Eagle Cap Extreme 2015 - Part 3

    I left Ollokot after the 6 hour layover with a very happy, excited team. I was thrilled to still have the 11 dogs I started with. It was warm, but I reminded myself that everyone was going through the same slush and it was exciting to pass a team several miles into the run. The dogs moved well, but I had to ride the drag mat for Nibbs and Mambo. They are both big boys with thick coats and having to work harder to keep up, were working very hard.
    We stopped many times in the shade and I let the dogs cool off by rolling in the snow. We found a great spot to snack in the coolness of the mountain side before going over the wide-open top of the mountain. It's always encouraging to see other teams on the out and back because you can gage how you're doing and if you've made time.
    Still, it was frustrating to have to move Mambo to wheel as he kept holding up the team. He did better out of lead, and we made better time down the mountain and started the last ascent.
    Suddenly, Urchin started limping...badly. I stopped immediately and tried to put him in the bag. He wanted none of it! He struggled and made quite a mess of the bag. I had to lean over the handle bar and hold him down. As we descended into Ollokot I was struggling to keep him in the bag when my drag mat broke. At almost the same moment, we came upon two of the trail breaking snowmobiles. They asked if everything was ok and I smiled and said yes....everything was under control, but I couldn't help laughing. It was all rather comical (not that Urchin was limping, of course, but that the typically laid back boy was being so difficult).
    We made it into the checkpoint and the to our camping spot, where I fed the dogs. They ate well and bedded down. I had only intended to stop for a few minutes, but with Urchin needing to be dropped and Nibbs, Mambo and Jingle needing looked at, I probably wasted time there. I should've dropped the dogs and gone but I was rather distraught at the thought of having to drop so many dogs.
    I forgot to mention that during the 6 hour layover I had a successful treatment of a wrist injury. I am very conservative with injuries and prefer to drop a dog, but since I had 6 hours I treated the writs with heat, algyval, ice (snow) and walking which helped two of my dogs tremendously.
    In the end I stopped at Ollokot for over an hour, which lost me a placing as another team came and went...and I dropped Urchin, Nibbs, Mambo and Jingle. The last three, looking back, I should've kept in the team - I later learned from talking with Scott that Nibbs and Mambo always look terrible when it's hot, but since the last leg was heading into the cool of the evening they would've been fine.
    Every race I learn so much - it's all about your decisions and every year I come to a new understanding of how tough sled dogs are and how to better read them. As we'll see in the conclusion of Eagle Cap 2015, the dogs grow tremendously when they finish a race...