Turning Heads Kennel

Alaska Dog Sledding Tours

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A Day at Turning Heads Kennel in Pictures

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  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…

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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.

Max, sleeping on my bed.   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.      

A Short Break On Their Trip to Willow….

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The phone rings at 7:57 waking me. I answer my cellphone only to have it die. I guess the charger hadn’t been plugged in all the way. I jump out of bed because I know what will come next and before I have time to walk into the living room, the house phone starts ringing.

Great. I can’t find the handset and I know it’s Travis.

It rings half a dozen times before the answering system picks up:

Hi Honey! Uhhh….Anyways we got to willow…but we had an adventurous night. 

We’re about to drop the dogs and go water them and then we’re going to find a spot to go run. But we had a very  very adventurous night…long story short we are going to have to put the truck in the shop…we didn’t crash or anything but… THE BRAKES CAUGHT ON FIRE…I hope you are listening to this cause seriously…MY. BRAKES….CAUGHT ON FIRE…and for once Grayson failed, he wasn’t Mr. Fix-it like, he just sat there laughing. Anyways. We’re all fine. There’s a truck auction in an hour somewhere up here…Maybe I could go…cause my brakes. CAUGHT ON FIRE. Seriously. Yup.  Uhhh…And with that news,  have a good day.

Talk to you later!

By the end of the message, I’m laughing so hard I am on the floor. I know, I know, the transcript does not convey hilarity whatsoever but Travis’ tone of voice is right on the edge of laughter and its infectious. I finally find the phone and return his call.

“So I hear your brakes caught on fire,” I say when he picks up.

He laughs. “Yup. Grayson just stood there laughing. I told him you know, you could at least pee on them or something.”

I start laughing.

“Instead he threw the last of our coffee on them…That was the crappiest part about the whole thing. That was good french vanilla coffee! I mean it wasn’t a big flame or anything.”

I had envisioned a small fire, you know, the type that happens when you cook steak on the grill and all the fat drips off and the fire wooshes up suddenly but just as quickly disappears.

“Yeah. That’s good,” I say.

“It was only like four inches or something.”

“Oh. That’s pathetic! That doesn’t even count!”

He laughs.

“But how did your brakes catch on fire?” I ask when I can finally stop laughing.

“The truck was acting funny. I pulled over two times before. I checked the rims on the trailer and the truck but everything seemed fine. I thought I had a flat. Nope! Then the next time I pulled over they caught on fire. It’s like they just locked up or something. So then we just slept in the car for like 4 hours. It sucked. We were like right outside of Girdwood and had no cell service. So we  just like let everything cool for awhile woke up at about 5:30 and started driving again.”

“And then they were fine?” I asked, skeptical.

“Yeah.”

“Weird.”

“It was an adventure. You would have liked it.”

I laughed. I probably would have. I have weird sense of “fun.”

“Anyways, I thought you should write about it, you know, cause well, my brakes caught fire and we had this adventure and stuff,” Travis says. He is trying not to sound too delighted.

“Ok,” I laugh.

“Hey honey, guess what?”

“What?”

“I can’t wait to go run the team!” Then, a long pause, “Also,” his tone of voice changes, trying to sound really sorry. ” you have to go do fish.”

Great. I think. “I guess I’m going to have an adventurous day.”

Change is in the Air

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It’s cold in the mornings. Travis wakes before the sun is done coming up, when its rays start splintering through our windows scratching at our eyes. “Get up! Get up!” The sun is saying. Travis pokes me a couple of times, realizes I am quite content to stay in bed, and kisses me goodbye. I sleep another hour; he heads outside.

There is the quiet barking at first. One dog here and there. Not the whole lot of them barking, just a few. It’s always just the excitable dogs at first who want Travis’ attention, his love that bark first. Then it invariably gets louder. Maybe he is throwing them a fish or shows a harness, it varies. No two things twice in a row. We aren’t organized enough for that.

It’s been a long, tough, summer for us all. We are young and filled our plates with too much stuff. Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. We had a blast doing tours but there were so many new components to it this year — employees, managing a glacier camp, and a huge learning curve…Now we reveal in the quietness of our days, the way you sit on the couch after Thanksgiving Day Dinner and watch football. That’s how we are passing the days now, digesting everything we’ve accomplished, waiting until we feel less full.

When I finally leave the comfort of my bed at 8:15, the team is already gone and the lot is already quiet again. Sometimes, they howl — the dogs who are left behind — and sometimes I feel like joining them. I hate staying home. Still, there is something that feels so intrusive about interrupting Travis’ early morning routine by tagging along, like watching a magician practice his tricks before the show. Instead, I try to figure out where to start my day.

We have lived in our home on Exit Glacier Road for almost two years. Yesterday, I hung our first picture up. It was strangely gratifying. I will work on the house for a few hours and try to do the things your supposed to do when you move in that we never did because we started a business instead. And then, as if one wasn’t enough, we said hey! lets take on another one! So now, finally, a quiet lull, and we are moving in; painting walls and tearing walls down, adding furniture and cabinets, fleshing out our skeleton home. We are putting our roots down. We’re here to stay. This is not just a house; it’s our home. And we need it to feel that way.

Eventually, I get sick of working — wrapping up business paperwork and organizing our kitchen. We have 17 cans of kidney beans in our closet, in case you wanted to know. (Don’t worry, we have even more cans of diced tomatoes and chicken broth.) Travis comes back somewhere in the middle of all this and begins hooking up another team to head out on another. I put by boots on and go out.

“Get on,” he says. The team is already all hooked up.

“Ok.” I clamber up the four wheeler.

“You ready?” He asks.

“Always,” I say.

He grins and calls the dogs up. And just like that, we’re off on another adventure…

Travis has signed up for Iditarod 2014

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It may be summer, but we are already preparing for Iditarod 2014. Saturday marked the first day of sign ups. Travis left our Seward tour business for a day to go and sign up while I manned the kennel and ran our summer dog sled tour.

We are more than thrilled with his performance this past year and are already working on putting together our team for next year. We are hoping that many of the challenges we faced in 2013 will not plague us — mainly flooding and warm weather.

Now that both the dogs and Travis have experience the trail once, we are hoping to compete. This past year, the goal was to familiarize both Travis and the dogs with what it takes to run the Iditarod. Believe me when I say, we learned a lot! From packing food drops to how to train, there are many things we plan on doing differently.

What did we learn?

Make a plan

Having a good plan for the race sets the tone — not only for the race but for training. The best way to train is to train the way you race, having a good plan early on will be key to our success this year.

Prepare Early

Figuring out what we need and learning to ASK FOR HELP will really improve our lives this year! Last year, we waited until the last minute to do our food drops. This was stressful and caused us to rush packing. Now that we’ve packed for Iditarod once, we have a pretty good idea of what we need and how much. We also have a much better idea of figuring out how much it will cost us and can better plan. As we really on our summer tours and our winter dog sled tours for all of our income, being able to financialy plan is key.

Fundraise

We are really excited to have the Breeze Inn located in Seward, Alaska on our side to help us plan some wonderful fundraisers. Last year, because of the flood, we actually had little time to prepare a fundraise. This year, the Breeze Inn has stepped in and will be hosting a few events to help us get to the starting line. We couldn’t be more excited! Want to help? We can always use items to donate at these events! Or you can sponsor us directly too! 

Train. Train. Train.

Last fall, we were really held back due to the flood. While most teams began training mid September, we really couldn’t kick things in gear until mid November. Repairing our house and dog lot took a lot out of us physically and financially. We started off behind. This year, we are going to start fall training on time!  In fact… our summer tours have allowed us the privilege of already starting! Every time we take the dogs out, we consider that a training run. It is AWESOME getting to work with the dogs day in and day out and see them grow in the sport!

We are really looking forward to another year of running dogs and chasing our dream of being the next Iditarod Champions!

2013 Iditarod Team

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So the decision has been made. This is Travis’ 2013 Iditarod team. We’ll be posting more information about the individual dogs as the week goes on. Here’s the team in action and a quick introduction. After all the hard fought battles we’ve faced this season: flooding, no snow, more flooding, warm temps, hectic food drops…we’ve made it. Iditarod is only a few short days away and to say that Travis is more than ready is an understatement!

Travis shot this video yesterday on Exit Glacier Road in Kenai Fjords National Park, where we do a lot of our training and where we run our winter dog sled rides. It was really warm yesterday — 32 degrees — but that is typical of Seward. Our dogs are used to running in warmer temperatures which, given this year, may be a blessing as its been a warm winter throughout Alaska. Instead of the
30 miles Travis thought he was going to do, he decided to do 60 and came home shortly before dark. The dogs looked great when the got back to the yard.