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Apache

Sarah · September 14, 2012 ·

“That is not a sled dog,” folks will say when they come in to our yard, pointing at Apache. “What is he?” is inevitably the next question that comes from their mouths. The perplexed look on their faces when they see him secretly makes me giggle.

“Not a sled dog you say? Well, hate to break it to you but Apache IS a sled dog. In fact, he’s one of the best dogs in our yard.”

People always look stunned. “But he has floppy ears.”

“Well dogs don’t run with their ears do they?”

“But he has spots!”

We then talk about what we DO look for in a sled dog because what type of ears they have or the color of their coat doesn’t concern us. Yes we like to make sure our dogs have a nice thick coat to keep them warm through the rough Alaskan winters but what that coat looks like doesn’t matter. Look at any ski shop and you’ll quickly learn: it’s not what the coat looks like on the outside ,but what makes it up that matters. Sled dogs have two coats: a dense heavy undercoat to keep them warm in the winter which they then (hopefully) shed as summer approaches and an outer coat, called guard hairs which help keep the snow wind and ice out.

Well what about the whole floppy-eared thing? Here at Turning Heads Kennel, we run Alaskan Huskies. Basically an Alaskan Husky is just a fancy condensed way of saying “a northern breed mutt that likes to pull.” Sled dogs come in all different colors and sizes. The one in important thing is their build. We look for a nice lean, athletic build. These guys are the marathon runners of the dog world (not the weight-lifters as some mistakenly think.) We want our dogs tall, long-legged, and to some extent big-chested. To that extent Apache fits the bill perfectly.

So meet our newest dog of the week: A P A C H E

Apache is one of those easy to distinguish dogs because of his great work ethic. He is a dog that is truly fun to hook up. As soon as Apache sees that you have a harness in your hand, a big smile rolls across his face and he is lunging to go. After all the grief everyone gave him this summer about not looking the part, it was always fun to hook him up and see people’s attitudes change.

“Wow! I guess he is a sled dog!” They’d say after the run.

Although a very sweet, loving boy with Travis and myself, Apache is timid around folks he doesn’t know and so serves as a good doorbell. We know if someone has pulled in the driveway to come say hello because Apache (and his brothers) who live at the front of the kennel will let us know.

Like all our dogs, Apache has enjoyed time inside our house during the winter. He may be one of the funniest dogs when he comes inside as he enjoys collecting items. After making a bed for himself, Apache roams the house looking for tiny treasures to take back to his nest: A tin can, dad’s sock, a book, two envelopes, a penny, a pen. He never chews on the items, in fact he treats them very gingerly as if he’s afraid of breaking them or hurting them and simply lays them around his bed, looking quite pleased with himself. He’s a truly funny dog with a great disposition!

Age: 3
Position: Lead/Swing Dog
Interesting Fact: Apache enjoys collecting items. His niece Bonnie is his twin and when she gets to play, she always chooses to play with Apache.
Relations in the Kennel:
Mother: Hope
Siblings: Bud (m), Weiser (m), Zema (f), Guinness (f), Amber (f), Madori (f)
Nephews through BUD: Micah (m), Chumley (m), Big Hass (m)
Newphew through WEISER: Captain (m)
Nieces/Nephew through MADORI: Bonnie (f), Clyde (m)
Grand Nephews through MICAH: Levi (m), Wrangler (m), Carhartt (m)
Total Relations in Kennel: 16

Top photograph courtesy of Albert Lewis.

A Day in The Life of Our Kennel

Sarah · September 5, 2012 ·

This Article appeared in the August 29th Edition of the Seward Journal

The last two weeks have been jam-packed here at Turning Heads Kennel. Our puppies continue to grow, the leaves have, it seems started to turn, and the cold wind that signifies summers end has begun to blow again. On the rainier nights, we’ve begun taking our teams out on longer runs. They’ve enjoyed stretching their legs and seeing new terrain.

Our mornings start early. We wake to wagging tails and barks of enthusiasm as soon as we step out into the yard. Our oldest group of puppies, now five months old are let out of their pen first thing in the morning. They jump on us, happy to see us and then they tear across the dog yard to greet the big dogs, their excitement generally welcomed. We scoop the yard as the big puppies (there are 5 of them, 3 born in our kennel, 2 adopted, all boys: Max, Drew, Levi, Wrangler & Carhartt) wander and play with the dogs and, by the time we’re done, the puppies are generally ready to be corralled back to their pen.

Then, it’s feeding time. After feeding, we let the little puppies loose. The little puppies are now two months old and they are the sweetest little girls: Pinky, Brain, Pickles, and Porkchop. On nice days and days when we aren’t overly busy, we take them for a walk around our property letting them take in the sights and smells of Alaska’s foliage. The devil’s club and firewood are far taller than our young pups, but they run into it without hesitation chewing on leaves and branches as they go. It’s easy to tell where they’ve been in our yard as the vegetation has

been trampled. Our once beautiful flowerbeds full of daisies and forget-me-nots hang closer to the earth than they once did from all the puppy feet who have run over them, but it’s well worth it. Our puppies are happy, eager, confident, and fearless.

Once the girls are back in their kennel, we play with our newest additions, who recently turned a month old. It was a small litter — just one male and one female. We hadn’t had much luck with names until one of our guests suggested Bonnie and Clyde. It stuck. Though they’ve only taken to walking and wandering recently, we can already see their personalities begin to develop. Bonnie eagerly greets any new person, challenge, or dog headed her way. Clyde is slightly more reserved. We continue to work with both and are happy to see that with love and time, Clyde is continuing to come out of his shell.

When morning chores are done and everybody has been fed and played with for the day, tours begin for the day. There are always little projects to do throughout when we don’t have guests: building houses, raking gravel, scooping the yard, and then scooping it again. Time passes quickly and before we know it, the sun is going down and it’s time to feed the dogs again. If we’re lucky, and we have been, the weather is cool enough to run and we take a team out to train. Even after a full day of tours, they want to run and see new land. Somewhere in there, we find time for ourselves: time to eat, time to do a load of laundry, but not much. We go to sleep tired and wake up eagerly, like the dogs, to do it all over again.

Zema

Sarah · August 24, 2012 ·

Enough good things cannot be said about this amazing little girl. Zema is one of our main leaders. She also happens to be one of the spunkiest, happiest dogs in our yard. Zema is currently on vacation. She was spayed last week — but don’t let that fool you, she has quite the maternal instinct. At the end of a busy day, we turn the dogs loose from being hooked up and teach them to run back to their house. Zema used to be one of the best at this, but in recent months has gotten distracted by the young pups in our yard. She beelines it for the puppy pen, whenever she is loose. If she can’t find a way in, she’ll attempt to nuzzle the pups through the fencing or, if she gets really anxious, she will start digging her way in.

After seeing her love and devotion to puppies, especially to ones that weren’t even hers, we had to admit we felt a little bad getting this special girl spayed. However, we firmly believe that if we do not intend to breed a dog, that spaying or neutering it is the best option. Besides eliminating any chance of accidental matings, it is also healthier for the dogs. Both females and males keep better weight when fixed and females are no longer susceptible to uterine infections.

Zema earned her distinction for dog of the week by continuing her peppy attitude despite having had surgery last Friday. You wouldn’t know by her attitude that she’d just gotten spayed. We recently put her back in the yard as she, along with the other dogs that got fixed, lived inside and our guests kept asking us to hook her up because of the sheer enthusiasm she was displaying at her house. Unfortunately for Zema, the doc said she still has quite some time before we can put her back in the team.

Keep up the good work Zema! We can’t wait to have you back in our team!

Age: 3
Position: Lead/Swing Dog
Interesting Fact: Zema is obsessed with puppies and small dogs.
Relations in the Kennel:
Mother: Hope
Siblings: Bud (m), Weiser (m), Apache (m), Guinness (f), Amber (f), Madori (f)
Nephews through BUD: Micah (m), Chumley (m), Big Hass (m)
Newphew through WEISER: Captain (m)
Nieces/Nephew through MADORI: Bonnie (f), Clyde (m)
Grand Nephews through MICAH: Levi (m), Wrangler (m), Carhartt (m)
Total Relations in Kennel: 16

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

Iditarod 2013 Preparation Begins

Sarah · August 8, 2012 ·

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!