Dog Food

The Ups and Downs of Dog Mushing

Sarah · December 13, 2015 ·

A few day ago my run was, to put mildly, a disaster. I didn’t have a good day to begin with. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and in one of those funks that you just can’t seem to shake. So I decided to drive into town and be productive. We were out of meat for the dogs, so I decided that I would go to the feed store and pick up what we needed. I decided that I would get 500 pounds of chicken, 500 pounds of turkey skin, and 500 pounds of beef. I wanted to have a lot and be able to choose back at the kennel what to feed and when.

Different foods are better for different occasions. Beef is a good fatty meal for cold weather and the dogs always love it. Often, we will use it to broth the dogs — meaning that we will put 5 pounds of beef in a bucket and let it thaw and add water. Then we will feed this mixture to the dogs so that they will stay hydrated.
Chicken doesn’t have as much fat to it as beef, but it is cheaper and is great for snacking as it has a high water content. Turkey skins are fatty and are good for a snack along the trail or when it gets very cold out. The last couple of days temperatures have been ranging from about -10 to -25 so it is important that we have a good quality source of fat for the dogs.

On a normal day, we will feed about a pound to a pound and a half of meat per dog. The amount varies based on the temperature and how much the dogs are running. We don’t want to feed too much if they are running too far or if it is warm because The extra protein and fat can actually cause problems in the dogs if their bodies aren’t using it all.

So I picked up the 1500 pounds of meat and also decided to get 10 new harnesses. I feel like I buy more dog harnesses than any other musher. I don’t know why but we seem to go through them quickly. The dogs may bite them but more often than not they tear or just get worn out. I need to get better at learning how to sew so we can start repairing our broken harnesses but I guess that is going to be a summertime project.

So then I got home, and decided that even though it was getting dark I was going to hook up a Team. Now, what are the biggest problems I seem to have that when I am in a funk and not having the best day Is that I tend to make bad decisions. This of course, results in a snowball effect. And then, my bad day spirals out of control.

My bad decision wasn’t hooking up dogs, it was just my ability to choose what dogs

Bs what team I was going to run. Rather than stick with a tried-and-true combination, I decided that I would go out on a limb and try milliliters new swing dogs and have no back ups in my team.I left the yard with Tamere and Coda In lead.

Now, Coda is a young dog who hasn’t done much leading. Tamere, on the other hand is a tried-and-true Iditarod veteran. Her problem, however, is that she is a little princess. Yesterday, it was cold out. Tamere had spent the last two days sleeping inside because she loves to cuddle and I was trying to be nice to her.

Big mistake.

We didn’t even leave the yard before I had my first problem. Tamere, probably grumpy about leaving her warm palace started fighting with Coda, who happens to be her son. I got that sorted out, pulled my hook and left the yard only to find out that my big fat dog Max, had decided to chase after me.

I had hooked this team up to a different Sled thinking that anything had to be better than the sledI went out with that didn’t have the foot boards on it. Boy, was I wrong! This sled was extremely light, and very Squirrley. As we careened down the hill out of our yard, Max chasing after us, the sled was much lighter and more flexible then anything I’d been on recently and my boot was getting stuck between the break bar and the bed of the sled: not good.

As I tried to pull my foot out, I tipped. I somehow managed to grab the snow hook while getting drug down the trail, Max now nipping at my ankles, perhaps trying to stop me, and jam the snow hook into the snow. The team came to an abrupt halt.

I hadn’t even gone 100 yards and I had already wiped out once. The team was amped, pulling hard against my set hook. I shook myself off and got ready to go again, sending Max back home with Justin who had run after the team when he had noticed that Max was chasing us. But as I was getting ready to leave, Travis came zooming by me with his 18 dog tea and our neighbor in tow, yelling about how the trail had been plowed in. Great, I thought to myself, just great.

With no other choice, I pulled my hook and head forward down the trail. My sled continued to bounce down the trail like a pinball off of snowbanks and trees as I tried my best to steer it. It didn’t matter that I had a 50 pound block of chicken inside my Sled acting as weight, the thing may as well have been empty. I managed to stay upright and felt as though I had some control over the team as we merged off of our out trail and onto the main trail that goes alongside the Parks Highway. Still, I noticed that my brake was not as effective as it should’ve been and I struggled with keeping the team at a comfortable speed. As I got anxious, the dogs got more rowdy. That’s what happens, when you run dogs. They play off of your fear and off of your anxiety. That is why it is always important to project control and confidence. Easier said than done.

As I continued down the trail I told myself that I was going to have a great run, building up my confidence and doing my best to project it. I settled in to the pace of the dogs and got them under control at a nice steady pace. But, unfortunately it doesn’t last for long. Tamere does not want to run today and she makes it abundantly clear in every way possible. She turns the team around, she deliberately ignores commands, and the more I try to assert my role as team leader the more she gives me the middle finger. Now, Tamere and I have a long history of not getting along together. It’s why, I don’t usually run her. But, unfortunately for Tamere, she has been demoted and will not be on Travis’s race team this year. So although she pines for Travis, the love of her life, she is stuck with me. And she isn’t very shy about telling me how much she hates it. This is why I was determined to run her. But I digress.

The trail continued to deteriorate and I quickly Found the large snow berms that had been plowed onto the trail that Travis had shouted about while running past. They were Frozen solid and hard to steer around but equally difficult to try and go over. At one point,Tamere decided that she thought the correct trail to take, due to all the berms, was the Parks Highway. And for a few terrifying second I thought I was going to be running down the road.

Fortunately, Travis had alerted Wyatt to the deteriorating trail conditions.Wyatt had driven out in his car to come lend me a hand in getting around the berms. He helped me get my team back on the trail and then out of a good sense of judgment decided to stay and watch how the team faired.

We did not fair well. I tipped the sled once. No biggie, I got it up right. Then, my goal was to take the team onto a lake where we hadn’t been before. Tamere used this opportunity to show how much she wanted to go home by turning the entire team around. I was having none of it. I kept trying to line her out. I would get her back in front of the sled pointed in the direction we needed to go, only to have her turn back around as soon as I got to the sled.

Now dripping with sweat, I was growing frustrated. The thing about dog mushing is, the dogs are never supposed to be in charge. So here I was out on the trail with this leader who didn’t want to listen and no real alternative as to who to put upfront. To make matters worse, I didn’t have great control over my sled. The break wasn’t digging in enough and my snow hook ropes were too long. This resulted in a very frustrating pattern. Either I would get the team going and then the snow hooks would bounce out of my sled, catching on the trail the whole team would come to abrupt stop or I would set my snow hook and then have to awkwardly reach behind me to get it out of the snow.

I really was mad at myself because as much as I preach about setting yourself up for success and the importance of doing it in dog mushing, I had done everything but. In my haste to get out on the trail and put my bad day behind me, I had forgotten the basics. That’s why they are the basics I’ve told myself since: if the basics aren’t done properly then your run is going to inevitably deteriorate into a shit show, which mine had.

In the end, I cut the run short. I was miserable and I needed to regroup. It’s not something I’ll be able to do on race day, and I’m keenly aware of that, but sometimes you just have to listen to your gut.

So, the next day it was all about doing everything right. Checking and double-checking and making sure all the basics were covered. It was all about getting back on the horse, and going back at it.

I went out with Travis, Justin and Wyatt. We all had clean runs. We had fun. We ran dogs and came back and played Uno. We went to bed happy and succesful, waiting for tomorrow so we could do it all again.

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.

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.

Sled Dogs Have Olympic Sized Diets

Sarah · August 15, 2012 ·

This Article Appeared in the August 15th Edition of the Seward Journal

Fall is slowly starting to creep in, and the dogs can tell. Cooler temperatures have begun settling over Seward and there is a tangible excitement hanging over our dog lot. The dogs know, like we do, that fall training is almost here – weeks? days? – and they are more than ready. On the rainy days when we have hooked them up for tours, the dogs are particularly loud, anticipating the longer runs that will soon come.

We’ve begun thinking about what this winter will mean for us too. Keeping dogs is no easy task, let alone Iditarod dogs. They are the Olympians of the dog world and have Michael Phelps sized diets. During Iditarod our dogs will burn 10,000 to 12, 000 calories a day, so we have to put even more back in to them. The summer months generally bring a reprieve from high food costs as the warm summer temperatures combined with the shorter runs mean the dogs burn fewer calories. Currently we are feeding one ton of dog food a month and as training begins that will only go up. Needless to say we have begun to think about fundraising to help alleviate our dog food costs.

We’ve also been slowly building new houses for our dogs too. Good houses mean the dogs stay warmer and are better protected from the elements. We still have another ten out or so houses to build before summer ends, but we are happy with our progress. The dog yard certainly is brighter as we’ve painted our houses brilliant shades of green, yellow, blue, pink, and red. The colors make the yard a fun place to be even on the rainiest of days Seward.

We’d like to remind the Seward community that we will happily take any freezer burnt meat or fish and to remember us this hunting season. Our dogs love bones and meat scraps. We also invite anyone who is interested in helping us fundraise to send us an email atTurningHeadsKennel@gmail.com

Volunteering with The Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association

Sarah · October 11, 2011 ·

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.

Salmon Fish Trap: This is the only opening in Bear Creek so the fish are forced to swim up into the holding pens.

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!

Salmon in holding tank. They are separated male/female.

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.

These salmon eggs have been fertilized and are now being rinsed with salt water so that they will “harden”

Another shot of the fertilized salmon eggs. The salt water also helps the sperm live longer so that more eggs will get fertilized.

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.

Opening up a salmon. We took kidney samples from every fish to check for kidney disease.

Kidney sample from the 80th female. This will be tested for kidney disease. If it’s positive, the eggs from this fish will be thrown 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!

A Note On Blogging

Sarah · July 30, 2011 ·

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!