Another 100 yards, and Nicki suddenly ran ahead. I saw a mother and baby moose cross the path, then the mother ran left and the baby ran right. Nicki ran after the baby. Immediately, I heard some sounds that were a little like goats, sort of “mmaaahhh, mmaaaahhhhh.” Another second or two, and I caught up with Nicki. She was just off the trail, and had grabbed the baby moose by the neck and was shaking it. I yelled “no,” and went to grab Nicki by the collar. She backed away, then bit the moose on the haunch. All the time, the baby was calling, “mmaaahhh, mmaaaahhhh” and was looking at me with big brown eyes full of fear. I heard the mother in the woods behind me, but she was (I think) afraid of me, and didn’t come close.

I caught Nicki’s collar and lifter her off the moose. The moose immediately ran away, and I hooked Nicki to the leash again. The baby was gone, though I could hear the mother moving around in the woods behind me. I yelled out an apology to the baby & mother, and we left. Total elapsed time was maybe 15 seconds.

Although the baby almost certainly got some puncture wounds, I did not see any blood or torn skin. I hope infection doesn’t set in, since otherwise there didn’t appear to be any life-threatening injuries. We passed the same spot on the way back, an hour later, and there was no sign of either moose.

Two days earlier, I had seen a mother and adolescent moose about a mile further up the trail. After the incident with the baby, maybe 15 minutes later, I saw at least one of the moose in the same area as the earlier day. So, there were at least three moose out that day. I think the baby was 3-5 weeks old. Not much bigger than one of our dogs (maybe 70 pounds?), it had a full coat of hair. It was standing fairly upright and had substantial legs, versus newborns that are very spindly, and seem to not be standing fully upright.

This was a nature encounter I would rather have not had. It looks like I’ll be keeping dogs on the leash, even when we’re in the deep woods. We did hear report of bear sightings in Chena Lakes, which is at the other end of my run if I do the fully 12-mile loop. Plus, there are wolf signs. Many pheasants, squirrels, and hare. Plenty of distraction, and some associated dangers.

Dogs on the trip were: Chevy, Decker, Nikki, Roo, Ahab, Storm, Asa, Higgs, Rocket, Rattles, Luke, Spike and Chester (who ran free or in the sled).

Topo map of route

The route is an active trapline trail– which I didn’t know about until we got there. I probably wouldn’t have take Chester if I had known this.  The sigin at the parking lot indicated no set traps for the first 18 miles, but I saw traps in trees– so I’m thinking that a set trap is one placed on the ground.

Total miles for the 2007-2008 season is around 1180. This is around 5.5 months of mushing; It’s amazing that the Quest and Iditarod folk do this amount of mileage in 10 days.

The dogs and I are getting impatient. Took Higgs, Asa, Frankie and Storm out for a loop around the field last week and they were way to hot.

• Roo & Decker (lead)
• Stubby & Nicky (point)
• Simba & Rattles (swing; Rattles ran lead for the 1st 12 miles because Decker didn’t want to run with Roo).
• Higgs & Asa (wheel)

The dogs did great, considering Greg had taken them for a 30 mile run the day before.

The trail was hard and fast. Between the beaver dam and the Granite Tors parking lot, there was little snow– we were running on frozen dirt. Much of the trail is frozen overflow.

• Lead: Decker and Roo
• Point: Stormy and Frankie
• Swing: Asa and Higgs
• Wheel: Rattles and Simba

As soon as I got to our access trail I saw another team ahead of me. I slowed down, stopped the team, and hooked in. I didn’t want to be on the other team’s ass while going down an icy hill. I waited several minutes and then…”ready, let’s go”…we were off.

When I got to the bottom of the hill it was time to pass. The musher in front of me didn’t know I was behind them. I started to pass them and half way through Rattles attacked the leader of the other team. Shit! Rattles and Simba and Frankie were all attacking my neighbor’s new dog, Starving Marvin. My neighbor and I got everyone to stop fighting. We then had to untangle everyone. Actually she only had four well behaved dogs, it was my team that needed untangling. While she was tending to her team, I tended to mine. Each time I got Decker and Roo untangled and I went to untangle the next set of dogs, Decker and Roo turned around and got everyone tangled again. This happened at least 4 times before I switched Decker with Storm. The problem was that my lead dogs weren’t “lining out” (holding their line tight and staying up front). I thought Storm would be better at lining out than Decker. I was wrong. Finally, my neighbor was finished fixing her team and was nice enough to hold my lead dogs while I untangled the rest of the team, then…”ready, let’s go.”

We were off…only to run into a big truck in the middle of the trail. Yes, a huge pickup truck. The owner of the property was out cutting wood. His three dogs were loose ready to pounce my team. Luckily, the dude saw me, pulled over so I could get by, and waved. I waved back. It’s nice to have friendly neighbors.

So, now we’re really ready to go…until I saw another musher coming towards me. This is usually no big deal, but we ended up passing on a narrow bridge. I was telling my leaders to go onby when the other musher said, “wait, my dog is attacking one of yours.” Sure enough, her dog had his teeth sunk into Frankie’s neck. All I could think of was Rattles and Simba joining the fight, and I pushed them away. The other musher (my other neighbor) got her dog off of Frankie. By then all of my dogs were totally tangled. Sigh. I wanted her to go onby so the dogs wouldn’t fight (they were still right next to each other), but I think she was untangling my dogs, so I pushed my sled off of the bridge. Higgs and Sima had already fallen off the bridge. My neighbor helped untangle the dogs and I tried pushing the sled out of the frozen creek. I couldn’t push the sled myself, I needed my dogs to pull. I ran up to Storm and Roo and said, “Girls, I know you’re tangled, but you need to pull, ready, let’s go.” The girls and the rest of the team pulled and I pushed the sled and we popped the sled out of the ditch. Yippie. My drag pad broke and my neighbor gave me a wrench to fix things while she untangled the rest of my team and held my leaders. Note: her team was lined out the entire time.

When everything was sorted out and we were ready to go guess who comes along? Greg! He had a team of ten. He saw us and stopped ahead. My neighbor had run up to her team to get going. I was ready to go, but Storm and Roo and the gang turned the team around again. Sigh. We were once again in a big tangle.

While I was untangling dogs, my neighbors dogs attacked Duke, Greg’s lead dog. When the fight was over, my neighbor went on her way and Greg came to help me untangle. Finally, we were ready to go again.

The dogs were really fast. We took the first gee (right) and I stayed low. We went through the small turns on the base line trail. Then came an intersection. I wanted to go onby, but Roo dragged the team to the left. I fell off the sled and went for a short drag. I was able to stop the team and get back on.

The rest of the run was uneventful. I decided to cut my run short because Higgs wasn’t keeping up with the rest of the team.

When we got home Greg was soaking in the hot tub. Even though most of the dogs had run today, I had a puppy party. Everything was just swell. Then Levi wanted to eat a frozen poopsicle. It happend to be Red’s poopsicle. Red attacked Levi; and so did Rattles, Simba, Duke, Frankie, and Peetie. I was screaming at the dogs, but they wouldn’t stop attacking Levi. Greg heroically jumped out of the tub, ran into the dog yard, and broke up the fight while he was garbed in slippers and a towel at minus 10 degrees. He carried Levi into the house.

Levi ended up going to the after hours vet and getting lots of stitches. He’s in pretty bad shape, so he’ll get to stay inside for a while.

Oh, I called the neighbor of the first fight, the one my dogs started, and her dogs were fine. Turns out she got Starving Marvin from the other neighbor (the one whose dogs attacked mine).

So, is this Karma?

A. Frankie (Simba and Rattles) => attack Starving Marvin (owned by Neighbor 1; previously owned by Neighbor 2)

B. Neighbor 2′s dog => attack Frankie

and poor Levi got his ass kicked by everyone. Levi’s karma is that he’ll be a permanent house dog…if he wants to stay inside.

Greg said that the trail was pretty straighforward. Ha! If it weren’t for the Quest Markers I would have ended up in North Pole (which actually isn’t too far from my house).

Duke and Levi were in lead, however Duke wasn’t leading to well so I switched him with Darla. The team was moving very slowly.

Once we got onto the river there were a zillion snow machines. I had to stop every 5 seconds to untangle Monkey-Tail, and once we started moving well, we had to stop for a momma and baby moose.

Only once before have I seen a moose on the trail. This was before all of my neighbors told me stories of how moose like to stomp dog teams. I was a little worried when I saw moose because I couldn’t see which way they were headed. Due to the bend in the river, I couldn’t tell if they were crossing the river or headed in the same direction as me. The dogs were going bonkers and I had to slam the hook into the snow and hold on. Eventually I moved on and there was no sign of moose.

Again I had to stop for tangles. There were another zillion snow machines. The snow machiners are usually very courteous and will stop the snow machine and let the musher pass. After we got going again, I saw another moose. This one was much bigger than the other two. We chilled out for a while and then moved on.

Eventually I got to the Dike and ran along the Dike for quite sometime. I noticed the Quest markers veered to the left. I told Darla and Duke “haw” (turn left) but they didn’t. I had to turn the team around– which resulted in a huge tangle of dogs. After we turned around we got back on the Quest trail. I wasn’t sure I was headed right way, so I quickly called Greg on my cell phone. He told me I was indeed headed home. An hour or so later we arrived home, ate dinner, and the stinkypups took a well deserved nap.