It’s been a busy week for us so far, here at Turning Heads Kennel. On Monday, the Seward Student Leadership program came out to the kennel. The Student Seward Leadership program has 18 students from grades 4-6 in it. They have decided to help us fundraise for this year’s Iditarod and we couldn’t be happier! We spent the afternoon teaching them not only about our dogs, but also talking with them about what a good fundraiser might entail. We showed them some of the important gear our dogs use like dog booties, wrist wraps, and dog jackets.

We decided that a spaghetti feed fundraiser here in town would be a great way not only to help raise money for essential items for our Iditarod: like booties, new dog jackets, etc, but it will also be a great way to get the local community involved. We really love sharing our sport! Of course, we also took the Leadership team out on a dog ride which they loved and let them play with our puppies (who are now getting very big!). All-in-all, I’d say it was a successful meeting!

On Tuesday, we woke up early to get ready for our friends wedding. It was a low-key affair down at the local court-house. It was perfect. The bride, Nichole, looked absolutely stunning and you could see the happiness in both their eyes. Mark, the groom, looked dashing. Nichole and I had fun in Anchorage a few days before picking out his and Travis’ ties and shoes. Both Mark and Nichole have been helping us around the kennel, and we couldn’t be more grateful. Nichole is a world-class chef and has been cooking some really wonderful meals for us to come home to after a busy day of promoting our tour, running dogs, and trying to keep everything functioning. Mark has been helping us take care of dogs, chopping wood, and just helping us get prepared for winter. We’ve been really lucky to have their help as things are only getting busier and busier around here!

Unfortunately, as the week winds down our work winds up. We have more teams to run and have been running them longer and longer each day. I recently started training some of our older puppies, while Travis has been focus on the main racing pool. We have 28 dogs in the main pool which is perfect for both of us to race this winter. Last year, it was almost impossible to run two teams in the same race due to the number of dogs we had. This year, we’ve both signed up for several races: Sheep Mountain 150, Knik 200, Northern Lights 300, and now, with the Tustumena 200, announcing they’ve changed their dates, we are hoping to sign up for that. I had a wonderful experience running the T-200 last year and would love to be a part of such a wonderful race again.

Travis is also going to sign up for this year’s Kusko 300, run out in Bethel. We’ve talked it over a lot and we think it will be a great race for a number of reasons. With all the racing we have planned for him, Travis will have put on 1100 miles on his dog team just through racing. This will prove really valuable as a lot of our younger dogs haven’t had a lot of racing experience. It will also be a great way for him to look at all 28 of the dogs in our racing pool. Believe it or not, dogs are sometimes like human athletes…they perform better when racing, not when training. With that many miles, he’ll be able to look at his dogs really critically. The best part, however, is that the last race we are signed up for (if we do sign up) would be the Tustumena 200 which is run the first week in February. What this means is, after a strong month of racing in January, the dogs will have almost a month between our last race and Iditarod. This will really allow us to focus in on training and choose our top 16 dogs — which isn’t always as easy as you’d think.

Well it may only be August, but we’re already thinking about Iditarod. While technically fall training doesn’t begin until mid-September, our tours have given us an excellent excuse to hone the skills of our lead dogs. Believe it or not, we’ve actually trained up several new leaders just by offering our summer dog sled ride. Plus, the colder weather we’ve been having here in Seward makes it very tempting to want to run our dogs further and further.

Travis handing in his $3000 entry fee for Iditarod 2013

So, how has running a tour business helped us train our dog team and new leaders? It’s simple — the trails we run on. I think we have a pretty unique set up in terms of summer dog sled rides. We don’t simply take our guests on rides – we put on a show for them. We have a small network of trails and over the course of the run our leaders travel through 10 intersections — places where they have to listen to what we, the musher tell them, and they have to react to. It really hones the dogs’ understanding of our commands: GEE (right) and HAW (left). We’re discovering our Iditarod team will have a lot more leaders than we initially thought because we’ve had the opportunity to train them up each and every day.

We also recently expanded our kennel to get ready for Iditarod. Travis wanted a few older veterans to fill out our younger crowd of dogs. We went to Anchorage last Saturday night to pick up the new additions… the only problem? There were seven dogs and our dog truck is currently in the shop. Instead of fretting about it, we drove up in our small Honda CR-V thinking to ourselves, “How on earth are we going to fit 7 full grown dogs in our car?”

My second job as a waitress prevented us from leaving Seward until 11:30 and the dogs were coming down from Fairbanks with a friend. We didn’t arrive in Anchorage until 2 in the morning, shortly after the dogs arrived. We walked them around the Best Buy parking lot and loaded their crates on the roof of our car. All seven dogs seemed tired but they eagerly hopped in the back.

You’d think with seven dogs in the back of the car you’d hear a bit of grumbling from one of them, but the dogs, tired from their journey, were relaxed and fell asleep, almost on top of each other. We felt like we were on a family road trip with 7 kids in the back. There sense of belonging to one another kept them calm and they seemed to enjoy their ride down. But you could tell they were excited to get to the dog lot.

We’ve ran the new dogs several times so far. Joe, a sleek black dog with the tiniest feet I’ve ever seen, will certainly make Travis’ Iditarod team. He finished Iditarod last year with Braxton Peterson who finished in 28th place with a time of 10d 22h 44m 4s. Apparently, he was barking and screaming to go under the burled arch. We’re also hoping that Marshall, a large houndy dog, will make our team. He’s trained with Lance Mackey for the last several years but has never made his Iditarod team.

Betty and Midnight have officially earned the title of “Tourist Greeter.” They diligently monitor the driveway and come up to anyone willing to give them a pat on the head. After a particularly busy day, they retired on the couch together (shown below). While most people think it’s strange for a cat and dog to be such good friends, Midnight, the cat, is really more of a dog. He eats (or tries to eat) with the dogs on a regular basis and goes crazy over dog food!

Well, that’s all for now. The pups in the yard continue to grow and we’ve enjoyed letting them run loose to play with the big dogs. It’s always fun watching the bigger dogs interact with the little ones. Zema, one of our main leaders, is particularly obsessed with puppies. Whenever she runs loose visiting the pups is her number one propriety. It seems, more often than not, that she forgets that they are not her puppies much to the chagrin of their real mother. Still, it’s cute to watch how excited she is around them.

Until next time!

Fall Training Picks Up

Iditarod 2013 Preparation Begins