I finally got enought strength to move Wild from the “Pet” category to the “Not Forgotten” category. We euthanized the beautiful evil creature from hell at home on July 22, 2008. It was an extremely sad event, especially since we euthanized her brother Bosco two weeks before.
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.