Spring Training & Family Time

Spring is the time for us to train our young dogs, relax on the weekends and just have fun with our family. Training for races takes A LOT of time and can be pretty stressful, so we are definetly enjoying our down time this season.

We have been taking Ana skating at the Sportplex in town on the weekends. It is so much fun!! She is a natural, skating all over the place with ease. This past weekend Ana's Aunt Suzie (Larry's sister) and cousin Karlie came to stay with us. We went skating again out out to dinner. I forgot my camera, so no pictures!

Ana, laying on the ice, tired, after all the skating

Two weekends ago, we gave Jason & Laura Cherry's family sled dog rides as part of a fund raiser for Ana's school. It was so much fun teaching new people about the sport and letting them enjoy our dogs. The weather was warm and beautiful and the trails were awesome. After a long day of running dogs, we hooked Ana's sled to the snowmachine and towed her behind. You can see by her face that she LOVED it!!

Ana took this picture of us after we ran all the dogs that day. It was a great weekend!

Larry & Ana after we had our snack

Ana & I

After the Cherry family headed home, we ran our own teams. I ran a team of 7 females with Zoey (left, my main leader and one of our main breeding females) in lead with her yearling daughter Serra. Serra did awesome! She is a natural in lead like her mom.

Smarty, one of our 11 month old pups out of Odessa & Mike Lee

Rags, another one of our pups. We have 6 left out of that breeding from last year. (One of the pups, Ruffian, lives with Shannon Miller and her sled dogs in Ohio). They have 4 hookups on them and all are doing awesome! Rags looks exactly like her mom, Odessa.

Man O War, or "Manny". If you didn't know yet, we named them after our favorite race horses.

Cigar (left) ran lead on his 3rd training run and did super!

Curlin, the little lover of the litter

Another picture of Cigar

Big Brown, the other female in the litter

Star (right) and our super leader Zoey jumping with joy after the run

Boston & Georgie (our super yearling), both out of Zoey & Strider, running lead together this spring. They are both very promising dogs in our kennel.

Larry ran a team of 7 males and one female. They are Boston & George in lead, Eddie and Prophet in swing, Gibson & Dana in team and Franklin & Liddell in wheel. When hooking up, they broke our huge, very strong snubline! Good thing we had the snowmachine out there so we could catch them!

This is the 7 dog all female team that I ran that day. Zoey & her daughter Serra in lead, Star & Cowgirl in swing, Memphis in team and Fender & Silva in wheel. We had so much fun!

We only have about a week or so worth of snow left, then we will get the ATV out and continue puppy training until it gets too warm. We also had Odessa, one of our main dogs from Doug Swingley's kennel, bred recently to Billy, from the Magnusson's kennel. Billy was on Doug Swingley's 2nd place Iditarod team and their Winning Wyoming team. He has also been on the Magnusson's winning teams the last couple of years. He is a spectacular dog and Odessa is awesome, so we cannot wait for the pups.