Coyote Run Sled Dog Kennel

2012-01-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

Race Season Has Begun!!!!

Well, it's been over 7 months since I updated this blog. One word to describe how we've been.....BUSY!!! We survived a painfully snowless December and FINALLY got a nice amount of snow last weekend. We only have a handful of runs of the sled, but it's better than nothing! Many areas in the mid-west STILL don't have snow and we are going to be very disapointed if some of our races get canceled. After 4 months of training/conditioning the dogs our first race, The Tahquamenon Country Sled Dog Race is finally here this weekend!!! Larry and I are both entered in the 8 dog pro, 42 mile race. Check race updates at: www.tcsdr.org/ It starts Saturday morning. We are excited to get on the trail and see alot of our musher friends! I'll update when we return! A HUGE THANK YOU to our sponsors for helping us get to the starting line: Manmat, Northwood Land Company and the Powerhouse Gym!!!!! We could not do it without you!!!

2011-05-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Spring Projects and PUPPIES!!!!!

Ana & her cousin Maddie playing in the new dog house opening Larry built for the new puppies

Maddie, Ana & Makenzie playing with the Slider/Serra puppies

The Elrond/Odessa pups sleeping in their new pen. They are named after places in Alaska: Juneau, Sitka, Willow, Ruby, Dutch, Kodiak and Homer. Pictured above from left to right: Dutch, Juneau, Ruby & Kodiak.

Homer, Kodiak, Dutch, Willow, Ruby, Juneau, and Sitka all squeezed together under the step. We have since built a new step that they can't fit under for safety purposes.

Ruby, Kodiak & Juneau exploring one of their "new" houses. My Grandpa Kelley built this house for our dogs a long time ago. It is looking pretty grim these days. We have repaired it a lot over the years because I just don't have the heart to throw it out. Plus, the dogs love it!

This is Juneau. She is so beautiful!! She gets her picture taken alot. She looks like her older sister Fender, who is the best female in our kennel. I hope she takes after her in the future as well.

Dutch & Juneau trying to escape!

Odessa's pups sleeping on their new steps

Ruby, Juneau and Homer wishing they were a little bit bigger!

Me & Kodiak

The entire Odessa litter. From left to right: Sitka (standing on Dutch), Dutch, Homer, Ruby, Juneau, Willow & Kodiak

The Slider/Serra litter. They are named after musical instruments/equipment: Banjo, Bongo, Tuba, Fiddle, Capo, and Cello. Not pictured here is Banjo. He was busy exploring during this photo opportunity.

Bongo resting after a long day of exploring his new digs

Fiddle exploring

Fiddle, Bongo & Banjo (the black/white pup)

Homer

Kodiak

Left to right: Dutch, Sitka, Ruby, Juneau and Homer

Ana holding her favorite pup from the Slider/Serra litter, "Banjo", when he was just a few days old

Ana helping her daddy grade the driveway

Pictured above are the new dog houses Larry built inside our garage. We used to have one inside, it leads to a pen outside. We always have our females whelp in here so we can keep a close eye on them from the house & bring the puppies inside often so they get lots of attention. The old house was on its last leg and with 2 litters only 2 weeks apart, it was time to build 2 new houses inside & 2 bigger pens outside. Also note that the entire project was built with wood we recycled. It was going to be thrown away so we put it to good use.

This is the pen on the outside. This doorway leads into the doghouse that is in our garage. I love it!! It has made caring for these 2 litters much easier!!

The two new pens. Serra is sticking her head out of her new house watching her pups. There is also a doghouse in each pen on the outside so the puppies have another spot to get out of the weather. It takes them a couple of weeks to be able to use the stairs to the garage house.

Sitka, Kodiak, Juneau & Homer (left to right)

Serra resting in our office with her pups. This was her home for 2 weeks while she waited patiently for Larry to finish her new house & pen.

Ana recently had her first gymnastics show. She was so proud & so are we!!

We have had a very busy spring with puppies and projects!! I thought we would get a break after our race season, but I guess spring & summer is the time to get things done before training starts up again. We are done with most of the things we were going to get done like spring cleaning the kennel, the garage, the barn and building two new pens and houses. Next on the list is getting our dog trailer ready to sell & building a bigger one. I swore I would never build another one after last time, but we are going to again!! We have finally agreed on the design of the new one and we are very excited to start this gigantic project.

Odessa's pups are growing so fast and are already 7 weeks old. Serra's puppies are also doing great and will be 5 weeks old this Saturday. We have started going on puppy walks with Odessa's litter and soon will do the same with Serra's. Then, it will be time for them to stretch their legs a bit more and chase the four wheeler. I love this part of puppy training! It is a blast!

We are really looking forward to Memorial weekend. Larry has 3 days off, which he is really looking forward to. I can't wait for garage saling, BBQ's and seeing friends & family. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend:)

2011-04-12T05:58:00.000-07:00

Puppies!!!!!!!!!!!!

Odessa had 7 puppies on April 6th! There are 3 males, 4 females. We bred her to Pete & Sharon Curtice's super leader, Elrond. This is a repeat breeding that we did in 2006 that produced 3 of the best dogs on our main team: Jackson, Gibson & Fender. She had the exact same number of pups as last time & the same male/female ratio. The only difference is last time she had almost all white puppies, this time we got lots of colorful ones!! We have another litter due soon as well, Slider/Serra. She is due April 25th.

2011-03-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

2011 Race Season Wrap Up

Roxy, our "rookie of the year" yearling female. She handled everything we threw at her & is doing super in lead!!

One of our last training runs before the Copper Dog 150. Roxy & Zoey are in lead.

Our snow was almost gone so we had to truck the dogs to our straight, boring, safe snowmobile trail for the last 2 weeks before the Copper Dog. We only received a few inches of snow in that time and shredded 3 sets of runner plastic in the process!!

Another shot of the final 12 before Copper Dog

Larry finishing the Midnight Run in 7th place.George & Franklin lead the entire race. Curlin, Fender, Prophet, Gibson, Manny & Jackson made up the rest of the team. Larry leaving the starting chute lined with thousands of spectators at the Copper Dog 150 on March 4th. Eddie & George are leading the way! Photo courtesy of Brockit Inc.

Larry workin hard!

Larry & team on the first leg

Larry and the team reaching the top of Brockway Mountain on the 3rd day of the race.

Photo courtesy of Brockit Inc.

Larry & team coming down the finish chute. Curlin & George are in lead.

Larry & the team finishing in 9th place

Another race season is in the books & we are thoroughly enjoying our off time. I've been a bit lazy about updating the blog so I figured I better get on it!! After the Beargrease we went to the Midnight Run in Marquette, Michigan. We had a severe warm up the week of the race and lost a lot of the snow. The trails up there were extremely icy & dangerous. In the best interest of the team & me I scratched from the race before the start. I was very disapointed after training for this race for 6 months, only to not run it. Larry decided to run the A team and scratch the B team. Not only was the trail very challenging, but the wind gusts grew to up to 60 mph! It was nasty out!! Larry had quite a few problems on the first leg. The trail wasn't marked very well so he took many wrong turns and had to turn the team around. The lake he had to cross was glare ice with no defined trail. George & Franklin headed across the lake in the wrong direction. After a lot of voice commands, Larry finally got them to make a huge circle back to the correct trail. In the beginning of the first leg, there were tons of stumps sticking through the melted snow. His drag pad got ripped right from the sled on that part, so he had to do almost the entire 1st leg with his metal brake, which was NOT fun!! After the mushers finished the first leg, the common word to describe the trail was "it was brutal". The 2nd leg was not as dangerous, luckily! Larry started the 2nd leg in 8th place & passed one team to finish 7th. At the post race meeting many of us talked about our concerns with the trail & the race organization took action! They are moving the start next year & we are finally starting in Marquette!! This will be so exciting with all the spectators that are there watching the UP200. Plus, there are so many trail options. I cannot wait to sign up next year & run that new trail!

Our last race of the season was the Copper Dog 150. This is a 10 dog stage race that starts in downtown Calumet, Michigan and runs to Copper Harbor & back. Basically it is three 50 mile legs. The competition was top notch & the downtown start was amazing!!! We had so much fun & learned so much!! We didn't have the best first 2 legs, but we had a great 3rd leg. The beginning of the 3rd leg we started in 12th place & ended up in 9th overall. The team was on fire!! I was very proud of Larry & the team to come back and make it into the top 10. We will definetly be back next season & look forward to trying to improve our finish.

The race season didn't really go as planned for us with crappy snow conditions, canceled races, scratching from another, and not finishing as great as we did last year, but that's racing!! We learned so much from all our mistakes we made this year & cannot wait to start training again in the fall. But, for now we are really enjoying our off season!! We are getting a lot of things done around the house & kennel while we wait for the snow to finally melt. We've also harness broke 4 of our pups: Zeus, Clark, Carmello & Hershey. We still have the 4 George/Odessa pups left to run, but they are a bit young yet. We are also awaiting our first litter of puppies. We repeated our Elrond/Odessa breeding from 2006 since it produced 3 of our very best dogs on our main team. Another dog that we sold is running on a top 3 team in Quebec for Marie-eve Drouin. She races the same distances as us. Odessa is due on the 4th. We cannot wait to see what she has!! Ana has no school for a week for spring break. We are having a great time so far & enjoying not getting up at 6 a.m. every day!! I will try & update again soon. Have a great weekend everyone!!

2011-02-13T07:13:00.000-08:00

Beargrease Blunders

Both Photos courtesy of Marc Bowen

Well, we had quite an experience at the Beargrease this year. I haven't had the energy to blog about it since we've been home, but thought I'd better since our next race is only 5 days away!! We were more than prepared as we left Gaylord. We had new plates on the truck, got an oil change, had our trailer tires checked just incase. We were READY!! We had a great uneventful trip until just after Ashland, Wisconsin. We were traveling in a white out, snow storm & going over a stretch of terrible highway. It was one of the worst roads we've ever traveled on! Whoever complains that Michigan has terrible roads, has never driven on this stretch of highway!! Suddenly, we got a flat tire. We were prepared, or so we thought. Our jack wouldn't lift our trailer high enough to put our spare on, so we called road side assistance. They got the spare on only to find out that it had no air in it!! Also, Mark, the tow truck operator, told us we needed larger ply tires on our extremely heavy trailer & was very surprised these tires had lasted so long. So, Mark took Larry back to Ashland to buy a device that would air up our tire on the highway & also to buy two new heavier duty tires & said he would put them on our trailer in the morning in Iron River. I was so hopeful that this would work!! Meanwhile, I had to wait on the side of the highway for them to return.

They came back after about an hour & aired up our spare. We put the two new tires in the back of the truck & started for Iron River. Only, we made it about 50 yards, our tire was rubbing against the inside fender & our spare went flat. So, we called Mark, the nicest guy on the planet, to come back & help us again. He jacked up the trailer, took the spare, our other rim & the two new tires back to Ashland to his buddy's house to put the new tires on our rims so we could proceed to Iron River. In the meantime, we were wondering why the tire was rubbing against the inside rim since it had never done that before. While Mark was gone with our tires, Larry took the fender off & the plywood that was on the other side of that with a hammer so we could be sure it wouldn't rub with the new tires on.

About 1.5 hours later, Mark came back & we were elated after he put the new tire on. We were thinking this would do the trick!! Wanting to be cautious with the new tire & not wanting to ruin it, Larry went forward with the truck slowly to make sure it wasn't rubbing. Well, it was, AGAIN! So, we stopped before we ruined the tire & then discovered our axle was broken!!!! Mark, who had been with us for going on 5 hours now, put a special dolly under our trailer & we limped into Iron River. We then fed the dogs & got into our hotel room at 3:00 am. We had to be up by 6:00 am, so that didn't leave much time for sleeping!!

Both of us had the worst, fitful sleep ever, dreaming about our broken trailer & how we were going to make it to the start of the Beargrease. Larry took the trailer down to A & L at 7 am only to discover that the axle was also bent & could not be welded. To top it off, we had to cell reception so comunicating with each other while he was with the trailer was useless. I was hopeful after he returned that everything was going to be fixed. Well, that wasn't so! Larry said, looks like we are not racing. We need a new axle. I was so disapointed and in shock thinking after all this training we would not be making it to our first race of the year.

Then, in one last ditch effort, Larry put an SOS on Facebook describing our hopeless situation & wondering if anyone had a dog truck or trailer we could use to get to the race. The support from all of the mushers was overwhelming!! My phone started to ring constantly after about 15 minutes. Only problem was, I couldn't talk to anyone since we had no service. I became a texting fool, trying to get the the bottom of this problem. Dave Turner & Thad McCracken were on the verge of putting Thad's dogs in Dave's trailer & coming to get us so we could make it to the vet check in time. We didn't want to ruin their races by having all our dogs on their trucks though because we had ALOT of dogs with us!! Turns out, we broke down in the right town. There were a few mushers in the area. Bob Wright had contacted Frank Holmberg about Natalie & Aaron Harwood having a trailer. Frank texted me the Harwood's number. Charlie Voldarski was spreading the word at the Beargrease and Eric Morris was trying to reach us to help out. I called Natalie from our hotel & she only lived 3 miles away!! It was a small trailer & we had 23 dogs, so we were in desperate need of a dog box of some kind also. I remembered our friend's Anne & Merlin Coy had moved to Wisconsin in the fall. I was thinking they lived in Superior. I found her phone number on my Facebook email & called her. When Anne answered the phone, I said, "Anne, where do you live??!!" I was elated to discover she lived only 10 miles out of Iron River. She told me they had some old dog boxes they were going to burn, but would put them on their truck & come to the rescue. Larry got Natalie & Aaron's trailer, Anne & Merlin quickly arrived & we shoved dogs & gear into every box we could. We had the speed of a well trained pit crew! So, now we were off to race the Beargrease in Anne & Merlin's truck with their dogs boxes & Natalie's & Aaron's trailer. We were so happy!!!!

We got to the vet check 3 hours late, but we made it! Now it was time to put the trailer stress behind us for now & focus on the race. The start of the race was sunny & warm for Beargrease standards. Usually it is bitter cold there. Or, it feels bitter cold to us fair weather Michigan mushers. I couldn't believe I made it to the start line!! After leaving the chute, I discovered one of our dogs running weird. Prophet is a dog I can put in the team & NEVER have to look at because he is always doing his job. Two weeks before the race, he had harness rub from us getting new harnesses & running him in too large of a size. So, I put a kid's t-shirt on him & ran him in a smaller harness until his special harness rub protection t-shirt arrived in the mail. I ran him with it on two short runs before the race & didn't see a problem. Well, there was definetly a problem today. He was not pulling & had short, quick strides & had his head down. I could tell it was that darn shirt! He pulled up the hills on the 1st leg, but that was it. I was really worried about him.

At the first checkpoint, Two Harbors, we discovered that the shirt sleeves had rubbed the fronts of his legs raw. We had a vet check him over & he looked fine otherwise, so we decided to take him on the 2nd leg. Right away, he was running weird. I had a sinking feeling that we made a huge mistake not dropping him. In the meantime, I had two leaders that were not driving down the trail & could not figure out who the culprit was. One of our females in swing, Fender, was in heat, so I figured she had something to do with it. 45 minutes into the 2nd leg, Eddie stopped on a hill & balled up the front of the team. I quickly decided to snack the dogs, move Franklin in lead, Eddie in swing next to his love interest, & took Prophet's booties off to see if this would make any difference. Problem solved!! The remainder of the 2nd leg went smoothly. George & Franklin rocked in lead, Eddie pulled hard in swing & Prophet pulled like a mad man the rest of the time.

After a 6 hour rest in Finland, we got the dogs up & walked them around to see if anyone was stiff. Eddie had two sore shoulders & had to be dropped. Everyone else, including Prophet looked great! I started the 3rd leg in 7th place & just hoped that nobody would pass me & we could hold onto our spot. My heart sunk when, right away, Prophet had that weird gait again. His fronts of his legs were obviously bothering him. I could have kicked myself for not dropping him in Finland, but he ran so well on the 2nd leg!! He didn't pull, except up the hills, so I slowed the team to protect him so he wouldn't have to have a ride in the sled bag. The rest of the team really wanted to fly, so it was tough holding them back. We even ended up catching two teams on that leg & finished in 5th place out of 37 teams!! Aside from making some stupid errors about our dog care, I couldn't have been happier. Prophet is one tough dog, because after all that, he made it to the finish line!!!

I got to enjoy my finish for about an hour, then the doom of finding a solution to getting home started to sink in. We spent the entire day on the phone to every place in Minnesota & Wisconsin that sold axles. We could NOT find ANY in two states, unless we wanted to wait 2 weeks!! We didn't have two weeks, we needed to get home. The other option was to rent a flat bed truck & put our trailer on it to get home. That would cost $800!! Right before the finish banguet, Larry hangs up the phone for the final time & delcares "WE ARE BUYING A TRAILER!!!!" We didn't want to throw away $800, so our only option was to spend the money & buy a nice, dual axle, 18' car hauler, flat bed trailer to haul our trailer back home. We could then build boxes on it in the summer & have a really nice, safer trailer to drive next year.

The next morning, we bought the trailer and went to Walmart & bought 9 heavy duty ratchet straps with 50,000 lbs of breakstrength. We stayed the night at Anne & Merlin's in Iron River and the next morning A & L lifted our trailer ontop of our new one & used the ratchet straps to tie it down to ensure it would make the trip home. We were finally on our way home!!! We drove 50 mph the entire way & made it!!!!!!

We would like to sincerly thank everyone that helped us! We would not have made it to the race or home without all of you kind people! I would also like to congratulate Dave Turner for an impressive win!
Our next race is this Friday, the Midnight Run. You can check our progress from our website: www.coyoterunkennel.com Also, our old trailer is currently getting a heavy duty axle put on so we can use it for the remainder of our races. We are hoping to have it back by tomorrow!!

2011-01-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

Waiting........

Our first race of the season, The Taqhamenon Country Sled Dog Race, was canceled due to lack of snow. Then, it was rescheduled for the following week, but again canceled for lack of snow. This race is North of Newberry, and they ALWAYS have snow! So, you can imagine our disapointment of not getting to go to our first race! It seems like we have been training FOREVER! Me, Larry & the dogs are getting sick of our home trails, we cannot wait to FINALLY get to race next weekend!
In December, our snowfall amounts were pretty pathetic! We got about 18" early in the month & then nothing! Our trails were very fast, but atleast they had set up & we could set a hook almost anywhere. We couldn't run big teams, but atleast we were on sleds.

Then, New Year's Eve, it warmed up and RAINED!!! That did it, almost all our snow was gone & everything was a sheet of ice! For the first time in YEARS, we had to find a trail with no ice, truck the dogs away from home, and train with the four wheeler, IN JANUARY!!! That is wrong on so many levels! We trained with the four wheeler for 2 runs, then finally got enough snow so we could leave the driveway on sleds again with small teams. Since then, we have gotten a TON of new snow & our trails are great again!! Thank god!!

This is Liddell, our young sled dog that severely injured his achilles tendon in late November on a difficult training run. He has been such a good boy through all his rehabilitation over the last 2 months. For one month, he was in a cast. That was a pain! Every time he went outside, we had to put a plastic bag over his cast so it wouldn't get wet. At the end of December, his custom brace came in the mail, so we took the cast off & put it on. It took some getting used to for him, but he is doing very well now.

As you can see, he is not being spoiled in the house at all! To the right, you can see our jealous Border Collie protesting that Liddell gets to be on the bed. Liddell has been doing fantastic. At night, when we take off his brace, he stands on his injured leg just as well as the other one. He is making a miraculous recovery! We are still using extreme caution though, we do NOT want to go through all this again! Although he will never be a sled dog again, he will remain our special buddy in the house. Ana LOVES having him inside & is doing a great job giving him lots of love.

Next Friday, the 28th of January, we FINALLY get to go to our first race of the year, the Beargrease 150! Larry has been on the runners the last 2 years since the first year I had severe Bronchitis and the 2nd year I injured my Knee on a training run so bad I could barely walk for 3 weeks! So.........I don't want to jinx myself...... but it looks like I might finally get to be on the runners for this race this season. So far, I am healthy! I am keeping my fingers crossed I finally get to race it since I am not really looking forward to the handling duties this year. Larry will get to see just how fun it is to dig a snow trench at the first checkpoint, I hope! The dogs & us are definetly ready to be on a new trail & compete against some of the best 8 dog teams around! The race starts Sunday, Jan. 30th at 1:00 pm. You can follow the race updates from our website:

www.coyoterunkennel.com

2010-12-15T07:01:00.001-08:00

SLEDS!!!!!

I don't have any sled pictures of this season yet so this one is from December 2009. This is me last year with the main team.

This was our last ATV run of the year a couple of weeks ago. Jerry Papke & Ali Dodge came up to run their dogs with us & have some passing practice. Larry & I combined our teams & ran one 18 dog team together. Jerry & Ali ran a 16 dog team. That was a lot of dogs on the trail! It was a good, uneventful run, except for the fishtailing around turns.

We have been busy, as usual. In October we went up to the Shaws for their rig session. It was a great time! It just isn't long enough! It is so much fun to see all our musher friends and meet new ones! The dogs had awesome passing practice!

In November, we split our time between deer hunting & dog training. We had two nice 8 points coming in where we hunt. They were too smart though & wouldn't come out till after dark. So, they will live on another year.

We had our first sled run of the year on December 3rd. Man, is that ever way more fun than the ATV! The dogs have been doing super! We are definetly looking forward to getting our toughest month of training out of the way and for the races to begin! Our first race is January 8th, the Taqhuamenon Country Sled Dog Race. Larry and I will both be running in the 8 dog pro, 43 mile race. We will keep you posted on how it turns out. Check out our website: www.coyoterunkennel.com to follow the race. We have all the links to our 2011 races on our site under "races". Hope you all have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

2010-10-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

Yep, you guessed it, more Fall Training & dog related activities!!!!!
Tefa & Fender waiting for treats after the run

One of our teams on a beautiful fall morning. Training is going well for us. We had a few days of warm weather that slowed us down, but now the cold temps are back!

Larry coming home with a team

Deward, the thousands of acres of state land we get to train in every day

Zeus, now 5 months old, excited about the new additions to our kennel! He finally has someone to play with other than our two house dogs!!

Carmello (black female) & Clark, two of the three new additions to our kennel. John Fink is selling out, so we went down there to check out his wonderful kennel of dogs. We came home with part of his candy bar litter, Clark, Carmello & Whatchamacallit. Whatchamacallit is WAY too long of a name, so we let Ana choose another candy bar she liked. She was stuck on Hershey, but there is already a hershey in the litter. We tried to get her to go for Twix, but Ana won and Whatchamacallit is now Hershey 2.

The 2nd female, Whatchamacallit, or now named Hershey 2. We are very excited about these three pups. They are from excellent bloodlines (Swingley/Saunderson/Buser/Redington), and are extremely social, well behaved pups.

Me reading in "Shady Acres" getting to know the new puppies. Carmello just had to crawl into my lap. She is a little sweetie!

One of the highlights of this fall was Lee & Claudia Nowak's annual visit to help socialize & spoil puppies. They had just come from the Symposium in Curtice with none other than Sebastian Schnuelle! For those who do not know, he is a top distance sled dog driver. In 2009, he won the 1,000 mile Yukon Quest sled dog race and then piloted his team to a 2nd place finish in the Iditarod only 10 days later. To say we were excited to meet him was an understatement!

Sebastian holding some of our pups from our George/Odessa litter. Odessa had 4 pups on September 8th. 1 male, 3 females. Ana picked a flower theme and named them: Poppy (the male), Pansy, Rosie & Daisy.

Lee doing his very important job of socializing (also known as spoiling) Daisy.

Claudia with Poppy

They are now 5.5 weeks old & doing great! They are little bundles of energy with VERY sharp teeth, chewing everything insight, including ME! Pansy is on the far left, then Poppy, & Rosie.

Daisy is on the far left, and Rosie is biting Poppy's ear.

All the pups exploring the big world outside their house.

All curled up, ready for a nap together.

Ana holding Pansy, her favorite puppy.

Other than working, everything we have been doing is dog related, of course! Ana loves school & is in gymnastics, which she also loves. She has a very busy job lately of socializing and playing with 8 puppies. This coming weekend we are headed to the Shaw's for their annual rig session & rabies shot clinic. We can't wait to see all of our friends & have a great time!!

2010-09-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

Bear Camp 2010!!!!!

Going to clear a year's worth of tree limbs & trees out of our trail before we could go on our runs with the dogs.

Bear Camp!

Franklin, on one of the tie outs. The sled dogs are picketed all weekend. This is excellent training for race time.

Larry's team on a 5.7 mile run

One of my teams that I ran last weekend

Larry & team on another run

22 Dogs

Happy dogs!

Waiting for treats after the run

Jackson & George & Eddie & Jersey in lead

George (left), one of our main leaders & Gibson a main team member

My family & Ali on the bridge infront of the neighbor's cabin

Me & Ana

Jerry Papke going across the river on a log without falling in!

Our Border Collie, "Jake", with his new girlfriend, "Nivea", Jerry & Ali's dog

Larry & Ana hiking along the river

Little "Tiny Tefa", our super star leader!

"Liddell", one of the UFC fighters litter

Boston, one of our main leaders

Curlin (left) & Manny, two of our top yearlings from last year

Libby (left), one of our yearling females, then Smarty & Prophet, two of our best dogs

We had an excellent weekend at Bear Camp, my parent's cabin that is North of McMillan, in the UP. My whole family went up Thursday night and spent 3 wonderful days there!! Jerry & Ali Papke got there Saturday and stayed a couple of days & Frank & Laura Holmberg stopped over and had dinner with us. We brought 22 dogs with us and got three 5.7 mile runs in while we were up there. The weather was rainy & cold, which was perfect! We had such a great time, that it was sad to leave. I love that place! It is 8 miles off of a maintained Rd., with nothing around for miles. It is so quiet and secluded and over-looks the Tahquamenon River. I could stay there forever! We came home late Sunday night, to beat the holiday traffic. Seems we have been busy ever since. Training is in full swing with the dogs and Ana starts school next week. Also, Odessa is going to have puppies any day now! We are sooo excited! I'll post a puppy update very soon!

2010-08-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

Almost Time!

Larry waiting for nightfall to hook up a team

Zeus, our pup out of Prophet/Tefa is now 3.5 months old! He is so smart and looks exactly like his dad!

Ana & her best bud, Jake

Ana on her first bike ride away from the house. She was so excited & kept saying, "I'm doing it, I'm doing it!"

Jake, on the couch, terrified of the thunderstorm the other night

Larry with Odessa at the Beargrease, one of our top females from Doug Swingley. We bred her to our young super star, Georgie!

George, in lead, on the right, during a training run last winter

Well, it is almost time to resume our training for the 2010/2011 season. We are beyond excited to get started!! We were lucky enough to get one run in last week when the temps cooled, but it has been too hot since. Hopefully the weather will cooperate soon. Our dogs are going nuts lately with nothing to do!!

We have had a busy summer, as usual. We got many projects done around the house and spent lots of time with family and friends.

Unfortunately, our two breedings to Hobo didn't take. We were very disapointed. We really wanted some Mackey bloodlines in our kennel. Luckily, Odessa, one of our best females came into heat in July, so we bred her to our young super star, Georgie! She is due Sept. 11th & has been showing for awhile now. I think she will have a big litter. We will see. We can't wait for them to get here!!!! We have a lot of great young dogs out of Odessa in our main team, so we are very excited about this breeding. George lead every step of every race with our main team this year as a 2 year old and was fantastic! He also made our main race team last year as a yearling. He is the best dog in our yard. We are so happy we will get some pups out of him this year.
Well, that is all we have to report for now. I promise I won't take 2 months to update this blog again!!

2010-06-07T12:47:00.000-07:00

Summer!!!!!

Ana & "Zeus", our pup out of Prophet/Tefa

Tefa & Zeus

Ana & Zeus. Doesn't he look comfortable with his pillow & blanket??

Zeus, discovering his first toy at 3.5 weeks old

Larry & Zeus

Hobo, the super stud that lead Lance Mackey's winning Iditarod & Quest team. We bred two of our females to him this year.

Well, I've definetly been slacking on our kennel blog. We have been busy, as usual. You'd think that I would have lots of time to do this, now that our race season is over. The projects keep piling up though, so we are never without something to do.

Our first litter of the year from Prophet/Tefa arrived 3.5 weeks ago. Things didn't go smoothly. Tefa went off of her food 7 days before her due date and didn't want to come out of her house that day. I was worried about an early labor, but hoped for the best. She held off until the next day, still 6 days early. But, the outcome was not what we had hoped. Two of the pups were dead after they came out and Tefa seemed listless, so I rushed her to the vet. They did xrays and found two pups still inside of her. One was for sure dead, as they could see the air in it's chest cavity. The other they thought would be dead too. The vet thought one of these pups died a day or so before this and that caused the early labor. They did an emergency C-section on Tefa and had to spay her since she had an infection and could die if they didn't. Tefa made it through surgery just fine and to our surprise, one white male pup survived. We were so happy!!! We named him Zeus, since his dad is Prophet and his grandpa is named Buddha. We thought we'd stay with the "religion" theme. He is doing great and is now 3.5 weeks old!

We also have two more litters of pups on the way. We bred two of our best females, Fender & Zoey to Lance Mackey's Hobo. Hobo was one of Lance's incredible leaders that helped take his team to a Yukon Quest & Iditarod win in 2007, less than 10 days separated both races. Nobody in history has EVER done that! To top it off, Lance has won the last 4 Iditarods in a row! We have known for a long time that we wanted these bloodlines in our kennel. Hobo now resides in John Stetson's kennel in Minnesota, making this wonderful breeding combination of our Swingley lines and the Mackey lines possible. We are so excited to see what we get. Fender's litter is due to arrive in late July. Zoey's will arrive in early Aug.

We also have many projects to get done before training resumes in late August. We are STILL finishing our basement, slowly but surely. We are also building a patio under our deck and another puppy pen. We also have to finish putting the wood lament flooring in our office and Ana's room upstairs. So, hopefully we can get all this done by the end of summer. We are enjoying our "off" season and spending time with family and friends, because when training begins, our social life takes a back seat to our dogs. Have a great week everyone!!

2010-03-31T06:57:00.000-07:00

Copper Dog 150 3rd Place!!!

Larry, right before the start with Boston & George

Tefa (left) and George, waiting patiently in the starting chute

Curlin, one of our top yearlings. He raced every race with the main team this year!

Our team in the starting chute, ready to GO!

Some of our team before the start

Manny, another yearling that did so awesome in the 2nd team this year, he was moved to the main team for the last race of the season.

Larry, finishing the 137 mile race with Jackson (left) and Georgie in lead!

When we were packing to go to this race, we were shocked at the weather. All week long, we were scrambling to find trails with enough snow to run on. Spring was coming, quickly! It was almost 60 degrees when we left Gaylord to drive to Calumet, Michigan. This was to be our last race of the season. The Copper Dog 150, a 137 mile, 10 dog race. It was Larry's turn to run the main team and he was very excited to begin!

The race started at 7:30 pm on Friday, March 12th. The temp was 38 degrees and it was raining! The downtown start was amazing! A couple thousand people lined the streets to watch the teams charge out of the chute.

The first leg was 37 miles. Larry and the team had a super run, despite the trail! The warm temperatures melted a lot of snow, so teams ran over snow, ice, dirt and mud. At one point, Larry was using the drag pad to slow the team down. He caught something in the trail (we later found part of a log in his sled bag), and he flew over the handle bars of the sled and landed behind the wheel dogs. He held onto the front of the sled and drug down the trail until he finally got the team to stop long enough for him to jump back on the runners. He still had the fastest time on the first leg and came into the checkpoint with the team looking great! We quickly took care of the dogs at the checkpoint and put them into their boxes for a 5 hour rest.
The next leg was 55 miles. I woke Larry up from his nap, we got the team ready and off he and the team went into the darkness for the next leg. Everyone was skeptical on what kind of trail there would be after the first leg.
The 2nd leg turned out to be the toughest leg of all. There was dirt, rocks and overflow running over the trail. One of our biggest dogs tired out on Larry and also had to be carried in the sled bag for 30 miles. Larry worked his butt off, ran up every hill and ran beside the sled over the dirt and mud to make up for the extra 65 pounds in his sled. He went from 1st to 4th after that.

There were a lot of angry, tired mushers after that leg. We had to have a meeting to decide whether the race would continue. They decided to re-route and shorten the 3rd leg, start earlier since it was going to be so warm on Sunday and they also added a dog drop 25 miles into the leg. A few teams pulled out of the race due to the conditions of the trail.

Sunday morning came and we were the first ones to the starting area, wondering whether we would be the only team there. About a half hour later teams started rolling in and getting ready to depart on the last leg of the race, a 42 mile run to the finish. Larry was in 3rd place on the 3rd leg, since one of the top teams dropped out due to the trail. He was 14 min out of first and 7 min out of 2nd. The 4th place team was only a minute behind. Our dogs were ready to go. We had a couple of sore dogs from the day before, but they looked good on Sunday.

After Larry and the team left on the 3rd and final leg, I drove to the dog drop just incase Larry would need to drop a dog. I was surprised to see that Larry got to the dog drop first and had passed two teams. The team looked awesome! He stopped and dropped Tefa, our super star leader. She had a sore wrist and he didn't want to risk having to carry her in the sled. He put Fender in lead with George and took off down the trail. At this point, he had made a lot of time on the first two teams.

A little while later though, he ended up having to load a 2nd dog in the sled to be carried for about 10 miles. Larry worked his butt off to keep from being passed.

He also had to take Fender out of lead because she didn't like all the people at the road crossings. We just discovered that her brother, Jackson leads well in training. We have never put him up there in a race. He had no other choice, so he put Jackson in lead with George. He ran lead like a super star! He handled everything with ease and finished the race in lead!

I was so proud of Larry and the dogs. He faced so many obsticles in this race, and always kept a positive attidude. It also greatly helped that we are sponsored by the POWER HOUSE GYM. Larry probably lost 10 pounds working his butt off on this race! Our team finished in 3rd place, about 2 min, 45 seconds out of 1st! Also our super 2 year old, George, lead from start to finish and was AWESOME! If we had just made one less mistake, we could have won. Oh well, that is racing. We learned so much for next year. Larry is looking forward to racing the Copper Dog 150 again and improving his finish. With snow, that will be a beautiful trail!

2010-02-23T07:13:00.000-08:00

Midnight Run 1st Place!!!!!!!!!!!

My team and I leaving the starting chute.

I drew bib #1, so I started first and finished 1st! Not bad!

Me at the finish line, early Saturday morning, getting a "bag check" and signing in. I was VERY happy!

Larry's team finishing a strong 9th place!

Larry's team waiting at the finish line. Boston (right) and Cowgirl in lead. Boston really surprised us this year by leading the entire 91 miles!

What a fantastic race and magical run for my team! I was a little nervous about drawing bib number one, but I quickly decided it could be an advantage on a tight trail with nobody to pass infront of me. The first leg is a challenging 49 miles. We left the starting chute like a rocket! I was worried about the first few miles because we run right next to a major highway. My team tried pulling me into the road last year, so I was hoping it wouldn't happen again. To my surprise, they didn't even try and stayed on the trail, thank god! Hurdle #1 down, now a few more to go! I rode the drag mat (the brake) for about 15 miles to keep them from going too fast. Hurdle #2 was getting through both road crossings without getting held up by traffic. We blazed right through the first one and only got held up for about 1 minute at the 2nd one. After the gravel pit, I just let them go their own pace and protected them on the down hills. They really flew! I was in shock and awe watching my team perform so beautifully. This is a very hilly section of trail and I am usually exhausted after, but this year it was incredibly easy with this team. They powered up the hills! I only ran up about 3 and just kicked up the rest. I think I ran up every one last year. We got through the hills and went down Marquette Mountain. For those who don't know, this is a gigantic ski hill that you have to go down and hope you don't run over your dogs in the process. I stood on my metal brake with BOTH feet and safely made it to the bottoem. Hurdle #3 down! Then, we run through another short series of hills before coming to an overpass where the dogs have to run under it. There is a highway overtop with passing cars, so each year, my team usually gets in a huge ball underneath it since the sound of the cars overhead terrifies them. Not this year! My team charged underneath like a freight train! When you come out the other side, you have to make a sharp 90 degree turn and pull your sled around a guard rail. Well, the dogs went around it, me and the sled crashed into the barrels they place infront of there for safety. We did this same thing last year! My team got in a small tangle, so a spectator stood on my snowhook so they wouldn't get away from me. I quickly untangled the

front 4 dogs and sped away! Hurdle #4 down!

This next section of tail is a flat 19 mile snowmachine trail that runs parallel to Lake Superior before coming into the Deerton checkpoint. At this point, my team was absolutely flying! I was in the process of having that "magical" run that everyone talks about. Nothing was going wrong, the dogs were so strong. They only got stronger and faster the further we went. I was hoping we weren't going too fast, but they looked so comfortable, I just let them do what they were doing. We passed hundreds of people on this stetch. There are bonfires all along the trail and crowds of cheering fans. It is my favorite section of trail. I was beaming ear to ear watching my team perform flawlessly. They were on fire! We came up on about 5 or 6 UP 200 teams at this point and Little Tefa and George just sailed past. I never had to ask for trail or interupt the rythm of the dogs. It was amazing! I usually kick on this section of trail to help the dogs. I didn't even need to this year, so I didn't! Before too long, someone from the crowd told me Deerton was 4 miles away. I was thinking, "already?!" That first leg went by so fast, I couldn't believe we were almost there.

When I pulled into the checkpoint, everyone was in shock at the time my dogs just ran that first leg. We ran it in 3:46, setting a new record for that leg! We ended up being 19 minutes ahead of 2nd place!!! My dad was waiting there for us and he and a group of volunteers grabbed my team and helped us to our truck and trailer so I could take care of the dogs and get them resting for our 5 hour break before starting the last leg of the race. The vets came and looked everyone over and remarked how good they looked. They did too! I had no issues with anyone. I checked all the feet and put ointment in them, massaged their shoulders with a liniment called Accede to help keep the muscles warm, put their dog coats on and wrist wrapped a couple of dogs to make sure their wrists didn't get sore, fed them a warm meal, put straw down for them and let them rest. I was so happy that everyone ate so well! You don't want a dog to not eat because they can become very dehydrated.

About an hour later, Larry's team arrived and looked great! He had no issues with any of his 8 dogs. He was running a couple of yearlings and two year olds mixed with a few veterans. All but 3 of his dogs had never done a race with a checkpoint, so we were very interested to see what would happen. We got his dogs taken care of and then Larry and I got in the truck to try and rest. There was no rest for me! I was way too pumped and excited about what just happened. We couldn't stop talking to each other. My out time was at 3:34 in the morning, so at 1:30 we both just got out of the truck and got to work getting everything ready to run the last leg of the race.

About an hour and a half before my re-start, we watered the dogs with a light beef broth and then walked my dogs around to see if anyone was sore. Usually we have atleast one sore dog after a rest. To my amazement, nobody was sore!!! They looked fantastic! We hooked them back into the team and Larry, my dad, and my brother-in-law, Chad helped my team to the start line. The dogs were very charged up to go again, which is always nice to see!

The 2nd leg is 42 miles of hills and flats, but is less challenging than the first leg. My main focus was to just not screw up my 19 minute lead by taking a wrong turn or doing something stupid! The team flew on the 2nd leg! I ran more conservatively than the first leg to ensure I had a team left for the entire race. They looked great, all 8 dogs performed flawlessly. Our only 3 snags were Having to hook down and turn my leaders twice and at one road crossing. There is one crossing where there is nobody there to help you. There is a good sized bank, you drop down onto a plowed road and have to climb up the bank on the other side. I told the dogs "straight ahead" 3 or 4 times because the trail on the other side was hard to see. We were almost across and BAM, George pulls the team to the left and wants to go down the plowed road! A million things flashed through my mind like, we wouldn't be able to stop the team and turn them around on that road, my race will be over etc. I screamed out "Tefa, GEE, GEE, GEE!" She immidiately lunged into her harness with all her tiny might, pulled George's 65 pound body of muscle up over the bank, and drug the entire team onto the trail on the other side!!!! I was shocked, amazed and filled with joy that she had totally saved us! I then let out a "whoo hooo! Good girl Tefa!!" She amazed me!

The rest of the leg went smoothly. I ran up probably 5 or 6 hills this leg, but just kicked up the rest. The team was strong and the trail a little punchy, so it disrupted the dogs every time I got off to run, so I didn't. The last section of this leg is on a very tight, twisty trail about the width of your sled. We flew through here. You can't be on your brake, since you have to steer around the turns, so you just have to let them go fast. We got in one tangle when my team came abruptly up to some open water that they didn't want to cross. My leaders, George and Tefa, got their neckline hung up around a tree and balled up the rest of the team in a big tangle. I hooked down, grabbed George and pulled him around the tree and pushed him and Tefa across the water. Prophet got turned upside down in the process and drug through the water on his back and had his back leg completely wrapped in the gangline. I ran up, pulled back on the line and thankfully got him untangled without injuring him. About 2 miles later after continuing on through this tight mess, we finally emerged out of the woods behind the football stadium in Munising for our triumphant 1st place finish!! A rush of emotions took over as I passed the crowd of people and watched my team run effortlessly to the finish. I was so choked up I could barlely speak when we came to a screeching halt at the finish line. We finished 19 minutes ahead of 2nd place! What a race! After signing in, a bunch of people helped my team back to the truck and I quickly got them taken care of so I could wait for Larry's team to finish. Larry and team came in looking great in 9th place!! All 8 dogs finished in both teams! We are so proud!! I will never forget this magical race for as long as I live!

Next up, the Copper Dog 150, March 12th in Calumet, Michigan. Larry was supposed to run this, but after having run 3 races this year, he is a little burned out and has decided to hand over the team to me. I will gladly except the challenge!

2010-02-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

Beargrease 150 7th place!!!!!

Larry and "Little Tiny Tefa" after the race. We had our doubts about her leading our team for this length of a race. With our main leader, Zoey, out with a toe injury, we had to rely on Tefa to get the job done. She did amazing, we will never doubt her again!! She pulled her heart out and gave it her all the entire race!

Larry & Odessa at the race start

Prophet, ready to go

Our yearling, Curlin, in booties for the first time. The trail was a bit abraisive, so we bootied our entire team to protect their feet for the first 2 legs of the race.

George (front), our super 2 year old main leader, and Gibson (rear), before the race start

Tefa and George leading the team into the starting chute

Larry's team finishing 7th place out of 42 teams. The finish was so icy, they had to stop teams at the top of the hill and undo the tuglines so they couldn't pull as hard coming down to prevent any injuries to the dogs. There was also a bunch of people onhand to grab the teams and stop them at the bottom of the hill. Larry finished the race with all 8 dogs.

Larry (above) and George after the race. George was so awesome! It is amazing that he is that good in lead at only 2 years old. He was excited to see what was around every corner for 106 miles!

With me having a knee injury, Larry got his chance, once again to race the Beargrease 150, a 106 mile race that starts in Duluth, Minnesota and finishes in Tofte. He loves this race and was so excited to start! The first leg is 35 miles. The team starts in Duluth and runs to their first checkpoint in Two Harbors.

While Larry is racing, I get the fun of driving our truck and HUGE dog trailer 40 miles to the checkpoint. When I arrive, I quickly have to find a parking spot. It is a race for the handlers to get all our gear to the actual checkpoint, 1/4 mile away and secure a great spot to rest our teams. This year, I was smart and brought two big plastic sleds to haul everything in one trip. I fit a bale of straw, a huge duffle bag filled with wrist wraps, linement, booties, etc., a chair for me, a shovel, 5 gallons of water, a cooker and a cooler on the sleds and used bungees to secure everything. It was VERY heavy, but I quickly drug it into the checkpoint and found a nice spot next to our friend Dave Turner's team. Thad & Stepanie, Dave's handlers were already busy digging a snow trench for his team. This is my least favorite checkpoint because of all the work involved for the handlers. It is basically a large field filled with snow. So, the handlers (that being me and only me) have to dig a trench in the snow big enough to fit an entire 8 dog team. Not to mention, we had to haul our teams over a gigantic snow bank to get into our trench that was over my head. I got trench dug, supplies ready, boiled water and poured it into the cooler of meat and then went to the finish line to wait for Larry.

I figured he'd be coming through in about a half hour. Well, that came and went, a few teams came in, and about 20 minutes later, Larry came in. The team looked fantastic and frisky, but the look on Larry's face said it all. Something went wrong. We got our team to our trench, took off booties, fed, put down straw, put coats on, and massaged shoulders and wrists and let them rest. Larry then told me he missed the turn coming into Two Harbors. He came to a fork in the trail and couldn't see the turn arrows. Our leaders wanted to go left, but he told them "straight ahead". He went for about 10 minutes the wrong way before realizing he took the wrong trail. He had to turn the team around and go back 10 minutes and turn onto the correct trail. Larry was very disapointed with his error, especially since the team had a flawless run. Our goal at this first checkpoint was 2.5 to 3 hours of rest for the team before continuing on to the 2nd 38 mile leg of the race. Larry was pretty down, so I gave him a pep talk to get him on the right track. There was nothing we could do about the wrong turn now except to go out and run a fantastic race for the last 2 legs. After that, Larry came back to the checkpoint with a good attitude and petted up the team. After 2.5 hours, we got the dogs ready and led them out of the snow trench and over the gigantic snow bank. In the process, I fell down the bank and re-injured my knee. It wasn't as bad as the first time though and me and two other volunteers got Larry started on the 2nd leg of the race. Then, I hauled all our gear 1/4 mile back to the truck and drove another 30-40 miles to Finland, the last checkpoint of the race.

This is where Larry and the team would take their remaining rest (you have to take 8 hours total plus your time differential), approximately 6.5 hours. I arrived at the checkpoint, found a parking spot and busied myself preparing for the team's arrival. When Larry's team arrived, again, they looked fantastic! Fresh and frisky like they never ran! We lead them to the truck (this checkpoint is awesome because you don't have to haul gear or dig snow trenches), and did our checkpoint routine, and then let the dogs rest in the deep straw around the trailer. We put coats and blankets over them to keep them warm and comfortable. We found out shortly after, that even with the wrong turn, Larry's team would be leaving for the finish line after our rest in 7th place out of 42 teams! I was shocked that we were that far up in the standings given our mistake. About an hour before Larry started the last leg, we watered the dogs and then walked them around on leashes to see if anybody was stiff. 7 out of 8 looked great. "Little Tiny Tefa" had a sore wrist, but nothing serious. She is one tough little dog. We massaged her wrist with Accede, and walked her around to stretch it out. We got the rest of the team ready, Tefa & George still in lead and off Larry went on the last 33 miles of the race. I then drove another 30 miles or so to the finish line in Tofte and waited for them to finish.

Larry had an awesome run on the 3rd leg and the team flew! They ran like they were still fresh and Tefa and George really came through and did an awesome job leading the team the entire race! Larry finished in 7th place! I am so proud of Larry and all 8 of our dogs: Tefa, George, Fender, Odessa, Prophet, Curlin, Gibson & Jackson. I can't wait to race this next year. Maybe I'll be healthy by then!

Our next race is the 91 mile Midnight Run in Marquette, Michigan on Feb. 19th. My knee is healing nicely and I've been training the dogs for over a week now. I am racing the main team and Larry is racing the 2nd team. I can't wait!!!

2010-01-19T07:02:00.000-08:00

Tahquamenon 2010

1st & 2nd Place!!!

Ana with our trophies

Me with George, my 2 year old super star leader and Larry with "little Tiny Tefa", his super leader that almost caught the main team!!

Larry & Tefa

me and Georgie

My team finishing the 43 mile race

Larry's team finishing the race

Larry's team at the last road crossing, 5 miles from the finish

Me with my main leader, Zoey before the race

Tefa during hookup before one of our last training runs before the race

Larry's team before one of our last training runs. Tefa & Boston in lead.

my team on one of our last training runs before the race. Zoey & George in lead.

We had a very successful first race of the season!! It is always this race, that sets the bar on how our team will do the remainder of the season. We definetly started with a bang! I was VERY nervous, as always, the entire week before Tahquamenon. The dogs were more than ready, we have done everything we could do in training. Nothing left but to race and see what happens. Race day was VERY cold, -17 degrees!! I never start a race with big mitts on. I am always afraid of losing the team if I get drug and cannot hang on. Well, in the first 2 miles my hands were numb, forcing me to put them on. The team was FLYING!! I was on the drag pad for about half of the run, trying to get George, my 2 year old leader, to calm down so he wouldn't tire out the entire team. I was hanging on for my life around all those tight twists and turns. It was a lot of fun though! I started the 8 dog class first and only had to pass a few 12 dog teams that started before me. George did NOT like going past the sleds. Zoey had to drag him past. A couple of times, George put the brakes on and balled up the team. One pass, I had to lead him half way past one of the teams. After that, things went smoothly. The last 5 miles, I had to take my main leader, Zoey out of lead. She was letting the swing dogs catch up, which is VERY unlike her. Prophet ran lead with George the rest of the way and did a wonderful job. We ran the 43 miles in 3:01 and some change and came in first place!! I cannot belive we ran it that fast! Larry had a SUPER run, only stopping twice out there. His team, with Tefa and Cowgirl in lead, passed teams flawlessly. His team ran it in, 3:03 and some change, only 2 min, 45 seconds slower than me with the B team!!! If I would have had any more trouble out there, he would have beaten me! We are so proud of the dogs for racing their hearts out and giving us our 1st & 2nd places.

Next up on the race schedule, less than 2 weeks away is the Beargrease 150. Larry ran it last year and got 4th place and "rookie of the year", while I had a terrible bout of bronchitis. My main leader, Zoey will be out for this race with a sprained toe. I am VERY disapointed, but Larry's super leader, Tefa will take her place leading the team with George. Hopefully Zoey will be able to resume training after we get back. I was really looking forward to racing it this year, since I had to miss out last year. On our last long run of the season this past Sunday, 5 miles into our run, we were turning off of a plowed road, onto a snowmobile trail. Tefa was turning me the correct way, George pulled the team the opposite way. Trying to stop the team, I slammed both feet onto the brake. In the same moment, Tefa pulled George the correct way, causing me to lose my balance, fall and get drug. In the process, I fell on my knee, and hyper-extended it to the side, hearing my knee pop in and out. It hurt so bad, it felt like I broke my leg. My dad (who was following our teams on the snowmachine), dove in the middle of my team to stop them. I righted the sled and hooked down for a few minutes, until I got the feeling back into my leg. I stretched it out, then continued on for the remainder of the run, 38 more miles. My leg was sore, but I was still able to control the team. When I got back to the kennel, I was trying to put a wrist wrap on one of our craziest dogs, she went between my legs, out to the side, I slipped on the ice and did the exact same thing to my knee, hearing it pop in and out again!! This time it really hurt and I could barely walk all night! This is so disapointing because I was really looking forward to the Beargrease this year. I am going to the doctor tomorrow to assess the damage. It is getting a little better each day. I HOPE I will be fine by race day. If not, Larry will be piloting the team for the 2nd year in a row.

2009-12-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!!!!

Our crazy main team during hookup

Another pic of our crazy team

Larry coming home from taking the main team on a run on Monday

Me running the main team yesterday

Another pic of my team yesterday

my team crusin yesterday

We had a wonderful Christmas with both of our families this year. We also survived our annual Christmas freezing rain by doing BOTH of our long runs with the dogs BEFORE Christmas so we didn't have to worry. I am very glad we did, we were off for a few days because of the icy trail conditions. We really enjoyed our time off and relaxed with our families. It was nice! Now, we are back to work with the dogs, getting them ready for our first race of the year, the Tahquamenon Country Sled Dog Race in Newberry, Michigan. It is next weekend, January 9th. Both Larry and I will run two teams in the 8 dog, 43 miler. We can't wait to get our first race out of the way!! I am always very nervous, until I get out on the trail. If you would like to follow our races this year, go to our website: http://www.coyoterunkennel.com/

and click on "races". We have provided the web links so you can follow us on our journeys. We hope you all have a

VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2009-12-10T13:51:00.000-08:00

Let it Snow!!!!!!we woke up this morning to yet another snow storm last night, bringing us over 2 feet of snow in all!!

This is Larry running an 8 dog team on the 6th in 10 inches of new snow. This was our first sled runs of the year!

Ana, so happy to have gotten to run "her team"

Ana's team consisted of Windows, our 10.5 year old retired leader (left) and Serra, our 2 year old promising young female out of Strider/Zoey.

We are so excited to finally have gotten a ton of snow! We have run the dogs with sleds twice now. I took my main 10 out for a 20 mile run last night, breaking trail through 18 inches of snow! Surprisingly, they kept an awesome pace and I was very thankful for the extra weight I put in the sled and the new snow to slow the team down. They were on fire! I was standing on the drag mat for the first 8 miles until they finally settled into a nice pace. They really looked good and are exactly where they need to be right now. The only difference I notice from last year's team is the power. Last year's team was powerful, but with 7 of the 10 being big, strong males this year, I could really FEEL how strong they were last night. On the way home, I had Larry go ahead on the snowmachine to make a track up the "huge" hill. This hill is like a ski hill, so I didn't want the team to have to break trail the entire way up it. Well, Larry buried the machine 1/4 of the way up. I yelled "get out of the way", charged past with the dogs, hooked my snowhook into the ski, and called the team up. I really didn't think they'd pull it out. It was REALLY stuck! They surged forward, put their heads down and miraculously hauled, Larry, Ana, me, a sled, and a snowmobile up that gigantic hill. I was so proud of them! After all that work, they still came charging into the driveway and finished happy and rolling around in the snow, wagging their tails. That is what we like to see!
It is Ana's birthday today! I can't belive 5 years have passed so quickly! We are celebrating with cake and subway that Larry is bringing home since it has been so bad out for the last 2 days, Ana and I have been snowed in and haven't left the house. Larry is also taking his team of 12 out for the same 20 miler I did last night. Ana and I will be following on the snowmachine just incase!
We also just created our website. Check it out: http://www.coyoterunkennel.com/

2009-11-24T10:53:00.000-08:00

DEER CAMP, and you guessed it, MORE TRAINING!!!!!!Larry teaching Ana to play chess at Deer Camp

This is "Deer Camp". If that carpet looks familiar, it was Holiday Inn's carpet in the 80's.

Larry with Eddie (left) and Manny, one of our yearlings that just ran lead for the first time. He did surprisingly well!

Larry's team coming into the driveway

Ana playing with her doll house with "Jake"

Ana showing off her new headlamp! She was so excited to go outside after dark to test it out.

Larry coming home with another team. Zoey (left lead), our super spectacular leader from Doug Swingley and Jackson (right lead). Jackson is a 3 year old main team dog out of Odessa (Swingley) and Elrond (Curtice). Jackson started leading like a super star this year, which we are very excited about!

Well, time continues to fly by. Life and training 2 teams keeps us more than busy. We took 2 whole days off from training to go deer hunting. We stayed the weekend at Deer Camp and had a wonderful, relaxing time. Nobody shot any deer, but it sure was nice getting away for a couple of days. Ana would like to move to Deer Camp permanently. There is no electricity and the wood heat keeps us toasty warm. I could stay out there forever!

Training is going very well. We are still way ahead of last year's mileage. The teams are both looking very strong. We are getting a little sick of the long runs with the four wheeler though. I am looking forward to a HUGE dumping of snow so we can get on sleds. Last year, we were on sleds by Nov. 21st. Not this year. We are supposed to get some snow on Friday. Unfortunatley, it won't be enough for sleds yet. So, we will be doing our 30 miler on the four wheeler. NOT really looking forward to that!

Happy Thanksgiving to all from the Fortier's!!!!

2009-11-08T13:14:00.000-08:00

Shaws Etc......Larry and I giving our presentation on our training program.

(photo courtesy of Shannon Miller)

Our crazy team during hookup time at Shaw's training weekend a couple of weeks ago (photo courtesy of Shannon Miller)

Sharon, Lyle and I doing what we like to do best...."talkin dogs!"
(photo courtesy of Shannon Miller)

Dr. Tim checking out Liddell during the rabies clinic
(photo courtesy of Shannon Miller)

This year's litter, now 3.5 months old. They are Billy/Fender. Pictured is Susie (left), Roxy, and Libby.

Dee Dee, another pup from this year's litter

Ana & our Border Collie, Jake E Jake, playing soccer

Me & Jake

Larry & Roxy

Ana and the puppies on our "puppy walk" today

Things are busy as usual here. Notice my last entry was a month ago!! Partly because my camera has been in the shop for that long. I FINALLY have it back and am so excited to take pictures again!! We went to Shaw's annual training session a couple of weekends ago and had a blast, as usual! It is so nice seeing old friends and actually getting to relax and hang out in between training runs. We never get a chance to do that during the races. It is never long enough though, next year we will try and come a day earlier. Our young dogs got a TON of passing practice both days, which is awesome training for our upcoming races. Larry and I also talked about our training program for us as well as the dogs. I was a little nervous, but after I was up there talking about something I LOVE, it wasn't bad at all. Other than dog training, we are just staying busy with Ana, her school, work and getting ready for winter. I can't believe it is already November! We are a bit ahead of our usual training, so that is always a plus. We are hoping that our little "tweaks" will help further our kennel this season. Well, that is all for now. Time to get a team ready to run.

2009-10-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

BEAR CAMP 2009Tahquamenon River

Star (left) and Boston in lead

All our young dogs staked out at camp

Our team on one of the many beautiful trails

Ana, Me and Jake, our Border Collie pup. For the record, he is the ONLY dog my mom EVER let inside the cabin! He was sooo good all weekend!

The boys ready for a run!

A green bug on a leaf

Odessa & Cowgirl sprawled out in the afternoon

Larry evaluating the team after the run

me watering Jackson (left) and Liddell on the run

Larry & Ana fishin'

Fender (grey dog) and Serra, 2 of our most promising young females

Eddie (left) and Prophet leading the team

The team after a run. Jersey (left) and her mom, Zoey in lead

Cigar, our pick of our current yearlings out of Mike Lee & Odessa

Larry and dad building a roof over the front porch

This is a little late. Over Labor Day Weekend, for the 2nd year in a row, we went up to "Bear Camp". It is my dad's cabin in Mcmillan in the U.P. Larry, Ana, me, my mom & Dad and Aunt Sueanne and Uncle Lee all drove up for a spectacular weekend! It is out in the middle of nowhere (really!) on the Taquamenon River, the perfect place for us to be! We took our entire kennel of dogs up also and trained every day. It was so much fun! We also got lots of relaxing time in, which is always a plus! The only thing that sucks, is leaving after a fun filled weekend. We hope to go up again, one more time, before the snow gets here.

2009-09-01T07:48:00.000-07:00

Let The Madness Begin!!!!!Larry's team on their 2nd training run. Dana and Star in lead.

My team going up the "big hill". It is almost a mile long and very good training for the dogs.

Dana, one of our most promising leaders and she is only 2!

Ana and Rags, one of our yearlings.

Ana with Fender's pups. They are now 7 weeks old.

Our Border Collie pup (left) getting checked out by Libby and Roxy. Jake's favorite activity is herding the pups.

Ana and Roxy

Ana and I taking a break from stacking wood

Larry and I after we ran our teams. Ana took this picture.

Fall training started for us on Aug. 21st. The temps finally cooled off and we were more than ready to start hooking up dogs! The dogs have been a little nuts the past couple of weeks, so we couldn't wait to run some of that energy out of them. They were amped, but our runs went smoothly, with no equipment malfunctions. Thank goodness!!!

Our basement project has been put on hold for now. We won't have time to get much done until spring. We still hope to get the ceiling and the floor done before we stop working on it for the year.

The pups are now 7 weeks old and growing fast. Ana has made sure they get tons of attention. If we are outside (which is all the time), she is with those pups.

This weekend we are packing up the kennel and going to the U.P. to my dad's cabin for a little R & R and of course, some dog training. We can't wait to get away!! Plus, it is nice that we can take our dogs on vacation with us. We hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day Weekend!!!!

2009-08-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

Puppy & Kennel UpdateOur Border Collie puppy, Jake

Jake sleeping, living a tough life!

Jake sleeping again, one of his favorite activities

Ana with all of Fender's 3 week old pups, Libby, Dee Dee, Susie, and Roxy

Roxy (top) and Susie

left to right: Libby, Dee Dee, Susie and Roxy

me with Roxy and Libby

Larry after our final sanding of the drywall in the basement

The starting line up, all ready, for the start of fall training August 20th

The summer has gone by so fast!! I can't believe it is already August and fall training is only 13 days away! It has been a cool summer, but I have LOVED the weather! The drywall in the basement is finally done, it took us a month. Just Larry and I did all the work. I will NEVER do it again! Now I know why people hire this terrible job out to a professional. It turned out awesome though and was well worth the work. Plus, we saved $$ doing it ourselves. This weekend, we will be cleaning up and painting the walls. There is still a lot of work to be done before training gets too far underway.

We have a new addition to our kennel, a Border Collie pup that Ana named "Jake". We have been looking for the right one for a few months now. We finally found a breeder from River Run Border Collies, 30 miles North of Grand Rapids. Jake, being a medium energy BC, fit us perfectly. He is sooo smart! He learned his name on the first night we had him. He comes when called, sits, lays down, fetches his toys, shakes, and a few other tricks and he is less than 10 weeks old. He is also doing very well with potty training. Ever since our 12 year old, beloved Border Collie, Bailey, passed away from Cancer 2 years ago, we knew we had to have another one. We waited until Ana was a little older first. With Fender having a small litter this summer, it was the perfect time for us.

Fender's pups are now 3 weeks old and getting around very well. Dee Dee is the most adventurous and eager to explore, with Roxy right on her heels. Libby has just started to explore more and Susie is the most shy. We will have to work on that!

As you can see from the last photo above, I am more than excited to start training again. After all of last year's hard work, we REALLY needed a break. Now, I am ready and I have had their line up ready for about 2 weeks. We have a magnetic board with all the sled dog's names on it. We stick it to the pole barn so Larry and I both know who is in which team. It makes it much easier and faster to hook up 2 teams of crazy dogs!

This weekend is also the "Meet The Mushers" event at Russ and Sherry Sutherby's. I cannot wait to attend! We will get to meet Iditarod Mushers: Dee Dee Jonrowe, Ryan Redington and Jason Barron. It will also be nice to take a break from all the work we've been doing, relax for a bit, and of course, talk dogs!

2009-07-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

Almost that time again....Picture I found online of Larry and the team at the Beargrease 150 this year

Another picture of Larry and the team at the Beargrease. Cowgirl and Zoey leading the team

Charging down the trail

Fender had 4 female puppies on July 14th. We are very excited about these new super dogs. Their dad, Billy is spectacular with an incredible race record. Fender has been on the main team since she was a yearling. She is a wonderful mom and does not like us handling the pups. They are named after famous female mushers: Dee Dee, Libby, Susie, and Roxy.

We went up to Mackinaw for the 4th of July. My family came up there as well as our good friends Jim, Tiahia and their girls, Sophia and Emma. They had a blast with the sparklers.

Larry and Ana playing with sparklers

Our house dogs Sissy and Willie, playing in "Shady Acres" with 3 of our sled dogs. Sissy and Willie love it when I put other dogs in there to play with them. George, Jackson and Rags are 3 of our most playful sled dogs.

The summer has been flying by. I can't believe it is almost August already. It has been a cold, but great summer. I am not complaining about the lack of 80-90 degree days and neither are the dogs though. Larry is kickin butt on the basement. The drywall is hung and now we are mudding the seams. We hope to be done with the drywall and painting by August 11th, when our new furniture arrives. Our current furniture will go downstairs and our new stuff upstairs. We are also ripping out all of our carpet and installing pergo wood floors throughout the entire upstairs to make it more "dog and kid friendly". I don't recommend carpet for anyone with kids or dogs!!! We are also less than a month away from the start of fall training. I can hardly wait!! We still have a lot of projects to get done before it starts though.

2009-06-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Sum, Sum, Summertime!!!Ana canoeing on Father's Day

Going under a bridge

Going under a tree

Larry working on the basement

Ana helping

me, reading in the dog yard, one of my favorite things to do when it's nice out

Tefa, enjoying her summer relaxation time

Fender and Odessa (in her house) relaxin'

Georgie, actually being still, for once

Boston

Jackson

We are busy as usual here at Coyote Run Sled Dog Kennel. It seems like the summer is already flying by, even though it is really just beginning. The dogs are enjoying their summer relaxation time. Only 2 months till fall training starts up again. Fender is getting fatter by the day. She is due to have her pups on the 18th. I can hardly wait!!

Larry has been very busy finishing our basement. The walls are up, electrical almost done. Almost time for drywall. It will be so nice having extra living space when he is finished.

For Father's Day, Larry, Ana, and I and my parents, neice Makenzie, Aunt Sherry, Uncle Fred, Uncle Lee, Aunt Sueanne and cousin Logan all went to Borcher's in Grayling for a canoe ride. It was awesome! The weather was absolutely perfect! We ended up going for 13 miles this time. I can't wait to go again.

We are thoroughly enjoying summer this year. Fall training and all the hard work that comes with it will come all too soon. Even though I am not fond of the hot temps, I am not complaining! It is nice to have this much needed break!

This weekend is the 4th of July already! We are planning on watching fireworks in Mackinaw City with family and friends. Hope you all have a great holiday weekend!!

2009-05-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

Summer and more Waiting!!"Silly Lilly" says "yeah, it's summer!!

Prophet (left) and Zoey in lead after one of our final spring training runs

Jersey (left) and her mom, Zoey, in lead after one of our spring training runs. Jersey is very promising and will most likely be running main lead with her mom on our main team next winter. She is GOOD!

One of our spring puppy runs this year. We have 5 pups out of Mike Lee/Odessa from last year that we harness broke this spring. They are naturals! We got a total of 8 hookups on them. They are ready for fall now.

Larry and Ana during spring kennel clean up. All winter we put tons of straw in the dog's houses to keep them warm. Well, then we spend all spring raking and cleaning it up! It took us 2 weekends in early May to get it done. It is a BIG job!

Ana on her new swing set that Larry built. She loves it! We are trying to teach her to pump her legs so she can do it on her own. She is very stubborn though! Must take after Larry:)

Ana in her seat on the back of the four wheeler. This is where she rides during training runs. She holds the bar to stay on safely. Plus, she is higher up than me, so she can see the team.

Our super 2.5 year old female, Fender . Her mom, Odessa was bred to the Magnusson's super dog Billy this spring. Billy has incredible race credentials like being in Doug Swingley's 2nd place Iditarod team, Melanie Shirilla's 1st place Wyoming Stage Stop team, and many great race finishes for the Magnusson's. So, we were very excited for pups out of these two. Well, May 5th came and went and no pups. Odessa didn't look pregnant, so I took her into the vet for an Xray. NO PUPPIES!!! We were extremely disapointed. Not for long though. We discovered that one of the best dogs in our kennel, Fender was in heat. Fender has been on my main team for every race since she was a yearling. She is a machine. So, we called up the Magnusson's and they dropped Billy off out our place on their way back home. Now hopefully, we will be expecting some super pups July 18th. All that waiting AGAIN really sucks though! The days will probably go by extremely slow!

We have been busy as usual here. Spring brings us many outdoor projects. We are almost finished with everything outside. We will then move to working on the basement. We hope to have it finished by the end of summer, before fall training starts. Once training starts, there is no time for anything else.

Ana is done with preschool until fall, so it is so nice not getting up at the crack of dawn anymore. I love my sleep!

We have had only had a handful of warm days here. It has been a really cold spring. I'm like the only one not complaining though. It gave us a chance to get tons of work done and run our dogs.

My blog entries have been few and far between lately, so I promise to update more regularly. On the schedule today: our garden. Hopefully, it will all be planted by Sunday. I will take some pictures of all Larry's hard work shortly. Have a great weekend!!!

2009-04-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

More Spring Training....FINALLY!Ana helping give snacks after running our 12 males

Our SUPER 2.5 year old main team female, Fender (left), running lead with our retired leader, Windows. This was the first time Fender lead successfully, like a pro, out of the yard.

Stopped on the trail, while Larry removed a tree that had fallen

Ana helping give snacks to the 12 females we ran in the first team. (Memphis and Lilly in wheel)

The last 2 miles, we put Serra in lead with Fender. They did awesome together. Serra is only 1.5 years old and the most like her mom, our SUPER leader, Zoey.

me and Ana after running the male team

Serra (left) and Fender after the run

Ana with Boston (left) and our rookie of the year, George.

After a month of waiting for the ice to melt, we FINALLY got to hook up teams on Sunday. It was nice and cold out, perfect for the dogs. We ran two 12 dog teams. One all male team and one all female team. 5 of the dogs are our pups out of Mike Lee and Odessa. We are very excited about that litter. They now have 5 hookups on them and we hope to get a half a dozen more before it gets too warm out. Then, they will be ready for fall. It was so nice to get out with the dogs after such a long time off. They were so happy and we barely heard a peep out of them the rest of the night! It was great!!

We have been busy as usual here. We are cutting lots of wood for next season already and doing our spring cleaning outside, which includes a TON of raking. Especially, the dog yard. During the winter, they get lots of straw to keep them warm. Well, when the snow melts, the straw is EVERYWHERE!!!! So, we then have to rake it all up before we start the whole process over again next fall. It is an endless cycle.

Last weekend, we got the rarity to have a day to ourselves. My parents took Ana for the night, so we headed North to the Magnusson's kennel for a BBQ and some dog talk. Jerry & Ali Papke, the Holmberg's and JR Anderson were also there. It was a great time!! It is nice sitting around talking dogs after the race season. When we are racing, we don't have much social time because we are either feeding or dropping dogs or getting ready to race. We especially enjoyed Jerry's hilarious stories. For those who have not met Jerry, well, there is never a dull moment. Thanks Bruce and Monica for a great night!

We are also expecting puppies in only 15 more days out of the Magnusson's super Swingley male, Billy, and one of our very best females, also out of Doug Swingley's kennel, Odessa. She is showing a little so we are hoping for a nice sized litter. We are very exicited about this breeding since Billy has such great credentials. He ran on Doug's 2nd place Iditarod team and Melanie Shirrilla's 1st place Wyoming Team and the Magnusson's winning teams over the past couple of years. He should add some great dogs to our kennel.

I am also very happy that Ana is almost done with school for the year- yeah!! I won't have to get up at the crack of dawn to take her to school till next fall. Only about 4 more weeks left!!!! Well, that is all for now. My next post will probably be when Odessa has her pups around May 5th.

2009-03-23T07:27:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-02-25T10:37:00.000-08:00

Midnight Run 2009 6th place!!!!!!!my team loping into the finish

Shannon Miller ran 6 of our dogs in the Jackpine 30 and also finished 6th! Thank you Shannon for taking such great care of our dogs and helping us before the race!! Gibson before the race start

Prophet before the race start

Me and Georgie, our awesome yearling, before the race

Jackson, relaxing before the race

Me and Odessa

Cowgirl, one of my main leaders

Just before the race start

Odessa (white dog), Zoey (my main leader) and Fender before the race

We had our last race of the season last weekend, The Midnight Run, a 94 mile race. The first leg of 47 miles, went ok. We had a couple of problems out there. My team tried to pull me onto the highway (we were on a trail right next to it) 3 times! I would plead for Zoey to drag us back to the trail and she always listened like a good girl. Cowgirl was bound and determined to have us running down the highway. Thankfully, Zoey is strong enough to pull her and the team the correct way. The trail was very punchy for almost 30 miles. They got almost 2 feet of snow 2 days before the race. This made it very tough for me and the dogs. We got held up at a couple of road crossings waiting for huge lines of cars. We got done with the hills and Marquette Mountain and were headed toward the overpass. We run under it, there is a highway ontop. Well, Cowgirl heard the cars overhead and would not go under. Instead, she turned the whole team around and came back to me and the sled. There were no volunteers and nothing to hook down to. Two ladies came running and held my sled while I turned them around and untangled a huge knot of dogs. Then, they lead me under the overpass, where we then ran over some hay bales and a huge barrel. Finally, the last 19 miles into the checkpoint is on a nice, flat, well groomed snowmobile trail. The team was really cruisin for this section. We were the 2nd team into the checkpoint since we had started 4th and passed 2 teams. The team looked super! We took booties off, rubbed them down, put their coats on them, fed them, then bedded them on straw for the 6 hour layover at Deerton. All the dogs rested very well. About an hour before our departure, we walked the dogs around to see if anyone was sore. Everyone was fine except, Gibson had a slightly sore wrist and George had a ripped pad from taking his frozen bootie off when we got there. We bootied George and ran Gibson around to warm him up. Larry told me to start the 2nd leg slow to warm them up. Well, I tried, but we took off like a stinkin rocket! I was standing on the brake with everything I had. Gibson & George showed no signs of injury the entire 2nd leg. We were screaming down the trail. The first 20 miles was a nice, hard packed fast trail. We started the 2nd leg in 10th place and quickly caught 2 teams. I was hoping I wasn't going to fast, but the team was moving effortlessly. About 20 miles in I caught the fast teams of John Hull & JR Anderson. I passed both of them, then JR caught up and we ran together for quite awhile. He repassed me at one point. The last 25 miles was more soft, punchy trail. There were a lot of hills and tight, twisty trails. In the hills, Cowgirl wasn't driving anymore in lead next to Zoey. Her line was quite loose, so when JR stopped for a tangle, I put Odessa in lead and Cowgirl behind her. We caught back up to JR and the next time he stopped, we repassed him. John Hull was still close behind and would catch up everytime we stopped. Finally, we got onto a nicely groomed snowmobile trail for about a mile, but the swing dogs were over-running Odessa. So, I had to stop again and put Cowgirl back up in lead. In the meantime, JR passed us again. Not wanting him to get away, I called up the dogs with more than 10 miles to go. We went passed JR again. Then, we turned onto more tight, hilly, twisty trail. At this point, I was not going to give up 6th place without a fight. I kicked and ran with everything I had and gave the dogs their commands to pick the pace up. Slowly, we started to put some distance between JR & I's teams. Finally, I looked back and couldn't see him anymore. I knew he wasn't far behind, so we had to work as hard as we could to keep our spot. My legs were so sore and cramped already from all the running and kicking! Finally, We came out of the woods and the finish was in sight. I called up the dogs again and they came loping into the finish! All I could see was Larry's face as he stepped out of the crowd. He had a huge smile on his face and was shocked to see I had passed 4 teams for 6th place! He was so proud of us!! We had increased our lead on JR to 9 minutes on that last section and beat John's team by 4 minutes!! The dogs gave me everything they had and left it all on the trail. It was a perfect end to an awesome season!!

WE WANT TO THANK OUR SPONSORS: NORTHWOOD LAND COMPANY AND POWERHOUSE GYM!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-01-30T07:48:00.000-08:00

Beargrease 150 4th Place, Rookie of the Year!

Larry right before the start of the biggest race of his life

Our good friends Jerry Papke and Ali Dodge

Zoey (left) and Cowgirl, ran lead the entire race

Well, our kennel has a lot to be proud of this season. Last week, we were getting ready to head to the Beargrease 150, the biggest race we have ever done. I got the flu last Tuesday and thought for sure I'd better by the time we got out to Duluth. A stomach flu turned into a hacking head cold. Saturday night at the bib draw, reality struck and I realized I may not be up to running a 130 mile race. We talked with the race marshall and he gave us until an hour before the race start on Sunday to switch drivers if needed. Sunday morning came and I still felt terrible, so Larry stepped up to drive my team. I've never seen him nervous before a race, but he was definetly nervous for this one. We hooked up our main leaders Zoey & cowgirl, Odessa, Prophet, Fender, a yearling Georgie, Jackson & Gibson and then they were off, rocketing out of the starting chute onto the fast trail of the Beargrease 150. I quickly drove to the next checkpoint, following Ali, who is Jerry Papke's girlfriend and dog handler. We arrived at 2 Harbors and parked our trucks. We cannot have the dogs staked out around the trailer at this first checkpoint, so the work had begun for us. I bungeed as much stuff as I could fit on my little plastic sled and walked the 1/4 mile to the checkpoint. The checkpoint is basically a big field with DEEP snow. The teams arrive and have to do a layover here. You have 8 hours plus your time differential to use at this checkpoint and the Finland checkpoint. Our rest was to be a total of 8:58. It took me 3 trips to get all our supplies to the field. Then, I had to dig a huge snow trench for Larry's team when they arrived to protect them from the wind and just to make it easier to take care of the team. I was disapointed about not being able to race until I started digging. I thought I was going to throw up at one point. I met Joanna Oberg's mom and one of their handlers and they came to the rescue and helped me dig the rest of my trench. I was very grateful! I was also glad I did NOT run the race. This is a very hilly course, and I would not have been able to help the dogs by running up the hills. Larry's team arrived before I was expecting them to. Luckily, I was ready for them. They looked awesome! We pulled the team into the trench and hooked the snowhook into a tree. Snacked the dogs, took off booties, rubbed them down with Accede, put their dog coats on to keep them warm, fed them a light meal and spread out straw so they could rest. Larry then walked to the truck to warm up and get something to eat. I stayed and watched over the team in the bitter cold. It was about -8 at this time in the early evening on Sunday. Only a couple of our dogs layed down at this checkpoint. They were frisky and pretty wound up. I was about freezing to death and wanted to get them back on the trail so we could take our extended rest at Finland where the dogs can rest at the trailer. That meant I could also stay in the truck and keep warm!! So, after 3:10 worth of rest, we rebootied the dogs and Larry got back on the trail for the 2nd leg of the race. I then packed up our stuff and Ali and I drove to the Finland checkpoint, the last checkpoint of the race, to wait for Larry & Jerry's teams to arrive. This checkpoint was way better, but it was very cold and windy. It was well below zero. Luckily, we didn't have to haul anything anywhere. We just got everything ready for our teams to arrive. Larry's team came charging into the checkpoint, looking spectacular. I was shocked they looked that good. This is a long race! They were jumping and barking to go, but we pulled them over to the trailer. Snacked again, took off booties, rubbed them down with Accede (a liniment to keep muscles warm), put dog coats on them, fed them, then bedded them around the trailer on thick beds of straw. THIS time, everyone konked out and fell fast asleep like good doggies. We had over 5.5 hours of rest at this checkpoint. The final leg, Larry was to leave in 6th position, only 2 minutes out of 4th place. I was just hoping he'd hang onto 6th place. Two very good teams were right infront of him, Tom Benson & JR Anderson. I didn't think we could catch them. When Larry started the 3rd leg, he said the team was fresh and he finally took his foot of the drag mat and let them cruise. And cruise they did!! He caught Tom's team pretty early on that run and a few miles later caught JR's team. The team was flyin! Meanwhile at the finish, I watched Dave Turner win the race, Don Galloway take 2nd (he won last year) and Dawn Breedlove was 3rd. I was not expecting Larry's team yet. I saw another team coming and Ali and I said at the same time "wholy crap, that's Larry!!!". Our dogs came loping across the finish line, jumping and barking to go. I could not believe it! This was our very first Beargrease, so not only did Larry finish 4th, but he got "Rookie of the Year" honors. They had the 2nd fastest 3rd leg time also, less than a minute slower than Dave Turner's team. We really made up some ground on this leg. I am so proud of Larry and the dogs. They were awesome! We finished the race with all 8 dogs and Zoey and Cowgirl led every step of the race. The team was flawless! Jerry Papke's team also did awesome. He started the last leg in 8th place and rocketed his team to a 6th place finish!! He is also a rookie and had an awesome team. Now, onto the next race, the 91 mile Midnight Run, the 3rd weekend in February. This time, it is MY turn!!

2009-01-12T12:31:00.000-08:00

Tahquamenon 2009 Ana and my niece Maddie after the race with Larry's team. We both ran the 8 dog Pro 43 mile race

My team finishing a very strong 3rd place out of 19 teams!!!!!!

Larry's team also finishing a very strong 7th place out of 19 teams!!!

Getting ready for the race

More getting ready, lots of preparation before the race starts

My team 5 miles out at the first road crossing.

My team on the way back, the last 5 miles. They really picked up the pace after the road crossing and finished strong! I was so proud of them!

Larry's team the last 5 miles. Notice Larry isn't wearing his hat. This part was just after a TON of hills and soft trail. His team did super and finished strong also.

Me with my main leader "Zoey" and my 3rd place trophy. Zoey was spectacular!

Me accepting my trophy at the awards banquet and getting my check for $500!! That is the most I've ever won and the best I've ever placed in a pro class race.

Larry accepting his check for $225 at the awards banquet! We paid for our trip and a month's worth of Redpaw dog food with our winnings.

We just had a super time this weekend. The weather was perfect, we saw so many of our friends and the dogs were fantastic. We both had great races. Larry started the race 7 minutes before me. It took me 25 miles to catch Larry's team. They were really cooking along and doing very well when I caught them. He had Tefa & Odessa in lead, Jersey and Lilly ran in swing, Eddie & Dana (a yearling) in team, and Liddell and Franklin (yearlings) in wheel. Jersey ran lead the last 5 miles afer Tefa wanted to go slower up there. She really did great and picked up his pace. His team finished very strong! My team was Zoey & Cowgirl in lead, Prophet & Fender in swing, Boston & George (a yearling) in team, and Gibson & Jackson in wheel. I was so proud of my team. The last 5 miles I gave them the going home command and they dug in and gave me everything they had. They looked great and loped across the finish line. So, looks like all that hard work paid off. December was a tough month of training, but it was worth it. Next on the racing calendar is the Beargrease 150 in 2 weeks in Duluth, Minnesota. This is three 40+ mile legs with 2 checkpoints. I still have to decide for sure the 8 dogs that I will be taking with me. There is a ton of very big hills there, so I will be taking my hardest working dogs with the best endurance.

2008-12-31T07:50:00.000-08:00

In The HomestretchChristmas Day, at 2:00 am, after we got done wrapping all Ana's presents

It didn't take Ana long to open everything

Larry showing Ana how to play her first guitar

Christmas Day at my family's house. Ana dressed in Maddie's fairy princess outfit

Maddie got a bunch of dress up clothes for Christmas. The girls had a blast running around in all the fancy clothes.

Makenzie, my 10 year old neice, who is the other dog lover of the family. She will definetly do something dog related when she grows up!

Well, the Christmas's are OVER! It has been a very busy month. We enjoyed seeing our families and spending time with everyone. I forgot to bring my camera to the Fortier family christmas. Or as Shane put it, Fortier Family Fun Day. It was a blast! We had an excellent time, especially since Shane brought his "yellow bird" to the gathering. As fun as it all was, it is nice that it is over and we can now take a breath and relax a bit.

We are also in the homestretch of our tough month of training the dogs for our first race, Tahquamenon, on January 10th. Last Friday, before the warm up and rain, I took out our best 12 dogs: Zoey, Cowgirl, Odessa, Lilly, Fender, Star, Prophet, Jackson, Gibson, Boston, and two yearlings, Franklin & George on a 42 mile training run. It was a tough run, lots of trail breaking, but the dogs were awesome! The last 14 miles the team really finished strong, they were like a freight train coming home. All 12 finished very strong and happy. I was so proud! With over 700 miles on both teams, we are more than ready for the 43 miles at Tahquamenon. Larry and I will both run 8 dogs. I will have the main team and Larry will have some nice veterans mixed with a few yearlings to give them experience. I am already getting nervous! I always get a queezy stomach and cannot eat a thing before a race. I do not start to feel better till we leave the starting chute. Then, it feels just like a training run and I start to relax. Larry on the other hand, never gets nervous. I wish I was like that! Well, tonight is New Year's Eve. Happy New Year everyone! Have a fun, safe night tonight! Until next time.......

2008-12-19T10:46:00.000-08:00

Birthdays, Holidays and of course, more dog training!Ana turned 4 years old on December 10th. We had a sledding birthday party for her with my family and our great friend Hatch on the Twin Peak hills down the road from us. We used to go sledding on these hills in high school with all of our friends quite often. Billie, my other best friend from high school, always had her birthday parties at these same sledding hills. Ahh, the memories....
This is Hatch, one of Larry and I's best friends and the person who helped get us together. He is up for the month before he moves to Dallas, Texas. Hatch and I became friends in 8th grade when we used to walk to the Community Center every day after school to play basket ball. I really suck at that sport, but we still had fun. We have been friends ever since. Hatch is a city boy, originally from Mustang, Oklahoma, so we had to lend him the above get-up to go sledding. He was surprised he was actually warm all day!

Training is as intense as ever right now. It seems we haven't had one moment to relax between my birthday and Ana's, the holidays and getting 2 teams ready for the Tahquamenon race January 10th. I will be glad when this month is OVER! Above is Star (black dog) and Jersey, a promising 2 year old (Zoey/Strider), leading Larry's team. The yearlings and young dogs are looking spectacular. I even stole Georgie, a big male yearling out of Zoey/Strider from Larry's team and have been running him in mine. He runs like a veteran and was one of my strongest on our last long run of 31 miles last weekend.

Pictured above is Franklin, an awesome yearling male, also out of Zoey/Strider (spotted dog) and Duelly. Franklin is next on the list of dogs for me to steal from Larry's team. He is an animal in harness and also did super on our 31 mile run last weekend. Duelly is the big black male. He has the funniest personality, but is all business in line. He keeps a nice steady lope the entire run, no matter what distance we run.

Well, on Monday I was in a very bad mood. We had a SUPER 31 mile training run on Sunday with both teams, but it was warm out, 36 degrees. Then, it drizzled, then rained and on Monday, it was 7 degrees and everything froze up. I always get a bit cranky when our spectacular training trails get ruined. We took 2 days off and got a bit of snow and were able to go and run again this week. Last night we got hit again and now there is a bunch of new snow for our 20 mile run tonight. It should make for a nice cushion for the dogs. The trails were a bit too speedy the last 2 days, making it hard to slow the teams down. Larry had the ride of his life last night that included being drug down a plowed road. Tonight's run should go well with all the new snow.

Tomarrow, we head downstate for the day for 2 family Christmas's. Yes, 2 in one day! Then, we head back home and Sunday we are scheduled to go 35 miles. We are not done with Christmas though. We still have my family's on Christmas day and Larry's family on the Saturday after. Still training dogs in between those days. Then, on that next Sunday we are supposed to have a very long run and do another checkpoint. Did I mention we are busy??!! I am hoping January and the races come SOON!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-12-01T10:18:00.000-08:00

Let it Snow!!!!!!Ana with Koyuk (left) and Windows after her first sled run with her team

Ana ready to go! We hooked her sled to the snowmachine and she mushed her team down the road. She loved it! It was so fun seeing her give the dog's their commands just like we do. Koyuk & Windows had fun too, of course!

George & Tefa, 2 of Larry's dogs. Tefa is one of his main leaders and George is on of our promising yearlings out of Zoey/Strider

Me and my 10 dog team last Friday on a 15 mile run. We have so much snow, our training is awesome!!

Dana & Liddell, another 2 of Larry's yearlings on his team, also out of Zoey/Strider

Larry's 10 dog yearling team, Jersey (2 year old on left) and Star in lead. Jersey is out of the first litter we had with Zoey/Strider. It was so good, we repeated it the very next year. For those interested Strider is one of Pete & Sharon Curtice's main dogs.

Eddie (brown male 2 year old) and Cowgirl leading my team the other day. Eddie is a very promising young leader from the Curtice's. Cowgirl is one of my main leaders from Andrew Cesario

Yesterday we did a checkpoint run with Jerry Papke's team. Larry and I both ran 10 dog teams, Jerry ran his main 12. We went 22 miles to deer camp, layed over for 4 hours and ran 9 miles home. The 2nd leg was supposed to be 13 miles, but the dogs missed the turn. Earlier in the day, Jerry lost his team going out of our driveway. I was first out, Larry was 2nd, and Jerry left third, then my dad followed with the snowmachine. Thank goodness because he scooped up Jerry, sped up to his team that was trying to pass Larry, got right up beside his sled, then Jerry jumped over to his team Roy Roger's style. The rest of the run was smooth. We had so much fun on our trails. Our teams looked very good.

Here is what we feed the dogs. We get asked this all the time. Well, in this bucket is what we feed at night: Redpaw kibble, Eureka meat mix, psyllium (helps prevent diarrhea), fish oil, wheat germ oil (for the Omegas) and we also give each dog 1 vitamin E pill daily as an antioxidant. Looks yummy, doesn't it??

Ali, Jerry's girlfriend tending to his team at our checkpoint

My team, somewhat resting. Eddie is being a good boy nestled in the straw. It took a long time for the dogs to finally lay down, about 2 hours.

Larry's team at the beginning of the layover. Tefa & Star were the only ones to lay down for about the first 2 hours. Then, the young dogs finally got the hint to rest

Prophet (a super 3 year old from Frank Holmberg) and Jackson were the only ones out of our 20 that did not rest well. They were sleeping standing up for 4 hours. Didn't seem to matter though, both did great on the 2nd leg

Zoey (left) and Cowgirl, my main leaders this season

Star & Tefa, Larry's main leaders this season.

Since this snow came, we have been super busy running dogs. It is almost too good to be true to get this snow so early. We have been getting storm after storm. Thanksgiving was great also. We spent Thursday with my family and Saturday with Larry's family. It was very nice to see everyone and the food was GREAT, of course! Today is a day off for training and tomarrow is my 32nd B-day. I can't believe I am that old!! Well, until next time..........

2008-11-23T06:31:00.000-08:00

Deer Camp, Snow and SLEDSSSSS!!!!!Ana in her comfy bunk at deer camp.

Can you see Mr. Camo, I mean Larry in this picture? I really don't think he could ever been seen by a deer in this getup.

Jackson hidin out from all the snow on Friday

Duelly enjoying all the big flakes falling from the sky

Our beloved wood boiler doing its job, oh how we LOVE it!!!

Ana on her sled. Larry was pulling her around the yard with the snowmachine so she can learn to ride her sled

This is the team Larry ran. Cowgirl (left) and Eddie ran lead

My 6 dog team at the bottom of the huge hill. Look to the top of the hill, there is a whole other hill when you crest this one. It is really HUGE!

Last weekend we spent our days and nights at Deer Camp. Ana loves it out there and so do we. It is such a cozy place, enveloped in warmth from the wood stove. I could stay out there forever. It was nice getting out into the woods for the opener of gun season. What sucks for us is we have to take turns hunting. Most men don't have this problem, they go out into the woods while the women stay home and take care of the kids. Well, that is not so with the Fortier's. We both hunt, so the fun of hunting has to be shared. I only hunted one morning and I let Larry hunt twice so he could have a chance to shoot a buck. I'd like him to get a nice one like my 8 point that is hanging on our wall so when his buddies come over he doesn't have to say, "no, my wife shot that one!"

Thursday we had about 6 inches of snow. So, I went out on a 17.5 mile run with the ATV. By the time I got home we had atleast 10 inches. I could not believe how hard it was snowing while I was out. I am glad I went out in the day time or I would not have been able to see a thing! The next morning when we woke up, we had atleast a foot of snow, so out came the sleds! This is the earliest in years that we have been on sleds. Last year it was December 1st, so we were elated to leave that stinky, noisy ATV in the barn and go out on our quiet sleds. Larry took out a 7 dog team and I took 6. It was so fun!!! Yesterday we gave them a day off and today we are going out with sleds again for an 18 mile run.

2008-11-07T06:56:00.000-08:00

Halloween & Dogs, of course!!!Ana in her costume on Halloween. She was so excited to be a sled dog. I even had a leash hooked to her harness so she could pull me. She LOVED it!

Ana & her cousin Maddie at Kera & Larry Platte's party they put on for all the kids.

Ana & Makenzie at the party. Makenzie was Wednesday from the Adam's Family

My sister, Jennifer, getting off of the hay ride. The Platte's have a hay ride for the kids and parents and pull everyone around the neiborhoods so we don't have to walk so far to get candy. It is so much fun!

Last week, the kids in Ana's preschool went to Flemming Farm. They had so much fun. Here, Ana is climbing on all the pumkins trying to pick one out to carve. I really think she cared more about climbing around, than picking a pumkin.

Maddie & Ana ontop of the haybales. Flemming Farm set up a haybale maze for the kids to run through. When they got tired of that, they all got ontop and jumped from bale to bale.

Ana's class ontop of the hay bales

Me, with a 14 dog team on a 14.5 mile training run last weekend. Here, we are pulling up one of our giganto hills on Post Rd. It is VERY hilly where we live, so the dogs get a great workout.

The dogs pulling me through the valley on Mushroom Rd.

The dogs after the run. Zoey (left), my main leader, with her daughter, Dana. Dana is only a yearling and very good in lead already. She is a natural in lead like her mom.

Well, a lot has happened since I posted last. We got our wood boiler finished and I am happy to report, we are finally WARM!!! Well, a bit too warm. Larry about heats me out of our house each night. Since we heat with wood instead of propane, we can afford to turn the thermostat up. Larry really likes that!

We also had one of our dogs, Memphis, get very sick after the Shaw weekend. Turns out, on the way home in her dog box, she peuked up her food, it aspirated into her lungs, meaning the food went down her trachea instead of esophogus and into her lungs, causing an infection. Then she got pneumonia. We did not think she was going to make it. I am happy to report now, that she has made a full recovery. She is still inside the house for another week, then will go back outside and start some light training in a couple of weeks when we are sure all the fluid is out of her lungs.

As you can see from the photos above, Ana had a busy week last week as well. I LOVE her preschool. They teach the kids so much. Ana had so much fun at Flemming Farm and trick or treating with her cousins.

Dog training is going very well, except for the recent warm temps. We have not trained since Monday. But, the temps are cooler now, finally, and we will be taking the team out tonight on a fast, fun 8 mile run. Then, this weekend we will do a couple of 14 mile runs.

2008-10-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

Shaw's Training Weekend The yearlings finally resting after their run

The two year olds resting after their run

Boston, one of our most promising 2 year olds. He ran on my Midnight Run team last year as a yearling

Zoey (left) in lead with her son Boston

Liddell (left), one of our yearlings, next to Jackson, one of our other super 2 year olds

Odessa (left) and Star

Georgie (left), another yearling and Duelly

Cowgirl (left) and Zoey, two of my main leaders

Star & Tefa leading the team

Last weekend we went up to Bob & Jan Shaw's for our annual training weekend. We had so much fun!!!! Ana stayed home with Grandpa and Grandma and Larry and I headed up with 22 dogs. It was so nice seeing everyone and having a great doggy weekend. The trails were awesome, the weather crisp and cold. Perfect for running dogs! This weekend is esential for our young dogs. There are tons of teams, so we always get lots of passing practice in. This is very important to train before our upcoming races. We are happy to report that every young dog did super passing!! We even had 3 of our two year olds in lead: Eddie, Boston & Jersey. They did excellent and passed other teams like pros. What a wonderful weekend. Only thing, it is NEVER long enough! It sure was nice getting home and picking Ana up though. We always miss her, so maybe next time she will come with us and camp out. It is nice to get away, but soooo nice to come back home. In other news, training is going well. We are a bit ahead of schedule, so that is always nice. More to come later..........

2008-10-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

First Day of School, Training etc......

Ana, her cousin Maddy and their friend Landon on the first day of Preschool.

Ana helping daddy dig the trench for our new wood boiler

digging the trench

The team on Gas Plant Trail on a 7 mile training run last week. Look how beautiful the colors are!!

The team at the bottom of the "big" hill. I know, we are real creative with our names. We have the "big" hill and the "huge" hill. The big hill is a steady incline and is almost a mile long. It is a great workout for the dogs in early fall while we are building muscle.

Memphis (left) and Star in lead

Ana playing with Cigar, one of the Odessa/Mike Lee pups in the background

Well, we are busy as usual at the Fortier house. Ana started school a few weeks ago. She LOVES it. She has to put her back pack on like a big girl when going into the school. She has so much fun there that she wants to go every day. Thankfully for me it is only 2 days per week of getting up super early. We are also getting a wood boiler. For those that don't know, it is a giant woodstove that is outside your house, making it safer. You pipe it into your furnace and burn wood instead of using propane (which is HUGELY expensive in these parts). This will more than cut our heating bill for the winter in half. Needless to say, I've never been so excited to get a wood boiler as I am now. Just turning my thermostat up is going to be exciting!!! We spent one weekend cutting and stacking wood (very hard work) and the rest of our wood is coming from a loggers train we are slitting with our friends. This will be enough wood for over a year!! Our training is going very well. We are ahead of schedule this year, which is a great place to be. We are running 8 miles and ready to move up the distance, but some warm temps later in the week might delay that till next week. Everyone is looking awesome. We have a lot of leaders we are rotating. Star, Odessa, Zoey, Tefa, Cowgirl are our veteran leaders. We also have a lot of the 2 year olds like Eddie, Jersey, Memphis, Fender, Boston, Jackson and a few others. George, Dana and Serra are our best yearling leaders. Windows, our 9 year old super leader, started the season with us to help sharpen the skills of our younger dogs in lead. Sadly she has about reached her limit with our young team at 8 miles and will be dropped from training soon. She has so much drive and has been such an awesome dog for us. It will be hard seeing her sit on the sidelines for the first time in her life. She will resume training when we harness break the Odessa/Mike Lee pups, who are now 5 months old. We will do that in December. Well, that is all for now. Next weekend we go to our super fun training weekend in the U.P. at Bob & Jan Shaw's. I will post more pictures and another entry after we get back.

2008-09-24T07:37:00.001-07:00

Lance Mackey Comes to MichiganLarry & I with Lance
Lance & his wife Tonya with the Nowak's

Everyone listening intently

Two weekends ago we went to the Full Moon Fall Fling at Russ & Sherry's Sutherby's kennel. Lance Mackey, who has won the Yukon Quest (1,000 miles) the last 4 years in a row and also the Iditarod (1,150 miles) the last 2 years in a row was the speaker for the weekend. The other incredible thing he did was in 2007 after winning the Quest, he went on to win the Iditarod only 10 days later with 13 of the same dogs! Everyone said it could never be done in the same year and he did it TWICE! So, needless to say, we were very excited to meet Lance. It was a wonderful weekend. On saturday, it was really laid back, with about 25 people. We got to hang with Lance all day and listen to his amazing stories and training/feeding advice. I can't begin to say how awesome it was. On Sunday, there were tons of people and Lance gave an awesome presentation. Tim Riley also gave a presention on the history of the Iditarod and about preparing for his 2009 rookie run with a team from Nature's kennel in the U.P. There were awesome door and raffle prizes as well including a Wiggy's sleeping bag and a beautiful parka. We got to meet mushers that we haven't met before and reconnect with old friends. It was such a fun weekend. It was nice actually getting to relax for once. Thank you Russ & Sherry and everyone else who helped put on a wonderful weekend we won't soon forget!!!!!

2008-09-15T05:57:00.000-07:00

Belated Labor Day WeekendBears at Oswald's Bear Ranch in Newberry

You might be a Redneck if.....you go swimming with socks on!!!

My mom & Aunt Sueanne

Larry & Ana

Bridge going across the Tahquamenon River

The Tahquamenon River

Aunt Sueanne, Uncle Lee, Ana & dad

Me, Odessa & Star

Zoey & Star

Ok, this is a little late, but we've been beyond busy lately. Labor Day weekend, me, Larry, Ana, my mom & dad and Aunt & Uncle went up to "bear camp". It is my parent's cabin located North of McMillan on the Tahquamenon River in the U.P. We also took 23 dogs up with us so we could train on the awesome trails up there. It was soooo nice and relaxing. We had a GREAT time up there. Needless to say, we did NOT want to come home!!! We were spoiled every morning after running dogs with a HUGE breakfast of blueberry pancakes (made with blueberries we picked up there) and the BEST dinners. I could get used to that!! We hiked around and looked at all the other neat cabins along the river, went to Oswald's bear ranch, we ate out one night at Timber Charlie's (the BEST restaurant in Newberry) and I got to witness my family swim in the FREEZING river. It was funny and there was no lingering. Everyone was in and out in the blink of an eye. It was way too cold for me, I relied on the solar shower to get clean!! It was a wonderful weekend with my family. I look forward to being able to go up there again sometime before winter. Stay tuned, more to come on our amazing weekend at the Sutherby's Full Moon Fall Fling. We got to meet the Incredible Lance Mackey!!!! He is the 4 time Yukon Quest Champ and won the Iditarod the last two years in a row only 10 days after winning the Quest (1,000 miles), one of the toughest races in the world.

2008-08-25T11:44:00.000-07:00

Shelter Dogs, Shady Acres & Training

Meet Willie, our new addition from the local animal shelter

" Shady Acres"

Inside "Shady Acres"

Ana with Star & Tefa (right) after our first training run

George (left) & Gibson

Lilly (left) & Dana

The 2nd team we ran Sunday morning, Eddie (left) and Jersey in swing

Well, summer is almost over and we have been extremely busy, as usual! First of all, we have a new addition to the house/kennel. His name is Willie, he is a Border Collie/Husky. When I went to get my kennel license renewed in the spring, the ladies at animal control showed me this dog that was put in the shelter for killing 30 chickens! Some people found this dog wandering around and for some reason they decided to put him in their chicken coop and then decide what to do with the dog. Well, Willie had a great time in there, killed all the chickens and ended up at animal control. Huskies and Border Collies are very hard to home so they wanted me to take a look. He was very sweet and good with Ana and I said I'd think about it and walked out of animal control not wanting another dog. So, over the summer, my good friend Sherry Sutherby (knowing we love Border Collies/huskies) kept emailing me the picture of this dog I had seen in the spring that was on Pet Finder. Two weeks ago, she emailed me his picture again and I told Larry. I had mentioned this dog earlier in the summer, but we definetly don't need any more dogs, so I said we shouldn't get him. So, I told Larry that that dog was STILL at animal control and was very unhappy and over the past few weeks, seemed very sad. So, Larry decided to go and take a look at him. I told him to call me BEFORE he made any decisions. Well, I called his cell phone and asked him how it went. He said "Good, I'm on my way home". I asked where the dog was, he said "in my truck"!!! So, we decided to try him out for a couple of weeks to see if he'd fit here. We don't have chickens or any small animals, so that is good!! Well, it turns out we are going to adopt him. He is very sweet, a bit shy, but good with kids and our other dogs. He is great in the house and well mannered. We weren't planning on getting another house dog so soon after losing our other Border Collie, "Bailey" last October to Cancer, but he really need a home. Also, he needed a home with people who are framilar with those breeds. They have some quirks and are not for everyone. So, we named him "Willie" and looks like he is here to stay.

I made Larry promise to build my huge pen I've been asking for though, since he got to keep Willie. It took almost 200' of fence, 4 bee stings from yellow jackets, killing bee nests and lots of hard work, but we finally have "Shady Acres". It is a fenced area for our house dogs and retired sled dogs so they can run and play with each other. I hate seeing retired sled dogs without anything to do, they like to be busy, so now they can play with our house dogs in Shady Acres. I do have to say they LOVE it!! So, thanks Larry!!

Our fall training usually starts August 20th, but it was way too warm. Our first training run was early Sunday morning, the 24th. They dogs were CRAZY to go!! It was so much fun and good to be back running dogs. We trained two 12 dog teams and went 3 miles. We had 2 retirees, 16 race age dogs, and 6 yearlings. Our yearlings were super! They are a repeat breeding that we are very excited about. Looks like we will be able to have another training run tonight and might have to wait till the weekend to run again, the temps are on the rise again.

This weekend we are going up to the U.P. near McMillan to my dad's cabin to run dogs for the weekend. He calls it "Bear Camp". It is AWESOME and there are miles of trails. It is right down the road from the Steilstra's kennel. I could live there. It is a great place and so relaxing right on the Tahquamenon River. Ana is very excited and asks me every day if it is Labor Day Weekend yet. We plan to take her to Oswald's Bear Ranch and to visit the Shaw's and the Holmberg's while we are up there. I can't wait to get away for a few days!! Have a great Labor Day Weekend everyone!!

2008-08-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Perfect Summer Ana getting a kiss from Windows, my retired SUPER leader

Koyuk giving Ana some love (another retired leader)

Larry & pups on our puppy run

Larry's new invention, introducing the "Musher Tote"

Pumkins are blooming!!!

Clouds after a storm

This has been a perfect summer and I can't believe we are already at the tail end of it. The temps have been awesome!! No 90's here, at all for an entire summer. That has to be some kind of record. While some people have been complaining about a lack of summer, we are LOVING it!! It has been consistantly in the upper 70's with lots of sun.

Now we are hoping for it to quickly become cooler, because in 2 short weeks, we beging fall training with the dogs. I cannot wait to see what my team will do this season!! Our summer projects are pretty much done and now we are concentrating on getting the dog equipment ready. We will be training two 12 dog teams, then when Windows & koyuk cannot keep up with the younger, faster dogs, they will be dropped from training and live our their retirement in the house. Koyuk will love it, but it will probably take some adjustment from Windows. She is the queen of the kennel and still has the drive to train and she still thinks she is young enough to race. She goes crazy when she is left behind.

I recently signed up for my two biggest races of the 2009 season. Our races for next season will be: Tahquamenon, two 8 dog teams 43 miles, the Beargrease 150 (this will be my rookie year) one 8 dog team, the Midnight Run one 8 dog team 91 miles and then we will close the season with a close, fun shorter race so Larry can run the main team. It should be a great year. We have a lot of young talented dogs coming up that we are looking forward to running. I am hoping to place in the top 10 in every race this year.

Larry has been quite busy this summer. He and Ana planted some pumpkins and they are now starting to bloom. We've never grown anything before, so it is fun to see how these plants keep changing. They check them every day. Larry also built us his new "musher tote" so all 3 of us can comfortably run dogs together. I drive, Ana sits behind me and has a saftey bar to hold her in, plus we are putting a seat belt around her so she can't fly off. Then, larry gets pulled behind on his "musher tote". It is like riding a sled. I am still a bit skeptical and think on the first big turn with a huge string of dogs, he'll go flyin in the woods, but we haven't lost him yet on any of the puppy runs. So, we will see. It must be quite funny for our neibors to see us cruisin down the road on this contraption. We look more like Redneck Racing, than Coyote Run Kennel. Oh well, it sure is fun!!

2008-07-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July!!!watching fireworks in Mackinaw City

my mom & dad

Smarty

Larry & Ana on our puppy walk to "soup pond"

the pups checking out "soup pond"

We had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. On Friday we walked around Mackinaw city with my parents. It was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky! In the evening we all went to the lakefront to watch the fireworks. Ana was so excited, but it was a LONG wait till it got dark. She loved them, then said they were "too loud for kids". She didn't like the ones with the HUGE BOOM. Those are my favorite! When leaving, it took us a half hour just to move about a foot out of our parking spot. There were so many cars all trying to leave at the same time. If we go back next year, we will definetly park in a different place. We didn't end up getting out of town for an hour!! The gas prices didn't seem to affect the turnout either, it was packed up there!!

On Saturday our friends Brandon, Becky, Michelle & Ted came over for a campfire. The conversation and of course, the smores were wonderful!! Sunday, we had a nice relaxing day around the house to ready us for the coming week. It was a beautiful day so we took all the pups for a walk to "soup pond". It is really just a huge mud hole that looks like pea soup. The pups and Ana thought it was great. Ana actually wanted to swim in it- yuck! All in all, it was a great weekend.

2008-06-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

Finally!!!! Summer!!!Ana in the new "poop pit" that Larry dug by hand! He was so proud of it, too bad I had to start filling the beautiful hole with, well, you can guess what!

Larry with Man o War (left) and Rags

Me and Smarty. He really fits his name. He is VERY smart! He looks exactly like his dad. I hope he turns out like him.

Ana playing with all the crazy pups

Curlin

Cigar

Man O War ("Manny")

Well, it finally quit raining after almost 2 weeks of rain EVERY day and turned into summer. It has been so nice out. As you can see above the puppies are really growing. Ana has been working hard keeping them socialized. We have been busy with summer projects the last couple of weeks. Larry dug us a new poop pit. We had an excavator dig the last one when we built the house. It lasted 7 years and we needed another. So, to save us the $250 it would cost to dig a new one, Larry dug it by hand. It only took him 6 hours and one chiropractor visit! The summer is already flying by, I can't believe it will be the 4th of July next Friday! We always go up to Mackinaw city for the 4th. We like to shop at all the gift shops, get ice cream and fudge and then go out to dinner. Hopefully, they will also have fireworks while we are there. We can't wait to take Ana to see fireworks this year. She was always too small before, so this will be the big year. Well, Happy 4th of July everyone!!!

2008-06-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

Ana & Odessa's pups

Rags

Pile O pups

Odessa hiding from the pups

Cigar

Big Brown sleeping while sitting

The pups are now 5 weeks old and getting friskier by the day. We went with some of our favorite race horses as the theme to this litter.

The boys are: Man O War (one of the greatest race horses of all time 20 wins out of 21 races), Curlin (07 horse of the year), Cigar (one of the winningest horses, tied Citation's record), and Smarty (o4 Derby & Preakness winner).

The girls are: Ruffian (one of the greatest fillies of all time), Rags (first filly to win the Belmont in 102 years, winning in 07) and Big Brown (this year's Derby & Preakness winner). Yeah, she has a boy name, but oh well!!!

Nothing much has been going on here, except I swear it will never stop raining!!! It has poured every day for about a week now. The poor dogs all have HUGE puddles/lakes at their spots. I have to dig little rivers daily to get the water away from them. Poor guys! I am really getting sick of all the rain. When will it end????

Atleast we live on a hill, or we'd probably be underwater.

Martin & BJ went to their new home last week in Quebec. We delivered them across the border last Thursday so their new owner wouldn't have to drive so far. Duelly goes to his new home on the 23rd. He will be living in Ontario.

Oh, it is pouring again!!!! Big surprise!!!! Maybe we should get a boat, I wonder if we'd save on gas???!!! Probably not.......

2008-05-20T07:41:00.001-07:00

Big Brown, Triple Crown??Big Brown, winner of the 08 Kentucky Derby and the Preakness

Claudia Nowak with our pups and Ana

Ana & Claudia

Sleeping Pups

There is big news in horse racing with another triple crown contender. The last one was Smarty Jones in 2004, he ended up falling short in the Belmont. Big Brown won the 2008 Kentucky Derby impressively from post 20, WAY on the outside. It was an awesome race. He did it again when he easily won the Preakness 2 weeks later this past weekend. In 3 weeks, he will be racing the Belmont against some awesome horses. Can he do it?? It has been 30 years since a horse has won the triple crown. The last one was 1978, when Affirmed beat his all time rival Alydar by a nose. Big Brown is an impressive horse, we are hoping THIS is the year where history will be made. Watch the Belmont, the 2nd week of June and you COULD witness history. We hope so, I'd like to see it happen in my lifetime, it has been a LONG time!

We had a very nice weekend. First Lee & Claudia Nowak came to visit and see our new pups. Ana very much enjoyed them as you can see by the above photo of her on Claudia's lap. The puppies loved all the snuggles. Then, Larry's sister Sue and our niece Karlie came over to stay with Ana so we could go to a wedding with our friends Becky & Brandon. Ana had a blast with Sue & Karlie. We also had a GREAT time getting to leave the house and hang out with our friends. We were a little tired as a result on Sunday, but by afternoon we rebounded enough to go and visit Tim & Michelle Riley's kennel in Grayling. They have a very nice setup and beautiful dogs. Tim picked us up some dog house barrels from downstate, so we picked those up for all our future new additions to the kennel. Ana loved running around their property, eating their chocolate and crackers. Sherry Sutherby and her little cattle dog "Zip" were there also. Ana loved Zip, I think she would have taken her home if Sherry would have let us! On our way home, we stopped at the park in Grayling so Ana could run around and burn off a bit more steam before we headed home to feed the dogs. It was a very good weekend, tiring, but I got all rested up yesterday. We look forward to more rest and relaxation this coming Memorial weekend.

2008-05-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

Mother's DayAna holding Odessa's pups

They are now 1 week old

Star (left) teaching young "Jersey Girl" the ropes in lead.

Zoey (left), our SUPER girl and Fender, rookie of the year.

Dana (left), one of Zoey's female pups from her 07 litter and Jackson, one of our soon to be 2 year olds that raced all this past season with the main team.

Prophet, our new 3 year old from Frank Holmberg. He had a super season racing on Frank's 1st place Tahquamenon 12 dog team and Jerry Papke's 1st place Apostle Islands and 3rd place Midnight Run team. We are very glad to have this happy boy in our team.

I had the BEST Mother's Day! I got to sleep in, then Larry made me his famous "breakfast sandwhich". Then, we were off to my family BBQ. The food was delicious! I was thinking about my mom's macaroni salad ALL week long. It was soooooo good!!! After that Larry, Ana, my parents and I went mushroom picking. It was fun looking, but I only found 3. We have not had a good season for it around here in a few years because of the cold springs we've had. Oh, well, the cold made for a great day to run the dogs and tire them out so they won't be so noisy. We ran two 12 dog teams and Ana helped me give the commands. She also gives them their treats after the run. She is very helpful. She says "see, I'm big enough!" The first team, we put one of our promising yearlings, Jersey, in lead with Star. She did super in lead and never missed a beat. She is definetly a natural leader. We also ran 4 of the 10 month old pups in the team. All did super as well. In the 2nd team, one of our other super yearlings, Boston, ran lead with Windows. He made my Midnight Run team this year as a yearling and did awesome. He did a fabulous job in lead and stayed focused. Windows always does a great job keeping him on the trail. He is a big dog, so he has to run lead with a VERY strong leader, like Windows. We also ran 3 of the 10 month old pups in this team. All did great. All in all, it was a GREAT day. Too bad Mother's Day isn't more than one day a year!

2008-05-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

Puppies!!!! Odessa/Mike Lee pups 4 males, 3 females

Ana petting the new pups

Our new frames for our dog barrels

Yesterday Odessa had her pups, 7 total, 4 males, 3 females. Needless to say, Ana was VERY excited to see them. They came a couple of days early, but all seem healthy. We haven't decided on names yet.
We've been super busy as usual. The weather has been great! Larry has been making new frames for the dog's houses to raise them up off of the ground a bit. He also drilled holes in the bottom to keep them cleaner. I LOVE them and the dogs seem to also.
Our morel mushroom season has begun, so we will be searching the woods in the coming days. It is so much fun! Ana even finds them. I'll post how many we find in our "secret" locations in a couple of weeks.

2008-04-16T07:15:00.000-07:00

2008 BreedingOdessa (picture from last summer)

Odessa & Windows (picture from fall training 06)

Mike Lee (father of this year's litter)

Well, spring is FINALLY starting to arrive. It was taking FOREVER!!!! We STILL have snow here, but it is quickly melting with all the warm temps. Usually I don't want spring to come, but this year's winter was a bit long, so I can' t wait till all the snow finally melts.

This year, we bred Odessa to Mike Lee. Odessa is one of our very best females that we bought from Doug Swingley. She always makes my main team, is a super female and all of her last litter turned out to be great sled dogs. We still had four of her yearlings training with our main team the entire season: Jackson, Fender, Tak, and Gibson. Gibson & Fender even ran the Midnight Run this year and did awesome. We chose Mike Lee from Jerry Papke's kennel for the stud. Mike Lee doesn't look like much, but he is a heck of a sled dog. He is also the full brother to our female Zoey that we also bought from the Swingley's. So, esentially we are crossing our most promising Swingley lines together. Mike Lee lead Frank Holmberg & Jerry Papke's teams to two 1st place finishes (Tahquamenon 12 dog & 8 dog Apostle Islands) and two 3rd place finishes (6 dog White Oak & The Midnight Run) this season. We think this cross will be a good one and can't wait till the pups get here. She is due May 8th and is already showing. Ana is super excited for Odessa to have her pups. We will keep you posted!

2008-03-20T07:18:00.000-07:00

SPRING!!!Larry being Ana's leader and pulling her on her new sled

Me & Koyuk

Windows & Serra (one of the pups)

Windows & Liddell, another one of the pups

Windows & Georgie

Duelly & Dana

We have been pretty busy this spring harness breaking the 2nd batch of Zoey/Strider pups now that racing is done. They are now 9 months old and have 5 hookups on them. They are doing very well and were natural sled dogs right from the start. Serra, Dana, Franklin, Liddell & George have already been in lead and all did great! Looks like we will have lots of young leaders this fall. It is really fun seeing them do so well. Harness breaking is one of my favorite things to do since I get to see the future of my kennel develope.

We are also house breaking one of our retired Leaders "Koyuk". He is such a sweet boy and a VERY good leader, but is getting a bit slower infront of the team. I usually use Windows to train pups anyways, so we decided to see how he does in the house. He only had one accident so far and is LOVING being a house dog. He is very gentle and great with Ana.

For the past couple of weeks, I was absolutely glued to the internet, following the Iditarod. That is the highlight of the year for me. Lance Mackey made history again by winning the Yukon Quest (a very difficult 1,000 mile race) for the 4th time in a row and also winning the Iditarod (1,200) miles with virtually the same dogs only 10 days later for the 2nd time in a row. Nobody ever thought you could be competitive in the Quest and Iditarod in the same year, but Mackey broke through all those myths two years in a row and really put new meaning to what great sled dogs can actually do. It was a very exciting race to the end, with Jeff King (4 time Iditarod champ) right on his heels. Mackey made a swift move when he got to Elim, where he snuck out of the checkpoint when King was sleeping to finally gain an hour on him and go on to win the race. Before that, King was only 3 minutes behind. A HUGE congratulations to Lance! It was also exciting following Ed Steilstra on the trail this year. He is a Michigan musher, he and his wife Tasha own and operate Nature's Kennel in the U.P. Ed just came off a win at the UP200 in February and placed 29th out of 90+ teams in the Iditarod. It is a big feat to place in the top 30 with the BEST teams in the world. So, congrats to Ed & Tasha and their wonderful dogs!

In the picture at the top, you'll see Larry pulling Ana on "her" sled. That sled was my very first sled I got from Halls Dog Sleds when I was in 7th grade. I haven't used it in years and it was always just hanging in the barn. Larry got to work one day and shortened the handlebar and put a platform on the footboards so Ana could stand on the sled better. She LOVES having her very own sled just her size. She also loves having her daddy be her leader. We keep asking if she wants one of the dogs to pull her around the yard, but she declines and wants Larry to pull her. It is very funny hearing her say "Straight Ahead, Straight Ahead", "Gee, Gee, Gee", "Haw, Haw, Haw". She knows all the commands!

2008-02-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

2008 Midnight Run 13th Place!!! Us ready to start the race. Boston & Gibson are in wheel. The person in the orange vest is a race handler. We have to have 4-5 help get the team to the start line because the dogs are so strong, they'd drag us across the parking lot.

Me crossing the finish line!!!

Well, I am pleased to announce that I FINALLY had a great Midnight Run!! I've run this race a few times and I always usually have a bad experience due to the challenging and often dangerous trail conditions. Last year we went down a steep hill with a 90 degree turn and I went over a cliff and lost my team. So, before the start this year my stomach was in a knot. My team was Zoey & Star in lead and Odessa, Cowgirl, Lilly, Fender, Boston and Gibson in the team. I ran a smart race this time and kept to my race plan for once, not changing anything to keep up with the competition. I ran a very conservative first leg and held the team back for probably 3/4 of the 46 mile leg, that way I'd still have a team with energy left for the 2nd leg of 43 miles. I was pleasently surprised with how well the first leg went. There were twists and turns and steep hills, but having a lot of snow and a new Prairie Bilt sled that actually turns really made a difference. I didn't drag or hit one tree!! Instead of running the cliff section, the trail crew re-routed around that and had us cross a lake. It was a moon lit night and crossing that lake was so beautiful with all the stars out. We start the race at 6:00 pm so most of it is ran at night. The dogs were doing awesome and keeping an excellent pace. I was so proud of them. After we climbed Marquette Mountain there was only one very icy steep down hill where I said "oh $#&%"!! I stood on the brake for all I was worth, luckily we stayed upright and it was over quick. The last 19 miles of the first leg we run over a flat snowmachine trail next to the highway. It is really cool, it is late at night and there are bonfires and hundreds people partying all along the trail. At first all the shouting and clapping when you go by scares the crap out of the dogs, but then every time they'd hear a crowd up ahead they'd actually speed up. We loped along at a great pace that whole section of trail. The team was on fire. I was just hoping that they wouldn't burn out because a ways behind me I could see a headlamp and did not want to get passed. I hadn't gotten passed the whole first leg yet. The last 15 miles, Boston, one of the yearling males, was getting horrible diarhea, which disrupts the flow of the team every time he had to go. But then he'd get right back into it. He is a powerful dog and really helped us on that leg. I never gave a pick up command till we hit the plowed road, the last 3 miles till the Deerton Checkpoint. The dogs were cruisin, and finally the headlamp behind me was getting closer and I realized it was Bruce Magnussun, who is driving an awesome team of dogs. Bruce passed, then his leaders weren't cooperating and got balled up, so I went on by him again and on to the checkpoint. His first leg time was still faster than mine, which put him infront of me after the checkpoint, but just the fact that it took so long for him to catch up was awesome. His team finished 9th overall. We had such a great first leg that Larry wasn't even expecting me in yet. The dogs looked awesome and were ready for more. Then, Larry came running around the corner and grabbed the team so we could do our 5 hour layover and bed the team down. We were very efficient getting our dog care activities done. All I said to Larry was I had a great first leg and we went to work taking care of the dogs so we could get them resting as soon as possible. We gave them a chicken snack in line, then hooked them around the trailer, fed them a warm meal, the vets looked them over, then we massaged Accede into their shoulders and wrists, put their dog coats and wrist wraps on to keep them warm, spread the straw and let them get some rest. Then, I got to eat/drink, go to the bathroom and I got about 3 hours of sleep. An hour before my re-start (4:19 am) we gave the dogs some baited water to keep them hydrated, then walked the dogs around to check for any lamness. I am very pleased to say that everyone was healthy and ready to go. I decided to leave Boston behind because of the diarrhea. He is young so I didn't want to take a chance with him having a bad run. Plus he is about 65 pounds, which would ruin our great race if he had to ride in the sled bag. He was so upset about being left behind, he was going nuts and shaking the whole trailer!! by the 2nd leg, it was pretty cold, below zero, the lowest -12. I had no idea and wondered why I was getting cold at times. I would just kick to help the dogs and run up hills to stay warm. I had Zoey and Star in lead also on the 2nd leg also. They were so awesome!! We had a great 2nd leg and never had a problem! I only stopped once to snack and once to flip a dog to the correct side of the gangline and once to turn the right way. I never even saw another team out there infront or behind, so I knew my dogs were maintaining a good pace. I still kicked constantly so nobody would catch me. I finished the race at about 8:36 am with happy, healthy dogs. We actually ran the 2nd leg at 11.5 mph, which was 1 mile per hour faster than the first!! Lilly and Zoey were barking to go more at the finish line!!! I am so glad the trail was awesome and the dogs did so well. Zoey & Star really got the job done leading all 89 miles. I had a great race and it was an excellent way to end our race season. I finished 13th place out of 29 teams. I moved up 13 places from last season!! I've always wanted to finish in the top 15, so for next year our goal will be the top 10!!

2008-02-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

Magical Run/Race PreparationsMe and Zoey before the 2007 Midnight Run

Last night was our final training run before the big race this Friday (the Midnight Run). I ran 10 dogs: Zoey & Cowgirl in lead, then Odessa, Star, Lilly, Fender, Tefa, Jackson, Gibson and Boston on a 19.5 mile run to be sure who I am taking as my final 8 this weekend. It was a magical run!! It was cold, the dogs were just awesome! I rode the brake almost the whole run to protect the team and try to keep them at a slower pace, but they were on fire. We came back just as fast as we went out. Usually the team slows down on our way back down Manistee River Rd., this straight, boring county road we travel before the final 3 miles home. I actually had to be on the brake for the entire time to keep them slowed down. It was so much fun seeing the team run how I've known they can perform, I actually got butterflies in my stomach out there watching them!! We had 4 short stops and still averaged 13.44 mph. I was so proud of the team. Maybe this is a sign of good things to come this weekend. Or, maybe I'll be hanging on for dear life on those trecherous Marquette Mountain trails. I am already getting nervous about the race and it is still 3 days away! My team that I chose is: Zoey, Cowgirl, Star, Odessa, Fender, Lilly, Boston & Gibson. I will have 3 yearlings in my team (Fender, Boston & Gibson) that have been doing super all year, so it will be interesting to see how they handle the second leg after the checkpoint. The race starts at 6:00 pm and the first leg is about 49 miles, then we take a 5 hour layover where the dogs get bedded on straw and I get to sleep in the truck. Then, the 2nd leg, where I am usually very sleepy for the first few miles, is about 42 miles. For any that want to know, dog care is key to success in a race where there is a layover. So, here is what we do: When I pull into the checkpoint, Larry is waiting there to help the team. We water and snack the dogs in line right away. Larry has already spread the straw around the dog trailer. Dogs are not allowed to be boxed at all during this time, making it easier for the vets to check them out. Then, we rub Accede (a liniment made by Ten Squared Racing that helps keep their muscles warm and soothes any soreness) into their shoulders and wrists (the parts of the dog that you really have to protect), then we put dog coats and wrist wraps on every dog to keep muscles warm. We then hook them each to their spot around the trailer where we feed them a warm meal. We then leave them alone to sleep curled up on the straw for as long as possible during the layover. I then get to eat something, which is usually hard because I always get a queezy stomach during this race for not drinking enough water during the first leg from running up all those darn hills. Then, I get as much sleep as I can. About an hour before we depart on the 2nd leg, we give the dogs more baited water (we bait it to get them to drink it so they stay hydrated), walk them around to see if anyone has any stiffness, algyval a few shoulders again to warm them up, then harness, bootie feet if necessary, hook them back into the line and off I go into the darkness again. By the time I finish the race it will be around 10:00 am Saturday morning. I will update everyone on the race after this weekend. Hopefully we have a safe run this year!!

2008-02-07T05:29:00.000-08:00

Family FunMom, Dad, Ana, Makenzie & Maddie enjoying the dogs

Windows & Koyuk

Last weekend the whole family came over to run dogs with us. First I took the race team on a 29 mile run to prepare for our upcoming race next weekend. Then, Makenzie ran Windows & Koyuk on a 3 mile run. My dad was next and he ran a 5 dog team on the same 3 mile run. Maddie & Ana stayed in the kennel and made "snow castles" with Grandma. It was a really fun day. It is nice having other people get to have as much fun with the dogs as I do. My team on Saturday was: Star, Tefa, Odessa, Cowgirl, Zoey, Lilly, Fender, Jackson, Gibson, Boston and Duelly. It was a nice run when we were going in the right direction. I have been giving Star a break in lead, so I had to rely on Tefa & Zoey to make the turns. Well, they turned me the wrong way 4 times and it was very hard to stop 11 dogs. When we finally did get them stopped, we had to hook the snowhook to the snowmachine, turn the whole team around, then untangle them. We also had to stop and wait for a TON of snowmachines that day. They were out in full force. Sunday we went on a 20 mile run and FINALLY everything went smoothly. This time Tefa & Zoey got every command. No tangles or anything and we only had 4 short stops. We averaged just over 13 mph, which is a pretty good time. The dogs were moving along nicely. We do have a couple of injuries in the team now though. Jackson, a yearling has a sore shoulder. He looks fine now, we will be running him this weekend to see if he is healed. We got more rain this week, which turned the kennel into a skating rink. When I went out to feed the other day, Tefa was holding up her back leg. She has a swollen toe most likely from playing with her neibors in the dog yard and falling on the ice. So now she won't be part of my Midnight Run team and is in the house recouperating. Next weekend is our biggest race of the year, a 90 mile 8 dog race called the Midnight Run. The first leg is 49 miles through some very tough terrain up and down very steep hills. It was this section last year that I went over a cliff climbing Marquette Mountain and lost my team. It was very scary!! I heard they re-routed this section, let's hope so!! After the first leg we take a 5 hour layover where we bed the dogs on straw so they can take a well deserved break. Then, the final leg is around 42 miles of much gentler trail (thank god!) to the finish line. It is a physically & mentally tough race. I am looking forward to having a clean, safe run this year. I always learn so much every time we race it. So, now we are just keeping the dogs in shape and happy till race time. Last night we did an 8 mile fun run. Tonight we will go 15. Then this weekend we will do a couple of 20's, then one short run next week, then off to the race!! We will keep you updated.

2008-01-21T07:38:00.000-08:00

White Oak Classic, Snow & TrainingLarry's 3rd place team White Oak 18 mile Class

Franklin, one of our 7 month old pups out of Zoey/Strider

Eddie & Jackson playing in the dog yard

Boston, one of our yearlings out of Zoey/Strider

Well, it has been awhile since I last posted, we've been busy as usual. A couple of weeks ago we went out to race the White Oak Classic in Deer River, Minnesota. We split the trip with Jerry Papke and his dad Carl, who I have known my whole life. Our dad's have known each other since high school and had lots of fun together over the years. It was a nice trip out, clear roads etc., so we really lucked out. Traveling in the U.P. along Highway 28 can be very dangerous and usually always we have white out conditions, but this time we did not. Larry's Uncle Bill, who lives in Minnesota, also met us out there and stayed for the weekend to watch us race our crazy dogs. He had fun seeing us race and we are so glad that he came out there to watch what we do. People have no idea what it takes to get the dogs ready, all the work, feeding, poop scooping, dropping dogs etc., until they see it with their own eyes. So race day went very well for Larry and his team. He was running Windows & Tefa as leaders in the 18 mile rec class and 4 of our most promising yearlings: Boston, Jackson, Gibson, & Fender. His team was on fire and did really well with all the passing and distractions that being in a race present. He ended up finishing 3rd, only about 20 seconds from 2nd place. We are so proud of his team and all our future stars. My race was going well, but 60 miles proved to be too much for a couple of our dogs after racing 42 the weekend before at Tahquamenon. I decided to use the race as a training run and only run 38 miles and scratch when I got to the first checkpoint at Squaw Lake. I was pretty dissapointed, but we are still learning a lot about racing and dogs. I have learned to race smarter, don't burn out the dogs going too fast in the beginning when you have a LONG way to go. Also, we may be expecting too much from some of our veterans. While our veterans are good dogs, racing back to back weekends may have been too much them them this year. This racing thing is very hard, we are still building a kennel of dogs to run the UP 200 in a few years, but we really have to be smarter about it. We have gotten a lot of good advice from Frank Holmberg and Pete & Sharon Curtice and we will use it for the future of our teams. So, after that we began the LONG drive home, 13.5 hours worth of driving. When we got to Ironwood it was like a blizzard out! It was 10:00 at night and we couldn't see a thing. There was already atleast 8" of snow on the road and it wasn't ending anytime soon. Instead of "white knuckling" it, we decided to stop there for the night. I am glad we did, it was pretty scary. When we woke up, more than a foot of snow had fallen. The good thing was, the snow plows were out in full force and every road was clear and salted. We really lucked out again on our trek down 28 and we had a good drive home. Oh, I forgot, Jerry Papke ran the 60 mile 6 dog pro with 3 of his dogs and 3 of Frank H.'s dogs and placed 3rd overall and had a great race. We also came home to a crapload of new snow. Before we left for the race a week before we got a thunderstorm, yes a thunderstorm, that melted almost all our snow. So all the new snow was a welcome sight!! It has snowed almost every day since we've gotten back. Our trails are awesome once again. We've been taking the dogs on short fun runs to get their attitudes back. It has also helped us mushers get our attitudes back as well. It was very cold this past weekend, but we had a blast on our 15 milers. Zoey injured her toe on the last run, so she is inside recouperating, but will hopefully be back in training this weekend. Sucks cause she is one of the dogs I am taking on the Midnight Run in less that a month and she will miss our 40 mile campout run tomarrow. I am taking our best 12, including some yearlings, on a 40 mile run tomarrow morning to see who does best and then Larry will hook them up again that same day (after they've rested a few hours) when he gets home to do another shorter run. In the Midnight Run, we run 49 miles, take a 5 hour layover, then run another 40, so we want to see who has the get-up-and-go to do back to back runs before race time. It should be interesting as we are supposed to get dumped on with more snow tonight and tomarrow. Our next race is in 1.5 weeks, at Bayfield Wisconsin. Both me and Larry will race the 6 dog, 30 miles Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully we both have good, clean runs this time!!! Well, that is all for now, can't wait for it to warm up, all this below zero weather is COLD!!!!

2008-01-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

Tahquamenon 2008My team before the start

My team at the first road crossing 6 miles into the race

My team approx. 12 miles into the race

Larry's team approx. 12 miles into the race

Well, we had quite an ordeal at our first race of the year. To start, it was VERY warm out. It was about 45 degrees, which is very warm for the dogs. Otter was not right from the beginning and wasn't keeping a tight line in lead from the start. After the first road crossing, I took her out of lead and put Odessa upfront with Star. My team was keeping a great pace at this point. About 15 miles in, I had to bag Otter. She wanted to go no further. I don't know if it was the heat or an injury since she just was not herself. The thing that is really unfortunate is there is no dog drop till the last 6 miles of the race, so I had to continue on for the next 20 miles with a 55 pound dog in the bag. I watched as all the magic my team had was zapped away. There were so many hills out there, I was tired from having to push the sled up with Otter in the bag. When I FINALLY got to the last road crossing, I dropped Otter and continued on to the finish. My team picked right back up again after otter was out of the bag. They loped and looked great that last 6 miles. I was very proud of them, even though we now had no chance of finishing in the top 10. We still finished 15th pace with a time of 3:47, which is pretty good considering all that I went through. My finishers were: Star & Odessa in lead, Cowgirl, Duelly, and Fender, Boston & Jackson were my 3 yearlings that did super!!

Larry had quite a race. His team was keeping a very nice pace, till Jersey, one of our yearlings got tired on him. He bagged her for about 4 miles. Then he put her back in the team and she ended up doing a super job for him. After about mile 30, Windows, our 8 year old leader, tired out and didn't want to go any further. The last dog drop was still a few miles away, so instead of going there, Larry turned the team around and went to the 12 dog drop, which was closer, but not one of the 8 dog drops. So, he made it there, dropped Windows and scratched from the race. He still wanted to continue since the rest of the team was still doing well, so he turned his team around and got back to the 8 dog trail. Meanwhile he came up on Tom Clark, one of the 12 dog racers. Tom only had his sled and two dogs, his gangline snapped and his front 10 dogs took off down the wrong trail. So Larry put Tom's dogs in his team and tied a rope from his sled to Tom's and towed him to the last road crossing. He left Tom there with the volunteers and continued on the last 6 miles to the finish line. I expected him to have a huge scoul on his face when he finished with all the had to deal with out there. But, I was wrong, he finished with a smile and was proud of his dogs that finished, even though he ran about 4-5 miles further than he had to to drop Windows at the 12 dog drop and then back -track to the 8 dog trail. He ended up running 46-47 miles instead of 42. I am so proud of Larry for STILL finishing after all that. There is no way I could have done the same thing. Our next race is this weekend if the dogs look good on our Wednesday training run. Hopefully we will have a fun/uneventful race this time!!!

2007-12-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!!!Ana opening presents on Christmas day.

Star, one of my main leaders enjoying the house. She is getting a bit spoiled!

We had a great Christmas this year. We went downstate a couple of weeks ago to visit all my relatives, went to my parent's on Christmas day and went to Larry's family's yesterday. It was so great seeing everyone. Ana had a blast and got a TON of toys!! It took Larry 3 hours this morning to put together her new kitchen that she got from Larry's family. Ana, of course, is playing with the box that the kitchen came in after all that work!

We had a warm spell here last weekend and got a lot of rain that almost ruined our trails. They were pretty icy and we could not run from the yard. We gave them 4 days off after a 31 mile run due to conditions, then last Wednesday trucked them down the road and ran a 15 mile run on the only trail that was still holding up well. It is a very boring, straight snowmobile trail, but that is all we had. We got a couple of inches of snow on Thursday night, and by Friday we could do our long run we had planned for Christmas eve, but had to cancel it because of all the ice. When we left the yard, we had about 2 inches of fresh snow and the conditions were great. Then, it was an all out blizzard! We could not see a thing out there, since we went out at night. I ran 8 dogs and Larry 10. My dad followed us with the snowmachine. He had to lead the way a lot because we had to break a ton of trail. At times we didn't even know where we were or if we were going up or down a hill. The snow was blinding. Then, after about 16 miles Larry had to bag Jersey. She was just tired. At this time, my team was really pulling away from him, we waited a lot. So, we decided that I would go ahead and my dad would stay back with Larry's team since me and my dad know the trail the best. I was rethinking doing the whole 40 a lot since we couldn't see and there was so much new snow. The dogs had to work very hard. When I got off the snowmo trail, there was absolutely NO trail to speak of, so for the next 6.5 miles of HUGE hills I was breaking trail alone. It was pretty desolate where we were, a couple of times Star tried to turn me down the wrong trail. I was thinking there is no way Larry was doing the whole run and he probably turned early to head home, as I didn't see or hear a team behind me in over an hour. It was absolutely brutal out there and I was very much regretting not turning home early. FINALLY, we got off that trail and turned onto the county road to head towards home, only 14 miles left. Then, behind me, here comes Larry! I was so glad to see SOMEONE out there finally!!! He ended up putting Jersey back in the team after about 4 miles of her in the bag, which really helped the team be able to run that difficult trail. We then told my dad he could leave since the run was taking so long. We just followed each other the rest of the way home. We didn't get back in the yard till midnight!! That run took us 6 hours to slog around in all that snow!! We were so tired and more importantly, VERY glad that the run was over. The dogs finished surprisingly strong though, even though most of the run was breaking trail. Next weekend is our first race at Tahquamenon. We will both run the 8 dog, 43 mile class. I can't wait to see how the dogs do. Hopefully, they aren't too flat after running that long run only 8 days before their big day. The weekend after we race White Oak, a 6 dog 60 mile race, so we had to put one long run on them before that race. That is a long way this early in the season. Well, have a wonderful New years!!!

2007-12-17T10:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas is Coming!!! Ana and Santa at my sister's house. She wasn't all that excited to meet Santa. She said "I don't like him" and wouldn't sit on his lap. Oh well, she still got her present.
Ana in my new sled. Her dogs "mama Tefa", "Baby Tefa" and "Barney" are in the pocket behind her.

Well, we've been busy, busy, busy!!! December is crunch time at Coyote Run Kennel. Not only do we have multiple Christmas's and gifts to buy etc. etc., but dog training is at it's peak. Our trails couldn't be more perfect. I just can't believe we have all this wonderful snow. I'm still waiting for it all to go away, it is too good to be true!! The dogs are looking great and are running hard. I am running 10 in my team: Otter, Star, Duelly, Cowboy, Cowgirl, Odessa, Zoey, Fender (yearling), Jackson (yearling) & Eddie (yearling). Larry's team is: Windows, Tefa, & Lilly as veterans and the rest are yearlings: Tak, Peavey, Gibson, Boston, Jersey & Memphis. All the dogs have 450+ miles, mine closer to 500. We have done four 20+ mile runs also. One of my best runs was 23.4 miles and we averaged 13.24 mph. That was with 9 stops, so I wonder how much faster we could have ran with less stops. Last week we ran 15.6 miles and the B team beat me!!! Larry's team averaged 14.62 and mine averaged 13.56. I had some leader issues though. Oh well, Larry was pretty proud that his team kicked my butt! The dogs are really looking nice. Our first race, Tahquamenon, is on January 5th, so that is not very far away. We will go 30 miles this weekend and again the day after Christmas, then it is shorter fun runs till the race. Next race after that is White Oak Classic in Deer River, MN. It is a 6 dog 60 mile race. It is the A team's off day today, but the B team will do a 24.5 mile run that I did last night. So, lots to do still today. Happy Holidays and enjoy all this marvelous snow!!!!!

2007-12-07T07:13:00.000-08:00

More Snow!!!Otter & Star

Sunday night we got dumped on again. We have close to 2 feet of snow, great for cushioning the trails. It has been a bear breaking trail though. On Monday I got the snowmachine stuck 3 times breaking out a new trail only 2 miles long!! I am not a very good snowmachine driver! We are making a new trail that allows us to turn out of the driveway and run down our road (which is plowed) and run straight into our trail that will connect us with all our other trails. Every other year we had to run down our plowed road and make a sharp right turn. Well, I've lost a few teams doing this as they get going very fast on the plowed road before making the turn. It is very difficult!! The new trail will hopefully get better as it gets packed down. It is pretty slow going for the first 3 miles, plus the dogs have to learn NOT to go on our usual route we take when we sled down to the end of the road. This can be very difficult training dogs not to run a particular trail we've been running for 8 seasons. Windows was determined to turn Larry's team down the old trail a couple of days ago. Poor little Tefa wanted to listen, but just isn't big enough to turn her the right way. Ana and I were on the snowmachine infront of Larry and constantly had to stop and turn the leaders the correct way. It took FOREVER!!! I actually can't wait for the flatlanders to come up and groom our trails with their snowmachines this weekend! That is a lot of work!!! We usually never have to groom much of our trails, but this year I think many are not traveling due to the high gas prices. Both teams have a 20 mile run under us now and we will go another 20-25 tomarrow. Both teams averaged just over 11 mph on the run, which isn't fast, but pretty good considering 8 miles of trail was very soft and newly broken out with the snowmacine. Well, enjoy all the wonderful snow this weekend, I know we will be!!!

2007-12-03T06:55:00.000-08:00

snow!!!!!!!! Larry with Cowgirl & Tefa

Larry's team

We now have two sled runs on the dogs. We ran two 6 dog teams on Saturday to get our "sled legs" for the season. It was so fun! We just ran a short fun run, 8 miles. My 6 dog team did the run in 28 minutes, averaging 17.14 mph!! That was with two short stops and going up the huge hill and the big hill. We went up the big hill at 11 mph. The dogs were cruisin'! Saturday night we got a huge snow storm that dropped an additional 10" of wet dense snow that had a crust on top from the freezing drizzle. On Sunday we were to run 14-17 miles with two teams. My dad broke trail with the snowmachine and I took out 8 dogs and Larry took 10. We were swimming in snow! My leaders kept pushing against each other so each one could run on the newly broken trail. It was very difficult going and we had to stop for numerous tangles. Needless to say, we shortened our runs and ran the 8 mile trail. I was exhausted from all the slauging around in the snow on the trail to fix tangles. There was NO trail out there to speak of except for the one snowmachine track my dad had made. So, today is an off day for the dogs and we will break out our trails for tomarrow's run. Tomarrow we will hopefully do our 17 mile run. Saturday will be longer at 25 miles. We are getting even more snow today and the rest of the week- yes!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

Ana playing on my new sled. She was saying "C'mon girls, straight ahead, straight ahead!" She had her stuffed dogs infront of the sled.

Larry running the team on a fun 8 miler

Star (black dog) and Cowgirl in lead

Another team out for a run with Larry

Otter & Odessa in lead

Our runs are still going well. We still have a total of 21 dogs in training for our two teams. We'd love to sell a couple of dogs, but it seems that every time we put one on the 4-sale list, they come off a few days later because everyone is STILL hanging in there. Otter and Star are really shining in lead. Otter is SUPER on commands and is only 3 years old, so I will have many more seasons with her leading my team. Larry broke the 8 mile record again last weekend, running it in 32 minutes with the ATV. The dogs were flyin'!! That was the team above with Cowgirl and Star leading. We are still running our 14.5 mile trail and the dogs are finishing strong. We will move them up to the 17.5 mile trail on Friday. I wish we'd get atleast a bit more snow to cushion the dog's feet some. The trails are getting slick and are a bit icy. We had some small cuts on some feet after last night's run. Looks like it is time to bootie some feet, yuck, booties can start getting expensive when we don't get snow soon enough. The trails get rock hard and that is not good on their feet. Hopefully we'll also be on sleds in the next week or so if we get the snow we are supposed to get. I always get worried about the transition to the sled though because our trip out of the driveway and down a plowed road before our 2nd turn can get a bit hairy. I've lost teams on that 2nd turn more times than I want to admit. My dad is usually following me on the snowmachine, thankfully, so we can catch the team as quick as possible. That turn to Larry is nothing. He goes out of the driveway with a 12 dog team like a piece of cake. It is so easy for him.

2007-11-19T14:21:00.001-08:00

Deer Camp & Dog Trainin' Ana's 1st deer camp stay

Ana helping with the dogs

Well, we've been busy as usual around here, so I haven't been able to post another blog entry in awhile. We just got back from spending 3 nights out at deer camp for the opening weekend of the gun season. We had so much fun out there and Ana LOVED it and didn't want to leave today. We all saw some deer, but nobody saw anything big enough to take. There were a total of 4 spike horns that were seen, but we don't shoot spikes to let them get bigger. My dad got a big 10 point in Canada the week before that will score in the high 150's on the B&C scale, so he didn't mind not getting anything. We LOVE deer camp. It is so relaxing and the food is awesome!!! I'm so glad Ana liked it out there, which means we will stay more often now that she's a bit older.

I've been super busy training dogs lately with the longer miles. We ran 14.5 last week and followed that up with two fast, fun 8.1 mile runs. We finally broke our ATV record time this year for the 8.1 mile trail. Larry ran a 14 dog team with 8 yearlings in it on Saturday and did the run in 34 minutes, averaging 14.29 mph. I ran it the day before in 35, so of course Larry had to beat that with his team. He even changed leaders once during the run!! The dogs were cookin and came in so happy with tails just a waggin. Before that we broke our 11 mile trail record. Before it was 1:08, which I did about a month ago. Doesn't sound too fast, but last year we ran it in 1:14 and it is an extremely hilly/difficult trail. Well, about a week and a half ago I ran it in 1:03. The dogs came in not even looking like they ran, so we upped their mileage. My team this year is half yearlings, so I am very excited for next season when they will have a racing and training season under their belts. So, we've been pretty pleased with our training so far. We've had a couple flat runs, but most all our runs are going very well this year. Well, I will post more training pics after Turkey Day. So, HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-09T05:47:00.000-08:00

Trouble on the TrailFender (grey dog) and her brother Jackson

Well, we have snow!!! It should be exciting, but really it kind of messes up training this time of year. The trails are a sloppy mess so you can't do as much speed stuff because there's not enough snow for sleds, there are trees down in the trail, and it makes kennel chores very annoying. We had a good 11 mile run this week. The dogs are ready to move up mileage, but we will finish out the week with our 8-11 mile runs. Last night I ran 14 dogs on our 8.1 mile trail. This was supposed to be fast and fun and I always try to beat my best time for this particular trail when running it if everything is going well. We have a record ATV time and sled time for this trail. Obviously the ATV time is slower than the sled time because the dogs are pulling me and a 500 lb ATV. Plus, there are TONS of HUGE hills here. For example, in the last 3 miles of this particular trail there is the "Huge" hill and the "Big" hill. I know, we are creative with the names! The "Huge" hill is about a 1/4 mile long, but very steep, like a ski hill. We live near an area that had a ski resort in the 70's. Then, after that we encounter the "Big" hill, which is less steep, but still big, hence the name, and it is .7 miles long. So, this trail isn't flat by any means. So, anyways the run was going awesome. I tried to stop the team a couple of times for a break, but they wanted none of it. They were nuts and wanted to keep going!! We were maintaining 15 mph pretty much the whole run, sometimes up to 16 mph. We made it up the "Huge" hill and at the bottom the team was again cruisin at about 15 mph. By this time we were at 26 minutes total and the record for this run with ATV is 36 min., 13.5 mph average. We only had about 2 miles to go, so we could easily do it! by the time we almost reached the "Big" hill, I saw a HUGE tree laying across the trail. Uh oh, I stopped the team and went up to investigate. It was too big to move, I tried. The trunk was 3/4 of the way across the trail and its branches extended all the way to a steep bank on the left side of the trail. The dogs were foaming at the mouth to go. I pulled Star and Cowgirl ontop of the bank and decided we'd try and go around it. I knew we'd have trouble getting the ATV up it though, but this is all we could do. Star and Cowgirl ran on the bank and went around the tree like good dogs, but when they dropped back onto the trail after the tree, the rest of the team followed and got drug into the tree. The team pulled all the dogs through its big branches, except Cowboy, who was running infont of wheel. His necline broke and he was spun around facing me and tangled in the tree branches. I stopped and went to untangle him, but the team was pulling forward and his tugline was still hooked up, so it was really putting pressure on Cowboy's body. His harness was completely wrapped around some of the branches. I tried to untangle him, as the team was pulling on him harder and harder. THEN the light bulb in my brain went off and I finally remembered why I've been carrying a leatherman all these years in my pocket. I cut his tugline loop and he was free and seemed ok, so I fixed his lines and put him back in the team. We finally made it home, but the record will have to wait till another run. We did do it in 42 minutes though, even after all that chaos. Cowboy was fine, but he had a scratch on his back from the tree. Thank goodness it wasn't anything more serious. Oh, incase you are wondering, our record with the sled is 28 minutes for this trail, averaging 17.35 mph.