Turning Heads Kennel

Alaska Dog Sledding Tours

2013

Chesney Goes Ice Skating

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Last weekend, I spent Sunday afternoon ice-skating with a friend out at Tern Lake. It’s a fun little spot where the Seward Highway & Sterling Highway meet and is usually one of the first places to freeze. I admit that I have never skated out there before and am not actually much of a skater.

Still, I used this as an opportunity to introduce one of our shier pups and to get him more familiar with me. We were really hard to socialize are dogs and it is important that lots of socialization occur at a young age. We try our best to work with dogs that show early signs of being shy by working with them more frequently. We often try to do plenty of 1-on-1 time.

Chesney was born this summer. He is the son of Fidget and Copper, both finishers from last year’s Iditarod team, both incredibly eager dogs, and both a little reserved when it comes to social interaction. I expected several dogs from this litter to show more signs of being shy. Fortunately, they are all very friendly dogs.

Here is a video of Chesney following along on the ice:

PS sorry…my voice over came out really loud, you might want to turn your volume DOWN.

In the last week after this video was shot, Chesney has been really friendly and out going — all very positive signs.

The Other Half of Iditarod

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Without saying, there is obviously a lot that goes into Iditarod. But, what exactly does it entail? For this kennel, what Iditarod has meant this year is lots of time apart. The realities of training a competitive distance dog team mean that you need to log lots and lots of training miles.

How many miles?

Well, different mushers have different strategies and that “special number” is something that many mushers actually like to keep “under-wraps.” Why? I have no idea…perhaps they think it is their “special” formula for success… But The reality is that most competitive teams have somewhere between 3,000-5,000 miles on their dogs before the start of the race. Of course, like everything, there are exceptions: older dogs who have travelled to Nome several times before often don’t require as much training as dogs who have only done the race once or twice. Still, miles are important

And miles, ultimately, means time apart — especially when our home base is Seward. There is a reason we are the only year-round kennel in this town: it’s because there are no trails. In the winter, when we have snow (which we don’t at the moment), we are able to put about 20 miles on the dogs by running out to Kenai Fjords National Park and back…in order to train the dogs, we often have to do at least a 60 mile run meaning we do the whole course 3 times. Because we run out to the Park and then back, we actually will cover the same trail approximately 6 times on one run. An

Travis training at sunset

This however gets very repetitive and the dogs often grow “sour.” Just imagine how you would feel if you had to run a marathon on a highschool track. It might be ok the first time. The next time you might get a little bored. By the 6th or 7th time, no matter how much you love to run, you are inevitably going to ask: why am I doing this?

We want to keep our dogs attitudes up and our own attitudes. So this year, Travis has been training all over the state. Most of the time, he is Knik, Alaska mushing with friend Wade Marrs. Together, they also travelled north to the Denali Highway where they did a series of camping trips.

But where exactly does this leave me?

Stuck at home.

With only myself and Travis currently working with the dogs, it means that I get to take care of the next generation of our kennel. We had several litters of puppies this year because our goal is ultimately to field two competitive Iditarod teams. So far, even though being at home means I cannot train, I have had a blast working with our puppies who are going to be the heart and soul of our kennel in the coming years.  Still, I will admit it is definitely tough staying at home. There a lot of work involved in the day to day running of a kennel; but more importantly, I just miss Travis. But, it’s all for the greater good… we are training to have a stellar season and being successful ultimately means we have to make certain sacrifices.

Wish us luck as we train. Have questions about Iditarod? Please, make sure to email us and we will post about them! If you enjoyed our post, please make sure you share it with your friends.

Handsome the Terrible and Midnight the Wonder Cat

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We recently added a new sled dog to our kennel, his name is Handsome…and there is a very good reason…he is GORGEOUS! We were given him because he is exceptionally shy dog despite lots of socialization and I have a long history of working with shy dogs and getting them to “come out of their shell” (or as the case usually is, dog house.) But all the shy dogs I’ve met and worked with before don’t even begin to hold a candle to Handsome. Although at home with his fellow canine companions, he is on full alert whenever I seem to come around…here’s a recent video I took of him resting inside:

The first three days at our kennel he lived in our house and at night I put him on the foot of my bed to sleep. On the third night, I woke up with his head resting on my stomach. You can imagine the joy I felt after having worked with him when I thought I had finally gotten through to Handsome that I was on his side. After all, I had bee feeding him, walking him on a leash, and at one point I even let him free run in our fenced in dog yard with all our pups. You could see although he was not at home with me that he, at least, felt at home…but maybe that was slowly starting to change.

Wrong!

That morning, believing that our bond had somehow deepened I decided to once again let him run loose with the pups. Letting our dogs play for an hour every morning 4-5 times a week is one of my greatest joys. Watching how our dogs interact, play, and “hang out” together is fun…more importantly I love that no matter what I am doing, whether it’s sitting on a dog house or scooping poop, that the dogs want to be around me. It’s cool to know that even though they have a huge yard to run around, they’d rather be hanging out playing next to mom.

What’s also awesome is that dogs as young as two months and as old as 10 years get along effortlessly. That’s not to say we don’t have occasional squabbles, we do, but they are always more interested in playing. Their favorite game is keep away. Inevitably, one dog always finds some treasured object whether it’s a bone, a ball, or a stick and then runs around trying to protect his treasure from everyone else. It’s hilarious. Occasionally, we get a “bad sport” who will take their treasure and dive into a dog house (“base”) to protect it and to stay away from the other dogs.

Well we had a great morning playing together and until playtime was over things went flawlessly. When playtime ended, one dog, Handsome refused to be captured. I have never had this problem. We have two shy dogs in our kennel — Willie and Sage — but both are dogs who respect, listen, and come to us. We work hard to socialize all our dogs, not only for our benefit but for theirs. One day, there will come a time when they cannot run or pull and they will need to retire. We can’t retire every dog to our kennel so it is important that our dogs have social skills. Plus, we mush because we love dogs…it’s only fun if they love us back!

Handsome is hanging out inside.

Handsome, unfortunately, was not at all like this. When I moved to the left, he moved to the right. No matter how close I got, he was always an arms length away. It seemed like we were magnets that repelled one another and no matter what I did I could not catch him.

So, I started pulling out every trick I have in my book. He is not the first dog who has not listened. Usually the puppies around 2-3 months old go through a brief “rebellious” phase where they do not want to be tied up and enjoy playing keep away. Max, my 1/2 husky 1/2 collie mix, Betty, our german shepherd, and Archie, our retired sled dog turned dog lot manager (I’ll post on this later), almost always come to my aid and help me coral the young ones — not so with Handsome. Their tricks at distracting would not work. Food did not work. Nothing worked. He was too fast and too smart.

I grew frustrated and started to think that I would never  catch him. He was in a fenced dogyard for crying out loud! How hard should it be?

But nothing seemed to work so Handsome remained loose.

Days passed. And I remained confused. Why wouldn’t he come? He always got so close but then whenever it seemed like I would reach out for him, would dart off in another direction.

One day went by. Then another. Then another.

Well, when I had given up hope of ever catching him, something miraculous happened: Midnight the Wonder Cat. Midnight cat has a thing for dogs and for some reason or another, they seem to have a thing for him. His best friend is a german shepherd and he routinely hangs out in the dog lot. Whenever we bring a sled dog inside he immediately goes up to it. For a long time I wondered about the expression curiosity killed the cat but now, I know. He is not shy whatsoever. See, look how he just helps himself to the dogs’ food.

So Midnight goes out to the doglot and Handsome immediately runs over and barks at him. They’d met earlier in the week and at one point I even caught them cuddled on the couch together — not a rarity with this cat. Midnight ran playfully around Handsome. There was no aggression. No sign of dog chasing cat or cat chasing dog, just playful gestures back and forth for about a half hour.

But eventually, Midnight decided it was time to go in. He came to do the door (I’d been watching this from inside) and I let him in. Much to my disbelief, Handsome followed Midnight not only inside but right up onto the couch to curl up with him. Quietly seated next to the cat, I easily snapped a leash onto Handsome who paid me no attention.

Handsome is still living inside. It’s clear he needs more time to learn how to trust us. For now, he’s happy snuggled up next to the coolest cat I’ve ever known.

Remembering Bode

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.