Our Life

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.

A Short Break On Their Trip to Willow….

Sarah · September 28, 2013 ·

The phone rings at 7:57 waking me. I answer my cellphone only to have it die. I guess the charger hadn’t been plugged in all the way. I jump out of bed because I know what will come next and before I have time to walk into the living room, the house phone starts ringing.

Great. I can’t find the handset and I know it’s Travis.

It rings half a dozen times before the answering system picks up:

Hi Honey! Uhhh….Anyways we got to willow…but we had an adventurous night.

We’re about to drop the dogs and go water them and then we’re going to find a spot to go run. But we had a very very adventurous night…long story short we are going to have to put the truck in the shop…we didn’t crash or anything but… THE BRAKES CAUGHT ON FIRE…I hope you are listening to this cause seriously…MY. BRAKES….CAUGHT ON FIRE…and for once Grayson failed, he wasn’t Mr. Fix-it like, he just sat there laughing. Anyways. We’re all fine. There’s a truck auction in an hour somewhere up here…Maybe I could go…cause my brakes. CAUGHT ON FIRE. Seriously. Yup. Uhhh…And with that news, have a good day.

Talk to you later!

By the end of the message, I’m laughing so hard I am on the floor. I know, I know, the transcript does not convey hilarity whatsoever but Travis’ tone of voice is right on the edge of laughter and its infectious. I finally find the phone and return his call.

“So I hear your brakes caught on fire,” I say when he picks up.

He laughs. “Yup. Grayson just stood there laughing. I told him you know, you could at least pee on them or something.”

I start laughing.

“Instead he threw the last of our coffee on them…That was the crappiest part about the whole thing. That was good french vanilla coffee! I mean it wasn’t a big flame or anything.”

I had envisioned a small fire, you know, the type that happens when you cook steak on the grill and all the fat drips off and the fire wooshes up suddenly but just as quickly disappears.

“Yeah. That’s good,” I say.

“It was only like four inches or something.”

“Oh. That’s pathetic! That doesn’t even count!”

He laughs.

“But how did your brakes catch on fire?” I ask when I can finally stop laughing.

“The truck was acting funny. I pulled over two times before. I checked the rims on the trailer and the truck but everything seemed fine. I thought I had a flat. Nope! Then the next time I pulled over they caught on fire. It’s like they just locked up or something. So then we just slept in the car for like 4 hours. It sucked. We were like right outside of Girdwood and had no cell service. So we just like let everything cool for awhile woke up at about 5:30 and started driving again.”

“And then they were fine?” I asked, skeptical.

“Yeah.”

“Weird.”

“It was an adventure. You would have liked it.”

I laughed. I probably would have. I have weird sense of “fun.”

“Anyways, I thought you should write about it, you know, cause well, my brakes caught fire and we had this adventure and stuff,” Travis says. He is trying not to sound too delighted.

“Ok,” I laugh.

“Hey honey, guess what?”

“What?”

“I can’t wait to go run the team!” Then, a long pause, “Also,” his tone of voice changes, trying to sound really sorry. ” you have to go do fish.”

Great. I think. “I guess I’m going to have an adventurous day.”

And they’re off!

Sarah · September 28, 2013 ·

They have left.

The houses, save a few, sit empty — their inhabitants now traveling northward in search of colder temperatures and longer trails. The dogs who were left behind, either too old or too young to travel, howl one at a time, never together, filling up the incredible black silence of night. It is a lonesome howl. It is a where-has-my-family-gone howl and a why-was-I-left-behind howl.

Fortunately, it won’t last long. In the morning I will tie up the younger dogs so that they are together. I’ll let them run loose for hours and tire them out. We’ll have fun. We’ll forget that the dog lot and house are empty. We’ll play games and go on walks and they will learn things they can’t learn when they are running with the team and they will think Life Is Good.

Life is good.

The puppies that were born this year are my future Iditarod team and school for them officially starts tomorrow.

The Hot and Cold Adventure

Sarah · September 25, 2013 ·

We woke to snow swirls yesterday morning. The grins on our faces were big and gawky as we looked out our window and took in the snow-top covered mountains. The day looked ripe with promise and we were on a mission: We invested in a 22′ enclosed trailer for training this year and we needed to start working on building the interior — so we thought a trip to Anchorage was in order

. There is something magical about the Seward Highway, no matter the time of year, but fall is my favorite: the mountains caked with fresh snow, the grasses and leaves shimmer yellow and red – nature’s sunset as we prepare for a long, cold winter.

Of course when you own sled dogs, nothing is simple. You can’t hop into the truck and just leave. You’ve got to feed dogs — we’ve been feeding mostly fish and kibble — and make sure things are in relatively good order before you leave, even if it is just a day trip. We had to get antifreeze and coolant. We had to check oil. We had to get gas and food. We had to put the house dogs out.

Finally, we were in the truck and on our way. Grayson was driving. Travis was reading an old issue of Mushing Magazine. I was simply excited to be on the move. The trip was slow. Just outside of Seward there is road construction and we were stuck for a half hour, waiting. Once we finally got moving, we crawled.

But it wasn’t long before our slow crawl came to an abrupt halt.

Our engine started over heating and we had to pull off to the side outside Summit Lake. I think it could have been really easy to get angry and frustrated at this point as what normally is maybe an hour long drive had taken us at least two hours, but instead we laughed and enjoyed the fact that it was a Monday and we were doing our own thing. We let the engine cool for a bit and turned home, afraid to trying going further down the road.

When the engine started heating up again, we stopped at a random trail head to let the truck cool down for awhile. It was the first walk we’d taken in a long time where I didn’t know where I’d end up. We hiked a short ways to a stream and watched the water run.

We never made it to Anchorage, but that was entirely ok; we got the adventure we wanted even if it was not the adventure we had planned.