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.

This morning Greg woke up and found Wild laying in pee and she couldn’t stand up. Even with the help of a towel, she couldn’t stand. She was like this once before around a year ago, after she got beat up by the sled dogs, she couldn’t stand for three days. Her temp this morning was 103.

Bosco is bones and fur. He isn’t interested in eating anything. Magic is sick. He has diarrhea and a temp of 103.5. He isn’t eating. Roo isn’t eating. Storm isn’t finishing her food.

On Monday, we came home and there was diarrhea all over the house. Greg thinks it was Buckwheat, but I’m thinking it was Scully, because she didn’t eat dinner and was looking sickly.

Today on my mush there was a poop extravaganza. I never saw such poop, in my years of mushing experience. The route I did was our Chena River route. This is about 33 miles in a big loop that takes us along the winter trail towards Fairbanks until around mile 10 CHSR, then south to a slough and eventually onto the Chena River. At that point, we were on the Yukon Quest trail (there were still markers up, and the trail was nicely packed). We followed the river for a little over 10 miles, very windey, then emerge at the Chena Lakes State Recreation site. A few miles following the dikes and drainage system there, then into the woods and back along the Quest trail to our access trail and home. It’s a great training route, though the river can be draining because it’s long, relatively dull, and can be cold. Unlike typical trail mushing, mushing along the river doesn’t involve much body movement (since it’s so flat: those many micro movements made with muscles along a bumpier route don’t need to happen). Deep knee bends are a good way to keep warm & moving.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about is poop. Lots of it! With 10 dogs, 3-4 hours after their breakfast, there is bound to be some pooping no matter what. But today, there was poop all along the 33 miles, with most dogs pooping more than 5 times each. This is, you would think, highly unlikely. Where did it all come from? Couldn’t they finish all at once or in at most two tries?

It was a warm day, making the dogs run slower than usual (our pace was around 10 MPH). Maybe that’s why. We didn’t feed them a big breakfast, and the dogs aren’t sick.

The lineup and performance:

• Dekker (5 poops, required stopping the team) & Nikki (5 poops)
• Higgs (4 poops) & Storm (over 20 stops to poop, pee, & think about it. I eventually moved Storm to wheel position)
• Pumpkin (1 poop. Today’s winner!) & Monkey (8 or 9 poops, a few pees, and multiple tangles in other dogs’ lines)
• Rattles (4 poops) & Simba (8 or 9 poops. Simba is usually a champion pooper, but this was extraordinary)
• Roo (4 poops, eventually I swapped her with storm) & Red (3 poops)

Holy cow! It was incredible, and exceeded all prior experiences with poop. It’s typical for dogs to get their poops out when they first start running, especially just a few hours after eating. But it’s unheard of for dogs to be pooping for 30+ miles (Simba, Roo, Monkey and Storm were all early poopers, and were still pooping at Chena Lakes).

Sled dogs can poop and run, and learn to do this by being dragged along by their fellow dogs while trying to squat. Really talented leaders (like Darla) can poop and run at speed, but most leaders need you to slow down a bit. Dekker is a truly outstanding leader in all ways but one: she stops cold to poop, with no warning, and gets run over by the team while squatting. Nikki can poop and run, but if I slow down she appreciates it.

Storm, another of our leaders, needs to pee a lot and cannot pee or poop while running. She is also a dog that likes to fling herself to the ground, splayed out, to cool off whenever we stop. So imagine her in pole position, squatting to do some business. Higgs, Nikki and Dekker try to pull her along, but it’s hard to do and everyone slows down. If I stop the team, Storm stops her business and flings herself to the ground… if I encourage everyone to keep going, she seems to think I’m telling her to stop and so starts running again. Imagine repeating this over a dozen times, and you understand why I moved her to wheel. One challenge is, once the dogs have begun to get tired, they’re perfectly willing to slow or stop for another dog. But Storm evidently only takes care of her business while getting yanked along by the rest of the team.

Disclaimer: all poop counts are estimates, but I’m so not exaggerating!

Chez may lose his tail. Yesterday I noticed that Chez’s tail was full of puss and had major hair loss. I brought him to the vet this morning and he has a 40% chance of keeping his tail :(

sigh.