Rogues Gallery Kennel Blog

As of last Saturday, we made it official. After months of discussing, budgeting and planning, Colleen officially signed up for the Yukon Quest – a 1,000-mile race from Whitehorse, Yukon to Fairbanks, AK. This will undeniably be the toughest challenge Cole and the dogs have faced, but we feel she has the skills and experience now, and the dogs are the right age and have the ability to meet this challenge.
Now, success will largely depend on two questions: will we have enough of a winter in Kasilof to properly train the team, and will the weather be suitable in Canada and Interior Alaska to produce a race course that is tough, but not overtly dangerous to the dogs. The Quest typically offers temperatures of around minus 40 to minus 50 degrees, with occasional lower spikes. The last few years though (possibly due to global warming), there have been milder temperatures, but snow has been sparse for many sections of the trail causing more dangerous conditions due to ice, overflow and exposed, rocky mountain summits. Our plan is just to be as prepared as we can for any, and all, weather scenarios. We’re expecting the worst, but hoping to be surprised by the best, as the cliche goes.
Even if the weather is somewhat cooperative, the Quest is still the toughest sled dog race in the world. Unlike the Iditarod where mushers can run checkpoint to checkpoint, the Quest demands self-reliance. There are fewer checkpoints, and there are at least two checkpoints where Cole will travel 150 and 200 miles before she will be able to re-supply and have contact with other humans. She’ll be camping out with the dogs, as dependent on them, as they are on her in these sections. There are also legs on the Yukon River where winds and ice annually make following trail markers difficult to say the least (typically there are only a handful of markers compared to the lathed road Iditarod racers follow). There is also Eagle Summit to contend with, which has a steep climb that can break the moral of even trail-hardened mushers and their dog teams.
Cole will do her best to face and overcome these challenges, but without loosing site of the most important thing – dog care. Over the years, we have seen a lot of egotistical mushers run the Iditarod and other races, not for the adventure or love of running dogs, but to either overcome or overcompensate for some insecurity in their life. As such they will run their dogs into the ground, not scratching at any cost, to prove something to themselves or to perceived others. This is not our philosophy. While Cole would rather die than not make it too Fairbanks, she would rather scratch than endanger a single dog’s life, so the future is uncertain. She will just do her best, as the dogs always do, and hopefully this combination will be enough to get them to the finish line.

As summer winds down, we are busy finishing all the last minute stuff we won’t be able to get to once we really ramp up running the dogs. This season, as always, we have refurbished and built several new dog houses. Some take wear and tear from the elements, but the dogs also chew on them occassionally when they get bored in summer. Building so many, we refine out techniques with each one. We can finally build a dog box in about 2-3 hours now and using only one sheet of plywood. Of course, painting and caulking them takes a little longer.

Yesterday was a bittersweet day. We said good-bye to Trucker, the first and only dog we have ever moved out of the kennel. Trucker had been with us for two years, and he just never really embraced the life of a sled dog. Some of our dogs love to run and pull more than seemingly anything else in life, but Trucker always seemed like he craved human companionship more than anything else. He likes riding around in the truck in the shotgun position and likes hanging out on your lap while watching TV. He is an AMAZING dog, just not an amazing sled dog, and since we don’t believe in forcing our dogs to do anything they don’t want to, having him be a housedog seemed like the best thing for him. Unfortunately, we already have five dogs and a cat in our 16′ x 16′ cabin, so adding Trucker just didn’t seem possible. Colleen’s brother, Ross, recently got married, and he and his new bride are starting to build a life together and wanted to add a dog to that life. The agreed to take Trucker and give him a loving and lifelong home in Massachusetts. We were sad to see Trucker go because Alaska is a great place for dogs with all the wide open spaces and lots of salmon to eat, which Trucker loves. But they will be able to truly give him the life he deserves, one where he gets loads of one-on-one time with people. We’ll just have to Fed Ex him frozen salmon a couple times of year. We wish him luck in his new life back east, but doubt he’ll need it. He is a very happy dog that adapts quickly to almost every situation. We saw the proof firsthand in the airport in Anchorage yesterday. Trucker, a dog who had seen less than a dozen stragner all year, moved through the airports on a leash without hesitation. He walked up and down stairs, through automatic doors, and dealt well with hundreds of people moving all around him. He never panicked once in the kennel, even when homeland security people pulled him out to check the kennel for drugs and explosives. He was awesome. We we’re so proud of our “Truck-man”. It was like he was a willing particpant in his decision to go, and it made saying good-by a little easier. We’ll miss his silly personality around the kennel, and he’s even sillier one-up and one-down ears. He may be gone, but he won’t ever be forgotten.

This summer has been less than the best. We’ve had weeks of highs around the mid to upper 50’s, with lows around the mid 40’s. So it has basically been a little to hot to run dogs and a little too cold to swim them. Still, we don’t believe in letting the dogs sit all summer, so we have been enduring the cold water of our neighborood swimming hole again. We made it our goal to take the dogs every day for the entire month, but it is getting downright painful trying to make it across for a few laps. The dogs don’t seem to mind, but we have seen our own breath for several nights and blue lips and appendages have become the norm. The things we do for our dogs!

We had a little friend for the weekend. While driving home from work, Joseph passed a small Shih-Tzu running down one of the busier roads in our area. Seeing stray dogs is sadly nothing out of the ordinary during the drive, so we only pick up (or at least attempt to) dogs that are in the road and are in danger of being hit, or that look like they aren’t savy enough to make it overnight on their own (such as little dogs that could be picked up by an eagle or eaten by a coyote). This little guy fit both criteria, so Joseph picked him up and brought him home, then, since he had no collar or tags, called all the animal shelters in the area and posted it on “Dog Gone News” which is a local radio show that announces lost and found dogs. No one called for days, so we began acclimating George (we named him that because of how curious he was). He was overwhelmed by the other dogs at first, it seemed clear he came from a one dog home, but he adjusted quickly, and by the second day he was rough-housing with Buckwheat and the other house dogs. He was also extremely sweet to people. He accompanied Joseph to work during the day, and would curl up with him at night when Joseph always reclines in a Lazy Boy. We were just beginning to think George was going to become a permant addition to the house, when on Monday afternoon his owners called. They said he had escaped from the garage and they had been driving around looking for him over the weekend and went to the animal shelters on Monday, which is how they found where he was. They came and picked him up, and while we were happy he was returned to his home, it was sad to see the little guy go. We’ve never been fond of Shih-Tzu’s as a breed, but little George won us over. I’m not ready to run out and get one, but had little George stayed, he would have been a welcome addition. I hope he fares well with his other owners.

O.K. For anyone that isn’t sick of fish posts yet. Here is another. We got 1,200 salmon heads from a local processors yesterday and bagged them up and froze them for winter. Heads are bundles of nutrition with lots of fat, protein and other essential goodies. That brings us up to four full chest freezers of dog food, so I think we’re finally set for winter.

Well, Fishcamp is finally over and it ended with a bang. After several pulls of anywhere from 2 to 12 salmon while the fishery warmed up, we finally got a huge haul of 39 salmon in one pull on the last day. Even as good as this was, people around us were pulling in 90 to 100 fish in one pull, but our net is old and a bit holey. Still we were happy with what we got. We ended up closing out our permit, as well as the permits of two other families, and still had a few other fish for friends too. We can rest easy now that we know we have food for ourselves and our dogs this winter. I guess cleaning more than 100 salmon at our place (see photos) was too much though, as the fishy scent drove in a brown bear last night around 2 a.m. Joseph heard the yard erupt into hysteria and looked out the window of the loft to see something big and brown charging Oaky, Seeker and Trucker. In the semi-darkness he thought it was a moose and feared a calf might have been seperated from the mom. Joseph went out in his underwear and slippers and was about half way through the dog yard, when about 10 yards from him, a big brown bear charged up to Ibn. Ibn dove into his box and without thinking Joseph started clapping and yelling “get bear!” The bear was totally startled and bolted back about 15 yards, then stood and looked one last time before running into the nextdoor neighbors and eventually moving off. It was the first time in 7 years we have had a bear in the yard and hopefully it will be the last. Luckily no one, dog or human, got injured.

O.K. the fishing got off to a bang. The fishery opened at 6 a.m. and we had our net ready and in the water by 6:01 a.m. We ended up getting 12 salmon in the first hour, and then a few here and there for several pulls after that. We’re still waiting for a big push of fish, but having fun while waiting. Here are some more photos. The first is Cole putting the final touches on a bouy harness the night before the opener. It’s easy to see how all these fishing knots help Cole make necklines, tug lines and ganglines during mushing season. The second photo is Cole pciking the net after our first pull, and the third photo is Buckwheat helping out.

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With fish for the dogs secure (see last post), it’s time to think about fish for ourselves. In these trying economic times, getting a lot of fish for the freezer can save us having to buy several meals from the grocery store throughout the year, so this week we went to fish camp. There are only about 100 sites to fish from and about 40,000 people that want to take part in the nine day fishery, but no regulations to manage it. It’s first come, first served, so we set up tents, fire wood and other supplies and began living on the beach about a week ago, staking our claim to the area in anticipation of the opener on Sunday. Then we’ll string out our set gillnet and hope for some sockeye salmon. Right now there’s not a lot to do until the fishing begins so it’s been mostly eating and drinking. We’re taking turns running home to feed and clean the bulk of the dogs left behind, and we bring two or three down with us each day, trying to switch them out so everyone gets a turn. Here are a few photos of the camp, the first is Joseph flavoring up some fresh clams for a campfire dinner, the second is our camp with with some friends of ours: Deb and Kevin Hayes. The third photos is Joseph and Colleen walking on the beach taken from in front of their tent. Not a bad view to wake up to, huh?