Sled Dog Care Part 2 — A look at Caring for Sled Dogs on the Trail

Sled Dog Care: What We Do On The Trail

This is the second article in a two part series on sled dog care. Learn about how we take care of our dogs when they are in the kennel in: Sled Dog Care Part 1 – A look at Dog Care in the Kennel.

We provide sled dog care out on the trail every time we train by assessing our dogs and their abilities. Good sled dog care in training translates to good sled dog care in races. While good sled dog care doesn’t necessarily equate to a first place finish, in order to finish well you must have good dog care.

Being the recipient for a humanitarian award is one of the highest honors a musher can be given while racing. The humanitarian award is given to the musher who demonstrates the best dog care on the trail. It is generally voted on by the vets and race officials.  Travis has now been the recipient of two such awards by both the Tustumena 200 and the Copper Basin 300 races.

We have tremendous respect for all of our fellow mushers out on the trail who share a willingness to talk and teach about great sled dog care. We also have tremendous respect for all the vets who volunteer their time at races. Not only do the vets assess dogs but they also play a vital role in educating mushers on ways to improve their dog care. Check out Jodi Bailey of Dew Claw Kennel‘s great post “My Not So Secret Love Affair With Veterinarians” to learn more about the wonderful thing trail vets help mushers with.

Sled dog care during training can be broken down into three distinct parts: the care and assessment you do before a run, the care and assessment you do during a run, and the care and assessment you do after a run.

Sled Dog Care: Before A Run

Good dog care starts by assessing trail conditions, the overall health of your dogs and looking at the temperature.

Trail Conditions

One of the most important things we need to take into consideration before heading out on a run are trail conditions. Depending on the time of year and weather, sometimes the trail can present conditions that force us to adjust our traveling speed so that we reduce the likelihood of a dog pulling a muscle.

Hard-Pack Trail

Hard-packed trail, especially early on in the season, can cause more strain on a dog’s muscles and joints – this however makes some sense. Imagine if you train for 3 or 4 months on dirt roads or grass for a marathon and then suddenly switch to running on hard pavement. Your legs would not be used to it and you would feel some soreness the next day.

Fresh Snow

New snowfall also forces the dogs to break trail. Depending on the depth of the snow, mushers may not go as far. Breaking trail through two feet of snow is incredibly tough and may only be done for 10-20 miles, whereas breaking trail through 6 inches of snow may warrant further progress.

Fall Training: Dirt & Ice

Early on in the season, we have to worry about how frozen dirt will effect feet. Do we booty to protect feet from abrasive gravel or should we leave the booties off for better traction on ice? Sometimes, trail conditions are poor enough that it warrants sitting the dogs or finding alternative methods of exercising them.

These decisions are up to the musher but are important to take into account. Mushers often try to train in all the conditions they would encounter on a race so that their dogs are adequately prepared.
Trail conditions play an important part in our decision making for the overall length of a training run. Because of this, assessing trail conditions is the first step in having great sled dog care.

Foot Care

Our on-the-trail dog care starts before we leave on a run by paying attention to our dogs feet.

Booties

Each and every run from Mid-November on, we put booties on our dogs to help protect their feet. In the summer, our dogs working on Godwin Glacier doing summer dog sled tours also wear booties.

Dog booties come in four sizes. Some sled dogs actually wear different sizes on their front and back feet. The booties are made out of a thin material and are one of our most expensive training costs aside from food – it costs us almost $1 per booty. It terms of usefulness, however, they are invaluable as they help prevent the dogs from getting cuts on their feet.

Booties are changed regularly when we are out on the trail or racing. Whenever we stop the dog team to rest for a few hours, we remove their booties. I don’t know about you, but when I lay down for a rest I enjoy taking my shoes off.

Booties help protect our dogs feet from getting cut or abrasions on the pads of their feet and inbetween the webbing of the toes.

Trimming Nails

Making sure our dogs have short nails is also a key part to having a successful run. Long toenails effect our dogs posture and gait and can lead to more frequent injuries. Ideally, the nails should be kept short. During fall training, the nails generally wear down on their own due to running on dirt. In the winter, however, we must routinely trim nails to keep them short. Long nails can result in shoulder and wrist injuries. Occasionally, long nails can also get torn off.

Health

Besides feet, we also have to look at the overall health of the dog. How does the dog look? Have they had diarrhea or do they look sore or perhaps lethargic? Are they in a good working weight? These are all considerations we have to take in to account when we decide to run (or not to run) a dog.

Before Iditarod, our dogs also have to undergo EKG’s and blood work to look for underlying health issues that may impact their performance and health on the trail.

Assessing Temperature

Temperature also plays a role in sled dog care. During the early parts of fall training, mushers must be cautious not to run their dogs too far during warm temperatures. Later in the season, mushers must watch the temperature to assess their dogs need for dog jackets and  male wraps.

Cold Training Conditions

When we begin training or racing in colder conditions, we must help our dogs stay warm. We must also be keenly aware of each dog’s unique needs and metabolism during colder events.

Dog Jackets

Dog jackets are an important way to keep dogs warm when it is cold out. Although our dogs are adapted to the cold they do need help staying warm when the temperature reaches about -25F.

Male Wraps & Belly Warmers

When cold, mushers often put male wraps on their male dogs and belly warmers on their females. These important pieces of gear help the dogs stay warm in cold temperatures. The wraps are specifically designed out of fur or another waterproof fabric so that the dogs can urinate on them without the urine sticking. These help our dogs keep their undersides warm where dogs sometimes have less hair.

Warm Training Conditions

Generally warm training conditions are much harder to overcome. Warm conditions require constant stopping to allow dogs to get rid of any excess heat and lots of water. Good hydration in warmer temperatures is imperative. Generally, mushers choose to run shorter distances in warmer weather.

Sled Dog Care: During A Run

Out on the trail we must constantly assess our dogs performance to make sure they are able to continue running. Fluke injuries, muscle strains, fatigue, and illness are all things that can impact a dog’s performance during a run. We are able to assess our dogs during a run in a multitude of ways: we look at their gait, we monitor their behavior, we assess their attitudes, and we judge their performance. Our job is to constantly assess our dogs. When assessing a dog we look at their gait, behavior, and attitude as ways to judge their overall performance.

Gait

Once out on the trail with our team, we watch the gait of our dogs relentlessly. We tune in to the rhythm of our dogs movement. Over the course of a run, we may find one dog falls out of sync with the rest of the team. Unlike his teammates, this dog is no longer moving completely smoothly. This subtle change in gait could indicate a muscle strain or soreness starting up.

Gait is indicative of many things. Although gaits can vary widely between dogs, a musher training for a mid-distance or long-distance race has to spend so much time with their dogs that they can easily spot a change in gait. You’d notice, wouldn’t you, if your friend was walking funny because they stubbed a toe? Although this is a gross exaggeration, this is a great comparison for how a musher sees their team.

Behavior

We also monitor the dogs behavior while they’re running– Are they eating snow a lot? Is one dog pooping a lot? Is a dog looking back at me a lot? — as another way to assess our dogs overall physical condition.

Generally, when fully trained, our dogs will run anywhere from 30-80 miles at a time, stopping only for a quick snack of fish, chicken, or beef. If, however, we see a dog eating snow a lot (an indication they are getting hot) we will stop and rest the team, allowing the dogs to cool off. If a dog has been having lots of loose stools, we would check to make sure they were staying properly hydrated and adjust their feeding. If we were on a race, we would consult a vet. At home, if we notice a dog feeling under the weather it may warrant the dog spending a night or two inside and taking a few days off from training.

Attitude

Attitude is an important way we can assess our dogs while out on the trail and is easiest to do while stopped. Are the dogs barking to go? Is one dog getting cranky whenever we stop? We look at our dogs attitude as a great indication of how they are doing on the run.

Judging Performance

Overall during a run we are looking for changes in behavior, gait, and attitude as a way to look at our dogs overall performance and determine their eligibility to continue running. This is a subject that is quite complicated as, generally speaking, a musher does not wait for a dog to stop pulling to remove it from their team.

Sled Dog Care: After a Run

When we complete a long run, whether we are on a race or at home training, there are certain things we do to help keep our dogs in tip-top shape. Because of this, it is after a run that the the work for the musher really begins. The musher has many tools to assess their sled dogs. One of the acronyms mushers and vets use in looking at dogs is H.A.W.L. — this is easily remembered because “Haw” is the command for left.

H: Heart / Hydrartion

A: Attitude/ Appetite

W: Weight

L: Lungs

Heart

During races, vets will often take stethoscopes to our dogs to listen to their hearts to make sure they sound normal. Mushers may also carry stethoscopes.

Hydration

Hydration is crucial for a sled dog. Dogs, like humans, have are composed of a majority of water. The Yukon Quest provides the staggering fact in their article “Water, Water Everywhere” that:

Over the course of 10 to 15 days, the Alaskan sled dogs and huskies racing the Yukon Quest will require roughly 6 liters (or quarts) every day. That’s 1.5 gallons of water for a 50-pound dog.  A 150-pound human would have to drink 4.5 gallons, or 72 glasses, of water every day to keep up.

Fortunately, sled dogs are able to get a lot of their water from food that they eat. Mushers try to get water in their dogs by feeding lots of fish, frozen meats, and soaked kibble. In fact, a majority of the water sled dogs drink is actually in their food!

Checking hydration can be done by observing the color of urine. Well hydrated sled dogs have a very light yellow to clear colored urine whereas dehydrated sled dogs will have bright yellow urine.

Skin elasticity or the “Skin Tent Test” is another way to check for hydration in dogs. By lifting the skin on the back shoulder blades of the dog, one can quickly tell if a dog is dehydrated. In a well hydrated dog, the skin will snap back quickly. In a dehydrated dog, it will do so slowly causing a “skin tent.” Here is a short video about ways to determine hydration in dogs:

Appetite

Appetite is a great way to assess a team’s overall condition – this is why you will generally see race commentators noting how the dogs are eating. A team’s appetite hugely influences the amount of rest a musher will take during a race.

If a team is eating well, a musher may be able to afford resting less. A team with a voracious appetite will have plenty of fuel to help them get further down the trail once it’s time to take off. Getting food and water into a dog team is crucial for success.

A team that is not eating well needs to rest until they are up to eating again. A team that is not eating well may be sick or tired.

Attitude

How do the dogs look when they come in? A team that is barking and screaming to continue down the trail paints an entirely different picture than a team that comes in slow and tired.  Ideally, dogs look alert, confident, and ready to go.

Weight

How do the dogs look? Do they have enough fat reserve should the weather turn? Are they able to stay adequately warm? During the demands of an endurance race such as Iditarod, maintaining good body weight is key for overall success.

Lungs

How do the lungs sound? Lungs should sound clear. Dogs should not wheeze.

Foot Care

Foot care is, without a doubt, one of the most crucial aspects of our dog care. If a dog’s feet are not in tip-top shape, there is no way they will be able to run!

The first thing we do after every run is remove booties and check feet. When looking at feet, we look for splits in between the toes of our dogs, check for abrasions on the pad of the foot, and also look at the individual toes to make sure there is no soreness. Nails are also assessed as long nails or cracked nails can be painful!

Generally, we put ointment on our dogs feet to aid in the healing of any splits (think canine blister) and gently massage it in. The The ointment is more or less a Neosporin for dogs.

Massage

After massaging the feet, we also massage the dog’s front wrist joints and check for tenderness. Every sport has an injury that it’s athletes are more likely to receive – skiers worry about their ACL, football players concussions, runner’s ankle and knee problems – and for sled dogs its problems in their wrists. We proactively take care of wrist injuries through massage and wraps.

We also massage the shoulders of our dogs and stretch them out. We thoroughly work over each dog, massaging, stretching, and, of course, loving the dog. The Yukon Quest wrote a great article on the use of massage therapy on sled dogs — it’s definitely worth a read.

Generally, if we are on a race or series of runs, the dogs would then eat a meal and rest for a few hours before going out on another run and the cycle of observe, react, care and rest would repeat itself.

Why Sled Dog Care On The Trail is Important

During training, musher pay close attention to their dogs, analyzing their gaits, their habits, and their normal routines. Learning the intricacies of our dogs helps us recognize when things aren’t right so that we can take the best possible care of our dogs. Good dog care leads to dog results!

During races, we work closely with the trail vets to assess our dogs. Dr. Tim Hunt has a great two-part article about Dr. Stu Nelson: The Work of an Iditarod Trail Vet Part 1 and  Stu Nelson — Part 2: Who is Stu Nelson, What He Does In His Free Time, And What you Can Do To Keep Your Pet Health Dr. Tim is the maker of premium dog food Dr. Tim’s as well as being a veterinarian and Iditarod racer. Stu Nelson is the Chief vet on Iditarod — it’s definitely worth a quick read.

We hope you enjoyed this blog post going over the basics of sled dog care out on the trail. Hopefully, we will be able to provide more in depth articles on sled dog care in the future!

Sled Dog Care Part 1 — A look at Housing & Caring for Sled Dogs

This is the first article in a two part series about how we take care of our sled dogs both at home and out on the trail. 

We love our dogs and strive to take the best care possible of them. To us, our dogs are family. We are not alone in this philosophy: mushers run dogs because we love dogs and when you love something, you take excellent care of it.

Owning sled dogs is a huge commitment. Like any animal, they require lots of attention every single day and so, in many ways, we give up a good deal of freedom. We choose to do this because we love our animals and the lifestyle we share with them.

Good sled dog care happens both at home and on the trail and its important to have both. We feel really honored that Travis has now been the recipient of two humanitarian awards, given for best dog care, by both the Tustumena 200 and the Copper Basin 300 sled dog races.

A Glimpse At Our Kennel: Sled Dog Care in The Dog Yard

When you walk into our dog yard you will notice two things. The first is that we have a lot of dogs who live at brightly colored houses. The second is that they aren’t making any noise. That’s because our dogs have their needs met: they have shelter, food, water, and, most importantly, lots of love and attention. Because we provide sled dog tours for a living, we are able to work with our dogs full time. I couldn’t think of better, happier co-workers!

Most mushers have between 30-100 dogs — seeing so many dogs at once can be overwhelming if you have never experienced it. We have 55 dogs and are leasing another 10 this year from musher Louis Ambrose. Our dogs are all friendly and generally speaking we allow our guests to interact with whichever dogs they would like.

Many people wonder why sled dogs live outside year-round. The main reason sled dogs live outside is that they are highly adapted for living outside in cold weather climates. While many of our dogs spend time in our home on a rotational basis, they generally get too hot and need to go back outside after a few hours. Imagine if you had to wear your parka inside all day long when it was 70F out — you’d get pretty uncomfortable after a while too! Throughout the summer and fall, our dogs hardly use their houses, preferring to sleep outside even in the rain.

Tethering Sled Dogs

Outside, our dogs are on tethers or in pens. Generally speaking, we space our dogs so they are close enough to play. We supplement this by routinely letting the dogs have free-time in our fenced in yard. We are currently working on building another large pen so that our dogs can enjoy greater freedom and more space to roam and play together. It is important to our philosophy as a kennel that our dogs have plenty of time to be dogs and have decided that building large enclosures where they can run around, play, and interact with their teammate is important to us.

Tethering sled dogs is a routine practice. Although many people are uncomfortable with the idea of tethering dogs, sled dogs receive so much exercise and care, it is important for each dog to have their own spot to call home where they can rest in relax. Cornell University published a paper saying that keeping sled dogs in pens showed no benefit over keeping them on tethers. You can read that study here, if you’d like. Nancy Russell also wrote a wonderful short article called “the positive effects of tethering.”

We tether most of our dogs but have pens for our puppies, who are not yet pulling sleds, and our females in heat. We would like to have more pens available for our older dogs in the future and hope to work on that this coming spring. We have also purchased two large dog carousels, but have lacked the time and resources to get it put together. This will be one of our springtime projects!

Our young dogs generally run loose through the yard when we are not doing tours; this helps socialize our puppies with the rest of the kennel while also providing playmates for our older dogs.

Keeping Sled Dogs Inside

Even though sled dogs don’t always enjoy being inside, sometimes we have to bring them in. Last fall, I built a 10-hole dog box for our basement. We’ve used it numerous times to bring in sick or injured dogs, young dogs who we want to spend more time with, or if the weather is particularly bad.

Here in Seward, it generally does not get cold enough where we would want to consider bringing our dogs in. Mushers who live further north sometimes see temperatures of -40, -50 and even -60 below! While sled dogs are adapted to the cold, many mushers who live in these areas have “dog barns” where they can bring their dogs inside. Aliy Zirkle and Allen Moore of SP Kennel live in Two Rivers Alaska where it can get quite cold and have a dog barn they use. Check out their dog barn! Mike Santos of Wolf’s Den Kennel also makes use of a dog barn though his set up is quite different from SP Kennel’s. Check out Mike’s dog barn!

Although we do not have cold temperatures that warrant brining our dogs inside, we do receive lots of rain. Occasionally we get lots of rain at 33F. While our dogs are well adapted to the cold, no one likes to be wet and cold. If we need to, we can actually bring all 65 of our dogs out of the rain. We have spots in our basement, dog trailer, and truck to accommodate every single dog.

A number of our older all-star lead dogs such as Zema, Tamere, Boston and Madison are also familiar with inside living so they can be loose. When we bring the four of them in with our 4 pet dogs who already live inside, real mayhem can occur!

Being able to bring all our dogs inside is important. We learned in 2012 that we need to have an evacuation plan in place for our kennel because we can experience extreme flooding. Most of our dogs are able to go in dog trucks or trailers so that should we need to move our dogs to higher ground quickly.

Remember the flood? We sure do. Being adequately prepared for another flooding event has been important to us.

Musher undeterred by Seward flooding from anchoragedailynews on Vimeo.

Sled Dog Care: Taking Care Of Dogs

What proper sled dog care looks like in the kennel varies from musher to musher, kennel to kennel but these are some of the things that are important to us. We believe most mushers would agree that these are good standards of care.

A Clean Yard

At the kennel, proper dog care comes in the form of scooping the yard on a regular basis. We often scoop the yard 2-3 times a day. The cleaner the dogyard, the better! A clean dog yard is important for the health and well being of our dogs.

No standing water

This should go without saying but it is important. Standing water is a breeding ground for bacteria and infection. No thanks! While less of a problem in the interior part of Alaska, in Seward where we can see inches of rain per day having effective draining systems is crucial and has taken lots of time and money.

We put in thousands of dollars worth of gravel each spring, only to have September roll around and expose a new “low spot.” We will always have to worry about flooding but we can counteract problems that routine rainfall brings. When we do find low spots (mainly holes our dogs dig!) we end up digging trenches to help with drainage. We are hoping to alleviate this problem entirely by redoing our dogyard for a third time in the spring of 2015. Stay tuned for updates – this is going to be a pretty cool project.

A Good Feeding Program

Again, it should be obvious that a kennel, especially a kennel full of working dogs, needs to have a good feeding program as a part of having good sled dog care. Long distance sled dogs are some of the best fed dogs in the canine world. Because of their work, these dogs need to eat the best food out there.

In our feeding program, we feed the dogs anywhere between 2-3 times a day depending on their level of activity as well as providing snacks while training. The amount of food we feed varies based on the dog’s metabolism, their age, and how much they have run. In general, young dogs who have started running require the most food: they are like teenage boys – they can eat, eat, and eat some more but because their metabolism goes so fast they gain very little weight. Generally speaking, we feed a mixture of beef, fish, and dog food.

In the summer and fall, we feed lots of fish and kibble. Fish is readily available, free or low-cost, and is one of our dogs’ favorite foods and one of the best options out there. Sled dogs have been powered for hundreds of years on salmon. We are proud to continue that tradition with the help of the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association who donates us fish each year and Resurrection Bay Seafoods who help us freeze the fish. Here is a video we put together last year about getting fish.

Tim Osmar and Monica Zappa, two other mushers living on the Kenai peninsula, also helped us with getting fish this year. Monica will be running her second Iditarod this year Check out their kennel and like their page on facebook to follow along!

When heavier training commences, we often start adding in beef, chicken, beef fat and chicken fat. Meat is an important part of a sled dog’s diet.

A Healthy Working Weight

Most people who encounter sled dogs for the first time are often surprised at how lean they are. Our racing sled dogs are lean because they have been bred for both endurance and speed. They are the marathon runners of the dog world: picture a winning marathon racer – not exactly someone you would call fat now, is it? Our dogs are built very similarly.

It’s important that our dogs stay in a healthy working weight. Because we focus on long distance events, good cardiovascular health is especially important. Being overweight is dangerous for any dog, but for a sled dog it can mean an inability to perform. Overweight dogs are also more likely to overheat. To keep our dogs in good weight, we exercise them regularly and change the amount of food we feed them if they are gaining too much weight.

Similarly, dogs who are underweight should not be run. Generally, mushers do not have a problem maintaining a healthy weight for their dogs as we focus a lot on feeding. Dogs, however, can become underweight due to changes in feed, exercise, weather or health. Immediate attention should be given to encourage weight gain.

Mushers generally classify their dogs as “easy keepers” or “difficult keepers” based on the dogs’ metabolism. Easy keepers do not have a problem maintaining weight under normal working and feeding conditions. Difficult keepers, as the name implies, do have problems and require more feed. Many people falsely assume that larger dogs require more food than smaller dogs. This is not true with sled dogs. The amount of food a dog receives is based primarily on the metabolism of the dog. Generally speaking, young dogs have faster metabolisms than older dogs. Unaltered dogs have faster metabolisms than dogs who have been spayed or neutered. Dogs who have problems maintaining weight can be altered to improve their ability to retain weight while working. We have done this on numerous occasions and found that dogs who are spayed or neutered require very little food in comparison to dogs who have not been spayed or neutered.

Water Availability

During months when water won’t freeze, access to water should be available at all times. During winter months when freezing becomes an issue, watering dogs should be done on a routine basis but especially before going on a run. Proper hydration is key to on-trail success.

Water should always be available to sled dogs during summer months

We generally give a baited broth once in the morning. Baited broth is basically hot water that has been flavored with something. At our kennel, typically we bait our broth with beef or chicken. We also feed wet meals to ensure our dogs are getting plenty of liquid, even in the summer. Our dogs work in the summer so ensuring they are properly hydrated is important.

The Yukon Quest another 1,000 mile long dog sled race wrote an excellent article about keeping sled dogs hydrated. The article, titled “Water, Water Everywhere” is well worth the read and provides an in-depth look at how sled dogs derive water from food sources such as meat, fish, and fat but also goes in to great detail about how much water a sled dog needs.

Sled Dog Care: Vaccines and Worming

It’s important to keep the dogs healthy. One of the easiest ways to do this is by making sure our sled dogs stay up-to-date on their routine vaccinations and that we regularly worm the dogs. Reputable dog sled races also require that dogs have certain shots in order to compete.

We provide all of our own shots with the exception of the rabies vaccine. The rabies vaccine must be administered by a veterinarian so we have our local vet come to the kennel to administer the vaccine to those dogs that need it. When needed, we take our dogs into the vet.

We hope you enjoyed this post. While it by no means covers everything, we hope we helped provide a good foundation. Stay tuned for Sled Dog Care Part 2 — Taking care of the Dog Team While Out on the Trail.