Saturday, December 5, 2015

Snow, Burn and Puppies!

    It's been a busy time of training. The weather cooled off and before Thanksgiving we got some much needed snow, giving the dogs feet a break. It cooled into the teens at night which made it awesome! Here are pictures from Thanksgiving - we ran 27 miles:






In other news around the kennel, Peppermint got out and breed Sweetwater. Although this was not planned, Sweetwater had six adorable puppies in October. I'm sure you'll hear more about them!


I have a Jr Musher named Emily who is helping train the dogs on weekend and bringing her dog, Meringue. She is going to be training with me for the Eagle Cap Extreme Jr race. It's been nice to have an extra hand on the trail and good for the dogs to get used to another person working with them. The first night we had a trailer adventure - which I'll disclose fully in another post.

As some of you may know, we had lots of fires in Idaho this year. I've never run through a wildfire burn, but not far from the trail head we came across a small burned out area. The first time I went, in early November, it stank terribly but after a good rain and now the snow, it's hardly noticeable. 





This week has been one of ups and downs for dog mushing. On Tuesday we got a bit more snow, but rain loomed in the forecast. I didn't want to run in the rain and, with an already slick driveway, decided to do an impromptu camping trip with the dogs. We ran 30 miles on Tuesday night, camped 6.5 hours and then ran 24 miles - with a light rain as we finished. Unfortunately, the rain continued and the trails were ice when I checked last night. Since it's only rain in the forecast, I hope they'll be back to enough dirt to run on Sunday. Otherwise, the dogs will be getting some time off. Last time I checked the forecast, over an inch of rain is expected Monday and then lots of snow starting Thursday. Let's hope it snows and sticks so we can get on the sled! (For photos of the Tuesday/Wednesday run and other training photos, see There & Back Again's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/There-Back-Again-Sleddogs-594777527328723/ )

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