Nikki: Right before the KC epidemic Nikki cut her foot on something. It was sliced open badly– not something that I could fix. She went to the vet and received several stitches in her paw pad. Healing time was estimated at 10 days and she was to wear a bootie and take cephalexin for an antibiotic.  Nikki appeared to be depressed that she couldn’t run with the team– at least this is what we thought because she wasn’t eating much and moped about. Then the KC came and she plummeted further into the doggie dumples. It’s been around four weeks of picking at food or not eating. I brought her to the vet today and she’s lost around 6 pounds since her visit to the vet four weeks ago. Doc felt a loopy intestine, so she’s scheduled for a barium test tomorrow. Possible obstructed bowel.

Chez: Last week I noticed a hole in Chez’s neck when I got home from work. There were drops of blood on the floor and his wound was actively bleeding. It was a regular puncture wound, but in a unique location. After speaking with a vet, I cleaned the wound and attempted to staple it closed. Stapling a dog by yourself is doable, but stapling a dog’s neck is tough. I placed one in a good spot and the other wasn’t very good– one end of the staple was in the skin and the other in the hole of the wound. I left it because he didn’t want me fussing with it. He too was put on cephalexin.

Magic: Around the time I noticed Chez’s wound, I also noticed a small puncture wound in Magic’s tush. I shaved part of it and cleaned it out. I put him on cephalexin because he tends to get infections.

Roo: Yesterday while we were saddling up the gang to go for a run, I noticed Roo’s back foot was bleeding.  We brought her inside to defrost the frozen iceberg of blood and saw her toenail was torn and instead of pointing vertical (like a normal toenail should) it was horizontal (pretty cool looking actually!). She must have caught it on the fence. She went to the vet today to have the toenail removed. The doc called me at work to check and see if she could cut her other toenails. I said “Yes!” Her toenails were pretty long and she was on the list for clipping– but I hadn’t gotten to it yet. It’s kinda embarrassing when your vet notes that your dog’s toenails are gnarly.

King Neptune: Neppy went to the vet today because of his on/off eating. His bloodwork was mostly normal, except for his pancreatic levels. We’re sending his medical files from one vet to the other, so the vet can examine his previous blood levels. Stay tuned.

Storm: This one isn’t vet related, but spring related. Now that it’s getting lighter out and late in the winter season, the moose are out and about. Storm decided to chase one this morning.

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.

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!

During the same week Wild and Chez were sick, Monkey and Pumpkin attacked Nutok. I brought Nutok & Monkey to the vet. Nutok needed stitches and meds. Although Monkey had a gouged eyelid and hole in her head– she was okay, so no stitches for Monkey. Pumpkin ended up with an injured paw that we noticed several weeks later. I’m hoping this won’t affect her ability to run this year.

A week later Munkin (Monkey and Pumpkin) attacked Storm. Storm didn’t go to the vet, but we gave her lots of antibiotics and cleaned her wound. She’s back to her loving self.

Yesterday we brought Simba to the vet because he wasn’t eating and was vomiting. Turned out that he needed surgery because he swallowed a piece of rope. We don’t know how much his little vet trip costs yet since he’s at the vet tonight– but I’m sure it’s $$$.

Hopefully things will calm down– but the weather is getting cooler out the the StinkyPups are getting a little crazy. I’ve been out a couple of times on the 4-wheeler for very short training runs. The summer has slipped away and I still haven’t taught my leaders to gee/haw and line-out. I’m sure it will be a fun filled winter!

We have two new additions to the family, Simba and Rattles. Hopefully, they’ll be good dogs :) If not, they can get on the waiting list to move inside.

Precious is still recovering from her fall the other day– she may be sick too.

Ilana went for a 4 mile skijour with Storm and Wild. She didn’t have to ski because Storm was very fast. Even Wild was loping for a while.

Greg is out on the trails with a 9 dog team.