Dog Care

Photo from Sled Dog Central.

The following are a few great organizations that promote the responsible care of sled dogs and the special relationship between musher and dogs.

Mush with P.R.I.D.E (Providing responsible information on a dog's environment)

Sled Dog Central

Fourteen angel's foundation

Minnesota Responsible Animal Owners Alliance

5 days until Iditarod

You can find lots of great photos on the Official Iditarod site. The Junior Iditarod is off and running right now. Awesome.

Fun Fact:

Despite common usage in annoying commericals or movies, mushers do not say "Mush" to their dogs. One theory as to how this term came to be, is that the French trappers were overheard saying "marche" to their dogs. The term to mush and musher stuck though, and are used to describe someone who runs sled dogs.

Mushers will say, Hike! or All Right! to get the dogs to pull, however, it's not generally needed. The dogs pretty much ALWAYS want to pull. I said, "Ready? All right!" to get my dogs attention and to start in unison.

google images

Magic Under Glass, under rocks, and on the Yukon Quest

Thanks to Larissa at Larissa's World blog for hosting the contest. I WON a copy of Magic Under Glass! Woo! And it's the pre-controversial cover too - a collectors edition.

Check out this awesome shot of the Yukon Quest taken by my friend, Karen of North Wapiti blog. Mugs up to all those who raced this year. Hans Gatt won the 1,000 mile race finishing in a record breaking nine days. And a big congratulations to Hugh Neff - one of the teams I sponsored, came in third place!

Things are back to normal around here - adventuring around our lake we found some cool "magic under rocks"

Adventures in South Carolina

Myrtle Beach photo montage and short list of cool things:

• the southern accents. Couldn't understand the waitress - but tres cool
• being introduced to a little store called Books a Million
• hand feeding the enthusiastic ducks at Broadway at the Beach
• discovering what the heck GRITS are anyway
• learning about the forest ecology at Brookside Gardens
• having a snowball fight
• watching the pelicans swallowing wiggly fish - that's gotta hurt
• spending time with family - lots of laughing
• the Myrtle Beach Aquarium
• my brother missing the return flight home - heh heh heh heh
  
  Thank you everyone for all the vacation well-wishes and condolences on the weather. We didn't mind the snow one bit - but the annual marathon was cancelled!

Myrtle Beach saw us coming

Back from our Myrtle Beach vacation, and I have to say, there's not much difference in temperature here. I'm thinking the beach knew we were coming. Wanted to make us feel at home by laying out not the red carpet, but the white one.

More to come on our fantastic time there - but this little gem of my man at the beach, I couldn't wait to share with you.

Heading for vacation

During my parents' Christmas visit, I do confess to abusing them with some harmless snowshoe-cliff-climbing. However, they are still inviting us to visit them while they vacation in Myrtle Beach to help celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary!

I'm taking a blogging break - but I'll be back with tales of adventure, I'm sure. Perhaps as payback, I'll be forced to shop or play golf.

Ever wanted to mush a dogteam?

This is the first time I've ever posted a video - but in this case, it needed doing.

Thanks to North Wapiti blog, and Richard Todd, you can now do the next best thing to actually running your own team (besides reading my upcoming novel Dogsled Dreams, 4RV Publishing 2011)

Karen's B string means these dogs aren't even her main racing dogs. Wow!

work station Monday

Apparently, today is the chance to show off your workstation and surroundings on your blog. Here's my little corner. And our deck which is much colder than it looks today. The birdfeeder shown in the photo normally has two or three squirrels hanging off it, but I was just entertained watching them get ripped off by the hurricane winds outside.