again. Most dogs, but not Joe. When we’d stop out on the trail to take pictures during tours for our guests, Joe would always be the first one to start barking as if to say “Alright already, they got their photos, what’s the hold up!”

“Why does he bark so much?” Guests would ask. We’d explain he was excited and often say something along the lines of “he’s too stupid to know any better,” but really that couldn’t be further from the truth. Typically, Joe runs at the back of the team. We like to tell our guests that’s where you put the blockheads, the dogs without brains who will just go! go! go! but lumping Joe into the category would be unfair. He is a very intelligent dog who, for the first time, ran lead last night. He is a good trotter and an excellent pace setter. Enthusiasm is important — attitude is everything — but so to is the physical ability to do the work. Joe is a powerhouse: smoothly gaited, efficient and beautiful to watch — but he also knows his limits. He finished Iditarod last year and will be a great addition to this year’s team.

Apache

Sarah · September 14, 2012 ·

“That is not a sled dog,” folks will say when they come in to our yard, pointing at Apache. “What is he?” is inevitably the next question that comes from their mouths. The perplexed look on their faces when they see him secretly makes me giggle.

“Not a sled dog you say? Well, hate to break it to you but Apache IS a sled dog. In fact, he’s one of the best dogs in our yard.”

People always look stunned. “But he has floppy ears.”

“Well dogs don’t run with their ears do they?”

“But he has spots!”

We then talk about what we DO look for in a sled dog because what type of ears they have or the color of their coat doesn’t concern us. Yes we like to make sure our dogs have a nice thick coat to keep them warm through the rough Alaskan winters but what that coat looks like doesn’t matter. Look at any ski shop and you’ll quickly learn: it’s not what the coat looks like on the outside ,but what makes it up that matters. Sled dogs have two coats: a dense heavy undercoat to keep them warm in the winter which they then (hopefully) shed as summer approaches and an outer coat, called guard hairs which help keep the snow wind and ice out.

Well what about the whole floppy-eared thing? Here at Turning Heads Kennel, we run Alaskan Huskies. Basically an Alaskan Husky is just a fancy condensed way of saying “a northern breed mutt that likes to pull.” Sled dogs come in all different colors and sizes. The one in important thing is their build. We look for a nice lean, athletic build. These guys are the marathon runners of the dog world (not the weight-lifters as some mistakenly think.) We want our dogs tall, long-legged, and to some extent big-chested. To that extent Apache fits the bill perfectly.

So meet our newest dog of the week: A P A C H E

Apache is one of those easy to distinguish dogs because of his great work ethic. He is a dog that is truly fun to hook up. As soon as Apache sees that you have a harness in your hand, a big smile rolls across his face and he is lunging to go. After all the grief everyone gave him this summer about not looking the part, it was always fun to hook him up and see people’s attitudes change.

“Wow! I guess he is a sled dog!” They’d say after the run.

Although a very sweet, loving boy with Travis and myself, Apache is timid around folks he doesn’t know and so serves as a good doorbell. We know if someone has pulled in the driveway to come say hello because Apache (and his brothers) who live at the front of the kennel will let us know.

Like all our dogs, Apache has enjoyed time inside our house during the winter. He may be one of the funniest dogs when he comes inside as he enjoys collecting items. After making a bed for himself, Apache roams the house looking for tiny treasures to take back to his nest: A tin can, dad’s sock, a book, two envelopes, a penny, a pen. He never chews on the items, in fact he treats them very gingerly as if he’s afraid of breaking them or hurting them and simply lays them around his bed, looking quite pleased with himself. He’s a truly funny dog with a great disposition!

Age: 3
Position: Lead/Swing Dog
Interesting Fact: Apache enjoys collecting items. His niece Bonnie is his twin and when she gets to play, she always chooses to play with Apache.
Relations in the Kennel:
Mother: Hope
Siblings: Bud (m), Weiser (m), Zema (f), Guinness (f), Amber (f), Madori (f)
Nephews through BUD: Micah (m), Chumley (m), Big Hass (m)
Newphew through WEISER: Captain (m)
Nieces/Nephew through MADORI: Bonnie (f), Clyde (m)
Grand Nephews through MICAH: Levi (m), Wrangler (m), Carhartt (m)
Total Relations in Kennel: 16

Top photograph courtesy of Albert Lewis.

Zema

Sarah · August 24, 2012 ·

Enough good things cannot be said about this amazing little girl. Zema is one of our main leaders. She also happens to be one of the spunkiest, happiest dogs in our yard. Zema is currently on vacation. She was spayed last week — but don’t let that fool you, she has quite the maternal instinct. At the end of a busy day, we turn the dogs loose from being hooked up and teach them to run back to their house. Zema used to be one of the best at this, but in recent months has gotten distracted by the young pups in our yard. She beelines it for the puppy pen, whenever she is loose. If she can’t find a way in, she’ll attempt to nuzzle the pups through the fencing or, if she gets really anxious, she will start digging her way in.

After seeing her love and devotion to puppies, especially to ones that weren’t even hers, we had to admit we felt a little bad getting this special girl spayed. However, we firmly believe that if we do not intend to breed a dog, that spaying or neutering it is the best option. Besides eliminating any chance of accidental matings, it is also healthier for the dogs. Both females and males keep better weight when fixed and females are no longer susceptible to uterine infections.

Zema earned her distinction for dog of the week by continuing her peppy attitude despite having had surgery last Friday. You wouldn’t know by her attitude that she’d just gotten spayed. We recently put her back in the yard as she, along with the other dogs that got fixed, lived inside and our guests kept asking us to hook her up because of the sheer enthusiasm she was displaying at her house. Unfortunately for Zema, the doc said she still has quite some time before we can put her back in the team.

Keep up the good work Zema! We can’t wait to have you back in our team!

Age: 3
Position: Lead/Swing Dog
Interesting Fact: Zema is obsessed with puppies and small dogs.
Relations in the Kennel:
Mother: Hope
Siblings: Bud (m), Weiser (m), Apache (m), Guinness (f), Amber (f), Madori (f)
Nephews through BUD: Micah (m), Chumley (m), Big Hass (m)
Newphew through WEISER: Captain (m)
Nieces/Nephew through MADORI: Bonnie (f), Clyde (m)
Grand Nephews through MICAH: Levi (m), Wrangler (m), Carhartt (m)
Total Relations in Kennel: 16