Turning Heads Kennel

Alaska Dog Sledding Tours

Press

Travis At the Start of the Iditarod

· ·

The Anchorage Daily News stopped by the dog truck the morning of the ceremonial start to interview Travis. It was sort of an emotional thing for us. Chris, the guy who did the interview, came to our kennel in Seward, Alaska during the flood. We were really excited we had jut started doing our summer dog sled rides and were looking forward to doing a lot of work to our facilities to make improvements…instead we had to rebuild.

 

His interview helped connect us with some really wonderful people who helped us get to the starting line after the flood so it was nice to talk to him again at the start. He explains our dog truck, traveling on the road, and rebuilding.

Here’s Chris’ interview from the fall when our house and dog lot were flooding: Musher Undeterred by Seward Flooding

Where’s the Snow?

· ·

November seemed to come and go without any real excitement and, more importantly, without snow. It’s been cold the last few weeks but the skies have been mercilessly clear. Over the weekend we had our first snowfall. Unfortunately, it wasn’t significant and it rained after so Travis went north. At this point he’s spent more time in Knik training with fellow musher (and good friend) Wade Marrs than in Seward.

The Team out at Kenai Fjords National Park
I stayed in town and managed to put on about 70 miles on my team over the weekend and do some oddball projects. As we move into the heart of mushing season, we get less and less time to ourselves, to our families, and to each other so we’re doing all that we can now to make life simpler later on. Over the weekend I prepared a bunch of freezer meals for our crockpot. If you live in Seward and want to help the kennel out, this is a simple & cheap donation that makes our lives easier, healthier, and tastier. I made these meals for nights when we’re too busy or tired to cook. Simply thaw and throw in the crock pot. My type of cooking! I’ve started working on some pasta dishes — and no, I haven’t gotten around to making a lasagna yet — to bring up north with us when we train out of our friends house.

24 Buffalo Chicken Burritos ready for days when we're too busy to make lunch
I’ve also started making burritos. They’re good trail snacks and easy to eat one handed. We like every sort of burrito: breakfast, bean, chicken…they’re all delicious! I feel like I’m slowly winning the battle, but I’m not convinced that I’ve won the war just yet… Lots and lots more to do but slow progress is still progress.

The dog runs went well. It was our first trip out to Kenai Fjords National Park with the dogs and I was excited to get out there. They close the road to the park in the winter so people can mush, ski, and snowmachine out there. It’s such a beautiful place in the wintertime. We love seeing the mountains covered in snow and there is usually wildlife to be seen. We’re excited to do our first season of winter tours out there — what a beautiful place to share with our guests.

Jane & Rags in Lead
Travis took all the dogs contending for his Iditarod team with him North so I had mostly puppies and no real lead dogs. It made for an interesting run, especially because to get out to the park you have to carefully navigate the dogs through a gate about 3.5 feet wide — barely wide enough for my fourwheeler. I was impressed. We went out a total of 4 times and they did it flawlessly all but the first.

On my first run, I saw 5 moose including two bulls. When we see moose they’re almost always in the same spot: right by the park entrance. In heavy snow years they can present a problem but with so little snow they’re happy to stay away from the dogs and don’t try to hold there ground quite as much. We also ran into some cross country skiiers and the puppies on my team were terribly frightened by the strange humans with large feet. By the end of my trip, all but 1 dog had learned that the skiers didn’t present a threat. They all passed exceptionally well.

Travis did a similar trip up north with his dogs — though he camped out on the trail.He said the dogs did great but he was quite sick and is currently fighting the flu. Still, he went out and trained because that’s what is needed. “I only got real sick a couple of times,” he told me. He broke trail most of his run which made it tough for the dogs but was excellent training.

Everyone has got to grow up sometime, today it was their turn. Clyde (top left) Bonnie (Bottom Left) Brain (Top Right) & Pinky (Bottom Right)
Today, I tied the puppies up to their houses. It’s always bittersweet — it means they are growing up and becoming real sled dogs and losing that cute puppy charm. They whine and protest loudly at first, yanking on the end of their chains trying to get their collars to pop off their heads. Archie ran around while they were screaming and tried to calm them down. Today they were greeted by our neighbor, a large bald eagle who has made it a habit to come sit in our dog yard during the morning. His nest is in our yard and for the longest time we were afraid that our dogs would scare him away — but I think if anything, the dogs have become a source of entertainment for him and his young. He often sits and watches them and occasionally we leave a frozen fish out for him. You can bet he enjoys that.Today he came when the puppies started screaming and he started screaming back at them. It always interesting to watch different species interact and there was no doubt in mind that they were trying to communicate with one other. The puppies would whine, the eagle would screech and the puppies would whine back. On and on it went. Who knows what, if anything, they said to one another. The eagle’s son came and sat in the tree to for a while, though he was less vocal.

The last week we’ve been busy with events. On Wednesday we went to the Seward Elementary School and did a short Q&A on dog mushing. It was a blast. The Student Leadership Team, one of our sponsors, helped set it up. The team is composed of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders — they’ve been far too kind and it’s been great working with such a  young, talented, enthusiastic, group of kids. They sure make us feel special and have been a wonderful sponsor to work with.

On Thursday we hosted a Family Night at the Seward Brewing Company. We played pin the booty to the dog, had dog mushing themed coloring, brought Archie and Bonnie to meet all the kids, and had hot cocoa. It was really fun to take a break from the lonesome dog trails and to get out and be a part of the Seward community. We feel really blessed to be part of such a wonderful town and we’re really happy to be able to do something for the kids.

Santa & Travis on The Green Machine. Photo Courtesy Of ASLC
The week before we delivered Santa Claus to the Alaska Sea Life Center’s Tree Lighting Ceremony.  We drove the dogs through a parking lot (no obvious trail) and through a crowd of people. It went flawlessly. We were thrilled to see how well trained our lead dogs are. It’s quite impressive and I have to think that our summer dog sled tours really helped. Our tour is SO COOL because we use it as real training: our dogs are constantly listening to commands. We used it as an opportunity to fine tune their abilities and to train a few new leaders. We’d like to thank the Alaska SeaLife Center for sharing their photos with us and for letting us be a part of their holiday celebration. What a blast!

Ready To Go! Santa, his "Elf", and his "Reindeer." Photo courtesy of ASLC

In other news, our first race of the season, The Sheep Mountain 150, was cancelled yesterday due to lack of snow. While we are disappointed, we are not devastated. We have many other races to look forward to and are hoping that the snow will get here soon.

Well that’s it for now. We are looking for a few homes for some of our dogs who aren’t quite cut out for competitive mushing / life as a sled dog. If you are interested in adopting one of our dogs or know someone who may be interested, please email us at Info@TurningHeadsKennel.com  All are friendly, good with kids, and are loved tremendously by us so we’d like to see them put in a good home. We’ll post more on this later with pictures and descriptions of the dogs but please keep us in mind if you know someone who is looking. These are AWESOME dogs.

Happy Trails.

The Flood

· ·

The dog lot is empty and when the wind blows, you can hear the lifeless chains banging. There are no dogs outside barking or playing — the only thing to be heard is the sound of heavy equipment trying to fix the damage. The damage. There seems to be lots of that. The dog lot is caked in mud and the gravel we had moved in all summer was either buried under heavy sticky silt, or washed away with the rising waters.

It’s still hard to believe any of this happened.

One moment we were feeding dogs, scooping them, playing with them in a very wet dog lot,  and the next moment we realized that we were going to flood. We’d taken a trip in our car up river and seen the evidence first hand. It seemed like no one believed us at the time, but we knew the water was coming. We called our neighbors, The Seavey Family, who had just vacated their summer dog lot and asked if we could take our dogs there. They agreed.

 

The dogs had no idea what was going on when the trucks came. We loaded the dogs one by one into the Seavey’s dog truck — our own truck has has great timing and is in currently in the shop — the whole time the dogs were going nuts with excitement. They, of course, thought they were going to be going on some sort of dog run and adventure. Well, it was an adventure, just not the one they were hoping for.

We even gathered the puppies: Pinky, Brain, Pickles, Porkchop and even little Bonnie & Clyde. Everyone made the mass exodus.

No sooner had we gotten the dogs secured in their new spot, did the water come. It came as a slow oozing brown stream. Travis and I had already moved much of our important belongings out of the basement — 1 ton of dog food, all our power tools, our Turning Heads Kennel merchandise — and begin fortifying the house, building baricades and walls.

Our legs couldn’t move fast enough. Our arms weren’t strong enough. We simply couldn’t keep up.

When it was all over, the basement had flooded. We didn’t know it then but we lost some valuable things: pictures, Travis’ yearbook, and most of all a certain peace of mind. Two feet of water came into the house. Several more outside. For as far as the eye could see, our house was surrounded by water. It was as if we were a castle floating on a lake. Our driveway turned into a raging river with the power to move just about anything.

Dog houses started floating off because the water levels got so high. Travis and my father (my parents choose the worst week imaginable to come visit) hurried outside and begin stacking them and chaining them down.We had to open part of the fence enclosing the dog lot to let water rush out.

And all the while we kept thinking: is it going to come higher? and Are the dogs ok? We watched for many hours as the water slowly started rising only to suddenly recede. Once, when we thought the worst was past we began frantically cleaning up the layers and layers of silt in the basement — only to wake up to another foot of water.

The dogs were and are, still ok. It was hard to believe. During the worst of it, we had water up to our knees just about everywhere outside and deeper in other places. It was impossible to think that the dogs didn’t have the same, but they didn’t. We were unable to get to them for two days, during which time Danny Seavey texted us updates saying that the dogs were fine and that they were being fed. It was comforting, yet hard to imagine.

When we finally got to see the dogs for the first time, it was total relief. I walked through the Seavey’s dog lot on the verge of tears as I walked up and down and greeted each dog. The only part of the Seavey’s dog lot that remained unscathed was where we had put out dogs. Someone was watching out for us.

Although the rain has stopped now, our dog lot is still empty. Walking through it is like stepping onto quick-sand and your likely to sink when you least expect it. Crossing the yard this morning, I unexpectedly sank up to my knees in mud. There is a lot of work ahead of us and it will certainly not be easy. The physical damage can be remedied: holes can be filled, gravel can be brought in, and mud can be removed, but the psychological damage will linger for some time. There is something eery about an empty dog lot full of water.

If you didn’t see it, check out Travis’ interview with the Anchorage Daily News.

We will continue working hard to bring our dogs home. Until them, please, pray for sunshine.