We believe that Sugar’s hip problems were caused at least partially by being a wheel dog in an earlier life, before we got her, with a traditional X-back harness. Such harnesses tend to put downward pressure on a dog’s rear, and this is worsened in the wheel position where the sled is lower than the gangline, and there are more jerks and bumps. We got Sugar as one of our first kennel rescue dogs. She was part of the sled team for a few years, but then made the transition to inside. One interesting thing is that while outside, she had persistent urinary problems — to wit, she’s peed in her dog box, resulting in many winter experiences chopping the frozen piss out of her box (embedded in straw, stuck to the wooden box). Nasty. But when she moved in, this immediately stopped. She did lose most bowel control over the past year or so, but not urinary.

Update Jan. 11, 2010: I brought some skin samples to the vet and showed these pics. Ringworm, in Alaska, is very unlikely. We are treating it as a staph infection. 500mg Cephalexin once a day, plus a good bath.

Today, around 2am I was awakened by an overwhelming smell of poop. My first thought was that Buckwheat must have pooped on his bed made of old blankets which is located right next to our bed. I turned on the light to find that Buckwheat wasn’t in the room. Chez was sleeping on Buckwheat’s bed.

As a side note, Buckwheat is around 112 years old and has been losing bowel control. He often leaves a present and doesn’t even know it.

Back to the story…

I went into the office room to see if the Buckster left me a present. Nope, it didn’t smell like shit in there. I went back to the bedroom in search of the cause of the foul smell.  I around looked for a frozen poopsicle that someone may have brought in through the dog door. I didn’t see anything. The smell was truly overpowering. I though maybe Bruno was having bad gas, and sniffed his bum. Nope. It wasn’t Bruno. Neptune’s tumbly had been growling, so I sniffed his bum. Yuk. Neptune smelled like shit. But wait, I looked at the bed and there was a brown turd sleeping next to me. Geez. Gross. Nasty. Barf. How could this happen?? Neptune wouldn’t shit in the bed? Would he? How come I didn’t smell it until now? Where did it come from. Help. I’m sleeping next to crap.

Okay. I got a hold of myself and began to clean up. I pushed all of the dogs off of the bed, pulled the sheets off, brought the nasty ones outside, and put new sheets and blankets on the bed. I walked by the office room to find that in all of the excitement, Buckwheat left me a warm present. I cleaned this up and was ready to get back into bed, but it occurred to me that both Neptune and I were sleeping on a turd. I began to sniff Neptune, and sure enough, he smelled like shit. I escorted him into the bathroom and began to clean the parts that smelled bad. It wasn’t working. I put him in the shower. At first he was whining, but then realized that he was going to get to take a shower with me, so he didn’t mind. I washed the both of us and then used the hair dryer to dry Neptune off because I didn’t want a wet dog to jump into bed.

By now it was 2:30am and I felt compelled to call Greg, who was in Texas, and tell him the news. He didn’t seem to mind being woken up at 5:30am to hear about shit in the bed. It’s not the first time we’ve been woken up do to some type of excretion.

We all went back to sleep. But the question remains, who shat in the bed? The suspects are Neptune, Bruno, Scully, Chez, Sam, Chester, Sugar, Buckwheat, and Ilana. We were all in the bed at sometime during the night.

• Sugar was sleeping just outside of the bedroom– in a location where she normally doesn’t hang out. Could she have been in the bed just before I went to sleep?
• Earlier in the evening, there was a turd in the hallway, which I suspect was from Buckwheat. It wasn’t a full turd though. Could Buckwheat have been in the bed, shat in the bed, and then leave additional stuff in the hall? But why didn’t I smell the shit when I first got into bed?
• Chester was in bed, right before I climbed in, and Scully was in be right before Chester.
• Sam and Bruno were in there usual spots, curled up on top of me.
• Chez was on Buckwheat’s bed, but could have been on the bed earlier in the evening.
• Neptune was sleeping right next to me.
• Ilana sometimes dreams that she has to take a dump. Could she have shat in the bed while dreaming about taking a dump?

Who do you think shat in the bed? You can take the poll on the right of this page to voice your opinion.

We’ve moved Sugar into the house because she got beat up by Nutok. She’s been doing pretty well, although I haven’t moved her from the blog “sled-dog” category to the “pet dog” category because I’m not sure if the move is permanent.

We’ve been bringing Frankie into the house more and more as “dog of the day.”  Frank is a really good lead dog, but he runs like a duck and just doesn’t have the build of a sled dog. He gets very cold in the winter, and my plan is for him to stay inside on cold winter nights. When we adopted him, he was an inside dog– but his owners gave him up because he was high energy and was destructive. He’s been very well behaved inside, although like Chester, we don’t leave him home alone. He’s quite comfy on the couch– but Neptune doesn’t like this since the couch really belongs to him (Nep.).

Since I’m probably going to participate in the 2009 Serum Run, I needed to get some more dogs. Of the 25 dogs that we have, only 4-7ish can run 750 miles (30-60 miles per day). These dogs are:

• Nicky (Can run in lead, but doesn’t know commands).
• Decker (A great lead dog, but doesn’t know how to poop and run so she holds it in and has bloody diarrhea at the end of the day. She’s not a good eater on the trail).
• Storm (Can run in lead, but is petrified of snow machines because she got hit by one.)
• Simba (A good team dog, but has extremely BAD feet. I need to take diligent care of his feet, otherwise they’ll crack and bleed.)
• Higgs (A possible candidate. He tends to overheat and get tired).
• Asa (Higgs’ brother– a possible candidate, but has had some wrist injuries).
• Roo (A possible candidate, but Roo tends to not eat at all on long trips. She also crabs a lot (runs to the side) in Manmat harnesses and does better in a traditional x-back. She can run in lead, but gets tired after 20 miles).

Sooo, we got some new dogs from a neighbor who was getting out of mushing. This puts us back up to 31 dogs (ack!!!) The new guys are:

• Dutchess (A 10 year old female that we’ll use for gee/haw training)
• Luke (A 3 year old male)
• Spike (A 3 year old spayed female)
• Rocket (A 5 year old male)
• Ahab (A 5 year old male)
• Chevy (A 4 year old male)

I’ll post pics and bios soon.

Today’s plan was to mush from home to Valley Center (arond 12.5 miles). Mush the 32 mile Hamburger Quest from Valley Center to Angle Creek. Camp out at Angle Creek for 4 hours and let the dogs rest. And then mush home.

What Actually Happened

I left home with 10 stinkypups (Levi, Duke, Darla, Buckwheat, Storm, Stubby, Magic, Pumpkin, Monkey-Tail, and Higgs). I’ve never mushed to Valley Center before, so I turned left too early, ended up going in a square a couple of times, and then cut through someones dog yard. Unfortunately, I ended up on Chena Hot Springs Road– yes the road! I couldn’t stop the sled because there wasn’t any snow to hook into and I couldn’t get my leaders Duke and Levi to gee (turn right) onto the snow burm. They decided it would be fun to run on the left hand side of the road. Luckily, a nice man stopped and helped to get my dogs over to the side of the road!!

When I arrived at Valley Center I thought that I had missed the start of the race. As it turns out, the race marshall decided to postpone the race from 11am to 12pm (because it was to cold??!?).

Greg was waiting for me at Valley Center. We souped the dogs and switched Storm and Magic with Bandit and Sugar. We waited 1.5 hours and then it was time to go. So, I’m trying to get to the race start and Greg is trying to hold the team back because he didn’t think it was my turn to go. I explained to him that they were waving me on and not the team in front of me. He let go of the sled and off I went.

Almost immediately after I started the race I needed to stop the team and readjust dogs. Duke didn’t have his tugline attached. Monkey was tangled. Levi wanted to poop, and then I was passed by musher #15. After I got the tangles sorted out we crossed the road at mile 27 and were on our way to Angle Creek. We had a few more tangles and a couple of other teams pass us, but for the most part the trip was uneventful. The only event that occured was I had to hold Monkey-tail’s harness clip in my hand to melt the ice-poop off (I needed to undo her clip and it was frozen with poop).

After three hours and twenty four minutes I arrived at Angle Creek. The team was still going strong (slow, but strong) and we were all psyched to finally be at the finish line. We had expected to see our handler, Greg, waiting for us with hot soup and straw, however, Greg wasn’t around. I was greeted by my neighbor Maureen. She asked if I was still going to mush back and I said I wasn’t sure, I’ll check in with Greg to discuss. She said she hadn’t seen him. We both thought that Greg not being there was weird.

Maureen and Scott were kind enough to hook up their tie outs and put my dogs on the tie outs. Allan and his kids offered soup (his girls even souped the dogs for me!). I had lots of help from everyone but Greg.

By then I had decided that I wouldn’t mush home. The dogs already were away from their intended rest spot, there wasn’t any straw for them to nap on, their booties and harnesses were off, etc. I decided to take Maureen up on her offer for her to bring my dogs home in her dog truck.

Eventually Greg showed up. He had forgotten the dog food and had to turn around 1/2 hour into his road trip.

We drove home and met Maureen and Scott at our house. Unpacked the dogs and fed them, and then all of the stinkypups took a long nap.