At around 1pm I started practicing for the snoozkon quest and was reading my book on the couch getting ready for a nap. Greg went for a run with Chester at 3pm. It was then that the outside dogs started barking. Eventually I got up and looked out side. Everything was fine.  I figured they were barking at Greg and Chester. The barking started again and I looked out the window to see a couple of teams go by. I figured this is why they were barking. After non-stop barking, I got up and looked outside. I saw Luke running around the wheel. I must have watched him run around twenty times– it was very amusing. I didn’t see anyone out of their kennel.

At around 5pm I went out to soup the dogs before going for a mush. I got to Higgs’ pen and saw him laying there. I knew he was dead– Higgs wasn’t the type of dog to take a nap. He got very excited when we were in the yard. I ran inside to get Greg; Went back outside to let Peetie and Rocket out of the pen, and said my goodbyes to Higgs. Greg came out.  It was a very sad moment. Eventually Greg checked to see if Higgs was frozen to the ground. His body wasn’t, but his tongue was. He got a shovel to loosen the snow around his tongue and picked Higgs up (around 65 lbs) and carried him to the truck. He’ll stay their tonight until we bring him to Dr. May’s to be cremated.

As a side note, we saw Susan Vega last night and she told the story of her parent’s sending her childhood cat down the east river in a viking funeral. I thought we could do this for Higgs– tie him to a sled, set it on fire, and send him down a hill. For some reason, Greg didn’t think he was viking enough.

Higgs was a goofy guy. He liked to try to escape from the dog yard, especially when his brother Asa was alive. He was a working dog until around 8 years old, and was a very strong part of the team. His last two years he didn’t run. We always new he’d have a heart attack, but I wasn’t really prepared for a sudden death. His brother Asa died last year, Feb. 17th– they are together now. Running and playing and being two pups in a pod.

Luke also went for a vet visit today. The vet wasn’t sure if he has a torn muscle or if it could be having back problems. Instead of doing ex-rays right away, the vet prescribed Methocarbanol (500mg every 8 hours). Methocarbanol is a muscle relaxant. Luke’s back thighs are very muscular and super tight.

Higgs and Luke added incredible strength to our “A” team. They are both big dogs (70lbs), who usually run in wheel and carry the team. With Rocket & Decker (a great leader) on bed rest due to a shoulder or wrist injuries, and Asa off the “A” team because he doesn’t like to run without his brother and he doesn’t like to run with Greg, we are left with Nikki, Chevy, Ahab, Capella, Zeus, Spike (who has harness rub on her chest), and Roo (who can’t run more than 100 miles). Soooo, my secret plan to run the Chatanika 200 and possibly the Quest 300 isn’t looking good this year.

Last night Greg headed out for a run with 9 dogs (Chevy, Nikki, Roo, Ahab, Higgs, Asa, Spike, Zeus, Capella). His plan was to either run a 17 or 23 mile run– a typical run for us. We’re down to nine dogs because Decker has a front leg injury (I’m speculating elbow), and Rocket has a front leg injury (I’m speculating wrist).

I took the ZZZ team (Red, Monkey, Punky, Bruno, Phanty, Rattles, Simba, Peetie, Sam) for a 7 mile run. When I came home from the run, I let all of the remaining dogs off for a party while I scooped the poop and tried to massage Decker and Rocket. I wasn’t expecting Greg home for another hour or so, but all of a sudden I saw Chester’s red blinky light at the gate. I ran up to open the gate and Chester escorted Greg and the team into the yard. Asa and Higgs were both in the sled bag!

Greg told me they were okay, and gave me details on what happened. Soon after leaving the yard, Asa decided he didn’t want to pull and began backing out of his harness. Greg put him in the sled bag– where he was content. Greg wasn’t too surprised, considering his past relationship with Asa. Soon after putting Asa in the sled bag, his brother Higgs started backing out of his harness. This was extremely unusual behavior. Higgs is a super-champ. He’s just run 33 miles two days ago. He’s a hard working guy. He began dipping snow, and then collapsed. Greg stopped the team, and ran over to Higgs, ready to give him mouth-to-snout resuscitation. Higgs was alive, and Greg carried him to the sled. Higgs fought Greg as Greg put him into the sled bag. Higgs apparently thought he was fine and ready to go. Greg shortened his run and came home. Both Asa and Higgs were happy and seemed healthy when we unclipped them from the bag. Higgs was panting a bit, but this is normal for him.

The temperature was 6 degrees above, so I don’t think he overheated– he never has before. It could be sled dog myopathy. We’ll need to get his blood tested to see.

But Decker has a sprained wrist, and has been off training for over two weeks. We’ll ease her in again next week. She’s a champion lead dog, and seems rather depressed to not be running.

Simba got pulled off the “A” team last season, due to a persistent shoulder injury. So, we eased him in this year, and included lots of stretching and massage. But no luck: the injury is still there.

Roo is good for training, but only pulls for 20 miles or so. After that, she can keep up, but doesn’t work. Definitely more of a sprint dog.

I was worried about Asa (he’s getting older, and had a persistent resistance to running with me, last year), but he and brother Higgs are still pulling strong and true.

The most recent loss is Luke. We are not sure what’s going on, but he did poorly on Saturday, then on Sunday simply wouldn’t pull (he was getting tugged by his neckline). He is sort of limpy, and sort of looks constipated, and we are not sure what’s up. We’ll let him keep resting for a few more days before visiting the vet (we have not had a week without at least two vet trips in 5 or 6 weeks!).

So the current “A” team (in the typical pairs we run them in):

Chevy, Nicki
Ahab, Rocket (who I’m not that sure about…he seems to overheat)
Capella, Zeus
Higgs, Asa
Roo (good spunkiness, but limited miles)
Spike (used to run with Luke)

We might get Phanty trained up. He’s only a yearling, and really doesn’t have much of a clue about anything, but seems to have potential. Also, I hope Decker will get back into training again. Bottom line is that today, we have 10 “A” team dogs, and maybe three others (Decker, Phanty, Luke) who might get back onto the “A” team.

The next day (March 21) we got up late, and eventually left camp at around 1pm. We were following the trail that had  started at the park headquarters. Since this year was such a big snow year, the bad section of overflow and glare ice (around 1 mile after park headquarters), wasn’t bad at all. Soon the trail petered out and we were following a ski trail. The snow was very deep, so I put on my snow shoes and broke trail, then ran back and mushed with my snow shoes still on. Repeat process.

Unfortunately, the ski trail we were following let us to the park road and the road had just been plowed. It snowed a little bit the night before, so the road had some snow cover on it. We cruised down the road to the Savage River camp site. We stopped to set up camp (around 4:00pm), and it took us a long time to melt snow and take care of dogs– but at least this time we were able to do chores in the daylight. We kept Sam and Bruno, with the rest of the dogs, on tie-outs and let Chester and Storm free. Storm was very needy.

After a night of endless whining from Bruno, we woke up at around 9am and began morning chores. After chores, we scouted a possible route back to headquarters that would have led us through Jenny Creek. There was a lot of open water on the creek, as well as no-snow spots, and we didn’t see a definitive trail, so we decided to head back the same way we came out. We saw HUGE wolf tracks and tons of fresh wolf scat; HUGE bunny tracks; and a big fat bird that was waiting for us to leave camp.

We probably left camp around 2pm and were quite bummed to see that the road had been plowed again– and this time it was plowed to the asphalt. We mushed for around 1/4 mile on the road (Yuk) and eventually got back to sections of the road that had some snow. We found the turn off for the ski trail, and with a little maneuvering got the teams to make the turn. The rest of the mush home was uneventful.

Dogs

We brought 21 pulling dogs and one fun dog (Chester).

Days 1 & 2

Ilana

1. Nikki / Chevy (no one wants to run next to Chevy because he nips at his running mate)
2. Ahab / Decker
3. Rattles / Simba
4. Asa / Higgs
5. Peetie / Red

Greg

1. Frankie / Storm
2. Dutchess / Rocket
3. Sam / Bruno
4. Roo
5. Monkey / Pumpkin
6. Luke /Spike

Day 3

Ilana

1. Nikki/ Chevy
2. Frankie / Dutchess
3. Sam / Bruno
4. Monkey / Pumpkin
5. Asa / Higgs

Greg

1. Decker/ Storm
2. Ahab/ Rocket
3. Rattles / Simba
4. Roo
5. Peetie / Red
6. Luke /Spike

Trip Planning
Since I was traumatized by Spot being killed, Greg was in charge of packing and trip planning. I don’t know the exact amounts of what he brought– but it was a lot of food. For dog food he brought two 40lb bags of kibble, a block of turkey skins, Champagne race meat, energy pack, 42 pieces of big fish, some left over snacks from the Serum run (which Peetie, Sam, Bruno, and Chester stole from my sled) and some fat. We came back with most of the turkey, race meat, energy back, and 30lbs of kibble).

Gear

• Our Mountain Hardware winter tent is great, however our 20+F sleeping bags really aren’t appropriate for -20F.
• Once again we had stove problems. Greg purchased a pump for our MSR stove, but there are two separate pumps for the Whisper Lite and the DragonFly, so the pump he bought didn’t work with the stove we brought. We also had issues with our Colman stove.  Note to self: bring fire starter paste!

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.

8:30am on the morning of the race we put the dogs in the truck and drove to the race start, the Valley Cafe in Pleasant Valley. I had twelve dogs in the truck; two of them, Rena and Foxtail, were my neighbor’s. I was somewhat nervous about running 12 dogs because I’ve only been running 10 dogs at a time and 12 dogs means extra power.

At 9:45 the bib draw started. The bib draw is draw to see who goes first. I drew #18 and I wanted to go last, so I switched with #31. The race began at 11:10am (this is when #1 left); Since I was last, I left at 12:10pm.

I knew from the start that my dogs were not performing well. So much for being worried about running 12 dogs. My dogs were moving slowly– but things were okay. I passed two teams and then stopped to fix a tangle. I let the two teams pass me, and from then on my run was a disaster. 4 miles into the run Higgs had diarrhea. 10 miles into the run Higgs was vomiting and had diarrhea. Since the first part of the race occurred near the trails by my house, I thought of mushing home to drop off Higgs. I’m not sure why I didn’t chose this option. Instead I decided to continue on and that I’d drop Higgs at the 27 mile road crossing. I mistakenly thought that it would take me the same amount of time to get home as it would be to get to the road crossing. Furthermore, I knew I was lagging behind and didn’t want the people waiting for me at the road crossing to have to wait for me and wonder where the hell I was.

My team usually travels around 10 miles an hour. I turned on the GPS to see how fast we were going and we were traveling at a rate of 6 miles an hour. Ugh! This was going to be a long day. We traveled along well known trails and I needed to turn my team around several times because the dogs wanted to go their “usual” route and not where I told them to go. I stopped the sled every 10 minutes or so to fix a tangle or to switch dog positions. One of the problems was that Foxtail, my neighbor’s dog, was a total maniac and he overpowered my dogs– which created many tangles. I tried a zillion leader combinations (Duke & Frankie; Duke & Rena; Duke & Chez; Rena & Chez; Rena & Frankie; Rena & Levi; Levi & Frankie; Levi & Chez; Levi & Duke)– but my leaders weren’t leading well or keeping the line tight. Double Ugh!!!

A little while before I reached the road crossing, while I was on the river, I passed a section of open water. This was a little nerve-racking because there was a huge hole in the river and the trail was only 10 feet away from the moving water. When I reached the road crossing I asked if I could drop Higgs. It was an “illegal drop” and could cost me the race (i.e., be disqualified), but it didn’t matter– I wasn’t here to win :) In fact, if Greg had been at the road crossing, instead of taking Scully to the vet, I would have scratched right there. I even considered just mushing home, but stupidly, I continued on for another 5 hours of tangles, slowness, and more tangles. I reached Angle Creek at around 8:30pm and Greg was waiting for us. It took us over 8 hours to run 50 miles. Note, the fasted team ran 50 miles in around 4 hours! All of my dogs were exhausted, except for Foxhound who wanted to run with a “real” team. There was no way I was going to continue the race, and anyway, I was disqualified because I had a 15 minute penalty for dropping off Higgs and I needed to arrive at Angle Creek before 8pm.

We fed and souped the dogs, hung out for a while until all of the other mushers left Angle Creek and packed up the StinkyPups. While we were bringing the dogs to the truck I heard a cough. I realized why my dogs weren’t performing well– they were all sick with kennel cough. This made sense. The previous week I had taken my neighbor’s dog for a test run. Two of these dogs were recently pulled from the pound, which means they were probably sick.

We headed home, picked up Higgs at the Pleasant Valley Store, and arrived home at around 12:30am. We put all of the StinkyPups away, checked their feet, gave them rubs and kisses and went to bed.