Turning Heads Kennel

Alaska Dog Sledding Tours

Seward Journal Article

Delivering Santa &Training Update

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This Entry Appeared in the December 12, 2012 Edition of the Seward Journal

Mother Nature is such a tease. For the past two months we have had bitterly cold weather without the slightest hint of snow. We are not alone in our search for it. Mushers all over are collectively asking, “Where is the snow?” To make matters worse, until the snow arrives, our trails in town are exceedingly limited. The long runs needed at this time simply cannot be done in Seward. We’ve been forced to do a lot of travelling.

Travis has now spent more time in Knik this November than he has here in town. He’s stayed with mushing friends and has enjoyed the long uninterrupted runs he’s been able to put on the dogs.

Photo Courtesy of Barb Redington
The dogs to impress us. We often compare our team to a freight train; they start their runs slow and gradually they gain momentum. At times they seem invincible, roaring up steep hills with a casual elegance that makes us wonder if they are really even working. We suppose they must be, but they simply make it look easy. They often end runs stronger and more excited than when they began. These are things we love to see. Just last week the dogs covered about three hundred miles.

On Thursday, we came home and participated in the Tree Lighting Ceremony at the Sea Life Center by delivering Santa with the dog team. We used our four-wheeler because there wasn’t enough snow. The dogs didn’t mind though, we’ve been training on the four-wheeler for almost three months now.  We have to admit that we were a bit nervous though: our dogs have never run in crowds or in parking lots so we were putting them to the test. 

We truly were impressed with our lead dogs, Tamere and Boston, who drove the team through the crowd as if they had been doing their entire lives.  It was magical giving back to a community who has been so supportive and to see our dogs take right to it. Travis steered them around the parking lot as if that is where they had been running their entire lives. It was awesome. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

If anyone has pictures or videos from Thursday night we would love to see them. You can either post them to our facebookpage: www.facebook.com/turningheadskennel or email them to us at info@turningheadskennel.com

A Day in The Life of Our Kennel

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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.

Sled Dogs Have Olympic Sized Diets

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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

Madori Had Puppies and Kennel Update

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The Following Appeared in the August 1st Issue of The Seward Journal

Things are getting busy here at Turning Heads Kennel. Madori, one of our lead dogs, gave birth to two puppies (a male and a female) on July 17, bringing our total number of puppies this year to 11. It’s more pups than we’ve ever had, but we are trying to grow our kennel. We certainly have our hands full but have enjoyed having locals and tourists alike come play with our dogs. Socializing them early is a critical part of sled dog development as when they’re out on the race trail, they will be looked over by vets and loved on by race fans.

Dogs and humans alike are also enjoying the exceptionally nice weather we’ve had over the last several days. Our new cart, designed for taking passengers out on the trail, arrived midway through the month and our dogs love being able to take guests out for rides. Our cart, locally designed be welder Nick Lester, fits eight people comfortably and really brings the thrills of dogsledding to life on the winding trails we have through our property. It’s also given us a great opportunity to work with our dogs and train them throughout the summer. In particular it’s really benefited our younger lead dogs as the trail we’ve been taking guests out on is a series of inter-connected loops. We’ve made a point of always changing the way we go so that the dogs stay focused and so they continue honing in on their commands. It may still be the summer time but our dogs are always working and learning just like us.