Turning Heads Kennel
Alaska Dog Sledding Tours
On a happier note, Fly and Weiser had a little boy and a little girl born on October 23.
Fortunately we have these two pups to keep us looking forward and to remind us that life moves onward, time continues to pass. It is strange with two of our best friends now gone but we are trying to pour our love and affection into these young pups and our other dogs instead of focusing on those we’ve lost.
We apologize for not updating sooner, but the end of October was not kind to us. We lost two dogs rather unexpectedly this past week and are still trying to recover.
Hatchet
Hatchet, was one of our mean lead dogs and spent the entire summer up in Anchorage keeping Travis company. He was an exceptionally friendly and intelligent dog. I remember one day this fall when it had been raining for several days straight, Travis and I went out into the dog yard to start digging ditches to clear some of the water. When we got to near Hatchet’s area, he took one look at what we were doing and, voracious digger that he was, he pitched in and helped out. He wasn’t digging just randomly either. He was an incredibly smart and talented dog who, on more than one occasion, walked leash-less in downtown Anchorage. All he needed was vocal commands.
Although he was primarily Travis’ leader, the few times I ran Hatchet up front I was nothing short of impressed. Travis had Hatchet since he was a puppy and, fortunately, we have several of his kids to remember him by: Larry, Curly, and Little Screamer. I will always remember how excited he was whenever he ran off leash or how excited he was simply to pull; Hatchet knew how to get the team moving. He will be terribly missed.
Chena
Chena was my pet dog. A ten-year old Siberian husky, she was incredibly devoted to me. To others, she was frustrating. Try as they might, Chena was difficult to befriend. She had an incredibly ambivalent attitude towards most people. A gentle-spirit, Chena was extremely shy, incredibly funny, and unbelievably loyal. I’ve never had a dog follow me around the way Chena would. My mother used to call her my lady-in-waiting. If I left a room, Chena would leave the room or if I stood up, she’d stand up. Simple things, but her love and devotion were evident. If I left her for the day, you’d never see a dog jump up and down with so much excitement upon my return — I will certainly miss that. I actually couldn’t even get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom without her following me to sit outside and, on more than one occasion, she simply barged her way in. She was a dog that knew what she wanted and often got it.
One time, Chena tried to eat my college diploma. She once ran around under the chairlift at Killington Ski Resort. When we went skiing, we used to tie her up outside and gosh, could she howl — we could here her from the mountain. She had two stuffed sheep that she liked to think were her puppies and that she’d do anything for. She walked into a lit fireplace, forcing us to coin the phrase “Chena-dumb.” But she was anything but stupid. She knew how to get what she wanted. She often felt like she needed to compete for my attention and, as a result, often didn’t warm up to the other people in my life. She routinely ran away when my parents watched her. She always barked like mad at my father. And, on more than one occasion, she tricked Travis out of bed simply to steal his spot and lie next to me. She is the only dog I’ve ever known to break into the pound and the only dog I’ve ever known who ran away from sheep. We used to live near a sheep farm when we were still in New England and I used to walk her out there. She’d sit and watch the sheep but, one day, her presence seemed to upset the flock and they started baahing. This terrified her. That dog high-tailed it out of there so fast I had no time to do anything about it; but I didn’t worry. I walked home and she was simply sitting on the front porch waiting to be let inside. She was incredible dog and moving forward will not be easy.
Saying Goodbye
The shock of losing both Hatchet and Chena within such a small span of time still doesn’t feel real. I still come home and open the door gingerly because Chena used to sit in front of it when I went out and, if I opened it too quickly, I’d hit her with it. I still look out at Hatchet’s house and expect to see him there — instead, there’s a young goofy looking pup because the sight of his house empty was simply too hard to see. Yesterday, putting away harnesses, we saw Hatchet’s harness and Chena’s. It’s the little reminders that they’re gone that are the painful ones. Not having to yell at Hatchet to line out when we first start hooking up or having to put him back on his house when we’re done with a run. Not hearing Chena barking with excitement because oh my god! it’s time to eat. It’s looking at Goblin and Gremlin who weren’t her puppies but whom she adopted anyways and protected from the other dogs.
Hatchet and Chena are buried next to one another in the back yard. To make things a little more bizarre, Chena was actually pregnant with Hatchet’s puppies. Unfortunately, the puppies did not survive — and Chena, who so desperately wanted to be a mother, I think died mostly of a broken heart. Although it by no means makes things easier, we take comfort knowing that Chena, Hatchet, and their puppies are together as a family in heaven.
One of our sponsors is the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association. Every year they kindly donate us fish after they have taken eggs from them and in exchange we try to help them out when they need it. They use the eggs they collect to stock the hatcheries. They also monitor how many fish they get as it is critical to fish and game for determining when they can open up to commercial fisherman in the beginning of the season. They have to let so many fish return to their spawning grounds so that the salmon population will stay stable before they can allow fisherman to start catching them. Good idea, because they sure are tasty!
The Bear Creek Weir, which is where we get our fish from here in town, has two big salmon runs. In the spring, they have the Sockeye Salmon, also known as the reds (for salmon illiterate folk like me) and here in the fall they have the Silvers.
Not really knowing a whole lot about salmon, I found coming down to volunteer some of my time pretty interesting. The whole idea is that we are helping the hatcheries and keeping the salmon stock healthy. To that extent, we’ve collected about 140 silver salmon eggs and fertilized them so far. It’s a pretty interesting process. First, the salmon swim up to the weir. It’s approximately a 7-mile swim from the ocean to the weir and takes the fish about 5 days. Then, the fish are forced to swim up into the fish trap.
Once in the fish trap they are sorted male/female. For every 3 females the weir takes 1 male. I’m still not exactly sure why they don’t do a 1:1 ratio, but I guess they have their reasons!
When enough fish have been captured, the weir performs an egg take. That’s when we go in and help them. Although no one part of the egg take is particularly difficult, when you add it all together if you don’t have enough people it can be a lot of work.
The first thing we do is kill the fish. We only kill a few at a time so that everything stays fresh. I ended up helping bleed fish on one of the days I helped for the first part of the morning. Essentially, I cut near the tail so that the fish would bleed out. It makes it easier to take the eggs and, more importantly, to get a kidney sample later on.
They put the eggs of three females in one bucket. Then, they take a male salmon and (this is kind of gross) they essentially squeeze the sperm out of him to fertilize the eggs. Once this is done, the eggs are put in a salt water rinse.
The fish, both male and female, are then taken and kidney samples are taken to ensure that they don’t have kidney disease. I guess it is a pretty prevalent disease among salmon and they are trying to ensure a healthy stock. From what I could tell (I mostly bagged kidneys) it seemed like the fish were healthy. If the findings show any of the fish have the disease, however, the eggs will be tossed out.
After all that has been done, Travis and I get to take some of the fish and the rest goes to other local mushers. It’s really a great set up and we’re really happy we have such a cool way to spend our time and to help out. We are extremely grateful that the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association helps us feed our dogs tasty salmon all winter long and that they provide us with such an interesting volunteer opportunity!
Well, our goal for the summer was to get a website up in time for the fall. So far, so good. We’re on track to be done. We have a few more pages to iron out (our sponors’ page and how to sponsor, as well as a our dog section) but for the most part, Travis and I are happy with how things are looking.
We’re starting to try and figure out how we want to do our blog/updates. So far, they’ve proven to be a challenge: summer has kept us busy and, for the most part, away from one another. While Travis is working in Anchorage, I’m down in Seward taking care of the dogs and working full-time. Our dog adventures have been somewhat limited in the summer months due to heat and trying to get weight on the dogs in time for fall training, but we’ve gone on some really great hikes / free runs with the dogs.
Bud, Pilot, Apache, Weiser, Hatchet, Larry, and Curly all enjoyed spending time at the Seavey’s tour kennel in Seward but are happy to be back lounging around in the yard eating yummy kibble and fish, digging lots of holes, and getting lots of love and attention. Hatchet recently travelled up to Anchorage and is keeping Travis company while Travis works at the WildRide Sled Dog Rodeo.
In terms of updating, we’re going to be updating at least once a week when training officially begins. We’d like to provide more of a behind-the-scenes look into how we do things and will be posting as many pictures as possible. We’d love to post some videos too but right now the only way we can do that is on our point-and-shoot camera. We’re hoping to eventually require a GoPro camera so that we can take HD videos while mushing and not have to worry about holding on to the camera but…they’re expensive. Right now, we’re pouring our money into buying dog food…
Speaking of, we just picked up a half-ton of Eukunuba. We’ve been really happy with it so far. The dogs coats are looking absolutely incredible and we’ve gotten a nice deal on it though the bill is still pretty hefty. Anyways, I picked the dog food up last Tuesday when I was up visiting Travis. This probably sounds like no big deal, you know, all in a days work, except Travis’ truck is a manual and I don’t know how to drive manual.
“Here,” he said and tossed the keys at me. “You’ll figure it out. It isn’t real far. You’ll be fine.”
I was less than excited at the prospect of learning to drive a manual on my own in the middle of Anchorage but we needed the dog food and he couldn’t take the time off. So I obligingly hopped in the truck and…wait? How do you start a manual? It took me a few minutes to figure out then I popped her in reverse and…stalled. I proceded to pop along until I finally got to the feed store. Pulling into the lot, it was clear I had no idea what I was doing: everyone stared.
Still, we got our dog food and will be able to feed the dogs for another month or so. We’re heading up to Fairbanks tomorrow to visit Lance Mackey’s kennel and to look at some dogs. We’re not too sure what we have planned but it’s been awhile since we’ve really been able to spend time together without work butting in the middle of the two of us — really, since July 4th — so it’ll be nice to have a few days to ourselves.
We’ll take pictures and post them when we get back. That’s all for now…leave us a message if you stopped by!
While Travis has been up in Anchorage working at the Wild Ride Sled Dog Rodeo, I’ve gotten to raise the puppies… Bud and Jane had four boys: Chief, Micah, Chumley, and Big Haas. They all have such unique personalities and it’s been fun watching them grow. Calling them puppies is…well a little inaccurate. These days, they’re more like dogs.
I’ve really enjoyed taking them on walks and exposing them to all sorts of new stimuli. We walk the river beds and they storm through the water, we walk down trails and they run off into the bushes, we play in the back yard and they run around like maniacs — they’re a fun group.
They turn four months old on the 31st. To celebrate, I’ll be taking them on some sort of adventure… Though these days I can’t take them all at once! They are simply too big.
Here are some videos from when they were smaller: