Rogues Gallery Kennel Blog

Hi all, sorry to leave everyone hanging. The race this year was on a new route that made it funner for mjushers and better for dogs, but much harder on handlers. I did a lot of driving and very little sleeping, trying to keep up with Cole. Then after the race we alljust crashed, humans and dogs alike.
Still have a lot to do, so this is just a breif update to say Cole and the team finsihed in fine fashion. All 14 dogs came in looking strong. Dunkel and the other young guys did outstanding. Dunkel seemed to do what only a few of our dogs do, which is actually get strgoner thougout the race. He looked better 200 miles in, than he did at the beginning. Hats also go off to Quigley, Metoo’s brother, who led more than 75 percent of this race. He was undeniably one of the strongest dogs in the team, if not the kennel. Cole was 4th place overall and at the banquet last night she recived the SPortsmanship Award, which is given to the person other mushers in the race vote for for being a good sport and having good spirits thorughout the race. It was an honor for her.

Wow! The team looked great coming into the firstcheckpoint. All the dogs we’re running strong, although Cole had to switch Metoo out of lead about halfway to Homer as she had blown too much energy in the starting chute howling and jumping around like a maniac. Wolf stepped up and worked with Penny to finish getting the team in.
Cole said the trail was beautiful and really set up for a good run for the dogs. The mandatory two-hour break didn’t allow her much time to rest, but the Homer people did a fantastic job of getting things ready for the dogs. The had straw and hot water ready, so mushers didn’t have to lose an hour to melt snow for dog food. The had plowed out a huge area too, so all the teams hd plenty of room to keep distance from each (see pic below, with amazing backdrop.
All the young dogs were having a blast. Cole said Dunkel, Woobie and Chuba-Bubba all who have never raced, we way, way into the experience. They even rested pretty good, rather than sitting up watching all the teams come in like a lot of young dogs do.
After the break, she left with all 14 dogs again. I’m bad with math, but as I said in the last post, I think after the starting time differentials are calculated, she is running around fourth or fifth. Hopefully, she won’t lose anytime on the way to the next checkpoint.
All for now.

Yeah!!!! The race got off without a hitch and the dogs we’re more pumped to run than I’ve ever seen them (as evident by the pic above of Metoo levitating in the starting chute next to Penny). You could tell it had been far too long since they raced. Here’s some pics from the start.
According to the GPS tracking, Cole appears to be flying so far, and has already realed in several teams. Once the time differentials from the start are calculted, Cole should already be somewhere in the Top 5. Hopefully her speed will hold for the whole race!!!

Above, Quigley and Zoom were frothing at the mouth to go. You should have heard this team. Their howls could have woken the dead!

Here’s Cole leaving the chute in a chilly minus 26 degree cold. If you look to the bottom right of this picture, that’s Dunkel (behind blond-faced Keno) in his first race ever. Hopefully he’s having fun.

And they’e off. Cole and the team kicking up a spindrift of snow as the blast from the starting line.
More updates soon…hopefully (if I keep finding wifi). Stay tuned.

Hi all! Hope you’re ready for race weekend. We are getting ready for the Tustumena 200 this Saturday, and from all reports on the trail and weather, it should be a good race.
It’s a little weird for us to be thinking the T200 will be our first race of the year, since for so many years this has been our last race of the season, but most of you know how it has gone so far. If not, as brief recap, we sat out most of the early season races to focus our efforts on the having the best Copper Basin 300 we could, but at the last minute (literally it seemed), the dogs got ill, and then even if they hadn’t the race was cancelled due to extreme cold and impassable trail.
Returning home we did what we thought was best and we shut the dogs down for a week to give them time to get well, since running dogs with a cough is an easy way to turn that cough into full-blown and much more life-threatening pneumonia. We also did not want to spread any germs to neighboring kennels (as happened to us). But, back to the Tustumena 200, which is our immediate focus.
It’s hard to say what our goal is for this race. The T200 wasn’t in our race plan until a week ago, and we usually try to train for specific races. We haven’t done that for the T200 and, if anything, the training we’ve done should work against us in this race.
We’ve seen the race course map already and the first half of the race is our EXACT early season training route, so not too sure how pumped up the dogs will be to run on a trail they’ve done a million times already. Also, since we were training for the CB300, where you can plan a run/rest schedule, we had planned to run at night, when the dogs are most comfortable. As a result, we did nearly all of our training at night (see pic above, a bit blurry, but I liked their eyes in this one). Sadly, though, the way the T200 works, most of the team’s longest runs will be during the heat of the day, so that too should have an effect on their performance.
Taking all this in, we decided to only put one good team into the race, rather than both of us taking teams. As stated we still have Iditarod to think about, and Cole would like to see how some of the dogs who didn’t get to race yet this season, or ever, will look while racing, to see if they could make her Iditarod team.
As such, she’ll likely be leaving out some of her most reliable veterans who finish every race, such as Goliath and Butterscotch, and instead taking dogs like Dunkel and Chubba-bubba, who have never raced before to see if they like it and do well. These are still great dogs though, which is why she is considering them for Idit, and the best way to test them out, will be to race them hard and see how they respond, so just because the deck is stacked against us, don’t think we’re going into this just to mosey down the trail.
Enjoy the race, not matter how it turns out. Even though the trail is familiar, the dogs will be totally amped to race when they get round all the other howling teams, and Cole is excited too. There should be GPS tracking this year though the T200 website, so everyone at home should know as much as me as to where she is in the pack, and I’ll try to put up photos and personal insight on how the dogs are doing as I get the info.
***Oh, one last thing, JerseyKat/Janet, we’ve tried emailing, send us your shirt size so we can mail it out to you.***

Wow. I never would have thought that catching kennel cough right before a rce would be a good thing, but for anyone still following the Copper Basin 300, we really dodged a bullet and couldn’t be more thankful.
As of 9:30 this morning, the CB300 was CANCELLED due to 50-below temperatures and six feet snow drift that even snowmchines couldn’t make it through. These are conditions that we wouldn’t want our dogs in, even if they were 100 percent healthy, and yesterday morning they were not.
With one team coughing hours before the start, we considered trying to put together the remining healthy dogs for one 12-dog team, but we weren’t sure they wouldn’t show signs of the cough within hours, and as it turns out, on the drive home, several of the dogs that would have gone, started coughing too. At the time we withdrew (not scratched as initially reported) before the race start, it was a super tough decison to make, but doing what is right for the dogs is always the best decision.
As to what is next, we’re not sure. We have to get the dogs healthy again and then go over our budget. As some of you asked after yesterdy’s post, we did last Friday decide to pull out of the Quest. We signed up for two 1,000-mile rces (Quest and Iditarod) hoping we would grow some corporate sponsorship, but after months of trying, the only people sponsoring us were the same faithful mom-and-pop businesses, family and friends who have for years. We needed a couple thousnd dollrs in sponsorship to make it hppen and we only got a couple hundred, so we decided to pull out of Quest and focus all our efforts on the CB300 and Iditarod, and we all know now how the CB300 has turned out, so we’ll just have to hope for better for Iditarod.
There’s is still a chance we may put a team in the Tustumena 200, but we have to think long and hard about this. Preparing for the CB300 we did all our training on the T200 race trail, and dogs don’t really like to race hard where they training daily, so we’d hate to put money into the T200 just to have the dogs drag their feet through the whole thing.
Anyway, we’ll see, stay tuned for more next week and thnks gain everyone who supports us and our amazing dogs.

Hey all, just a quick word for anyone who has been following the CB300 and gotten worried over not seeing us not start. We and the dogs are safe, but a filthy little microscopic germ has, pardon my French, completely fucked our race and possible our season.
When we left to come up here yesterday, one of the 24 dogs we picked to race was coughing a bit, by yesterday afternoon that dog was downright hacking and two others were starting to cough. By feeding at 11p.m. last night six were coughing and by this morning we’re up to 10 with Goliath and Metoo being two of the worst.
We called the vets this a.m. and had them listen to the dogs, they said Goliath already has some wetness in his lungs and diagnosed the rest as having the dreaded and highly contagious kennel cough.
Since at this time yesterday one dog was coughing and now there are 10, we are worried by this time tomorrow more in the teams will be. Even if they are not, we wouldn’t want to risk the health of the dogs already sick by running them in trail-breaking conditions and minus 30 temperatures. The vet agreed a case of kennel cough could easily turn into pneumonia by doing so. We also wouldn’t want to infect any other teams that could end up parking next to our dogs in checkpoints.
Another crushing part of this story is when we called home to see if any dogs back there were coughing too, a friend and fellow musher said kennel cough has been moving through the neighborhood kennels for more than a week. Had we only known, we could have tried to vaccinate our guys specifically for it to prevent this whole fiasco. They’re slated to get the vaccs before Iditarod anyway.
So, that’s the scoop. We withdrew before the race even began. It was the right decision to make for the well-being of the dogs, but it doesn’t feel any less shity. We only planned two races this season, this one and Iditarod and we really needed this race to spring board into peaking the dogs for Iditarod. We’ve put in so many hours and so much cash to get here and its all lost but the saddest part is the dogs really deserved the chance to go. They’ve been on the same boring trails all season and have been jazzed every time we’ve dropped them up here to eat or pee. They new the scent of new trail and they were excited to be on it, but now they won’t get the chance, and as two of our leaders (Cyder and Keno) are getting up there in age, so we, Cole and I, may never get the chance to do this together with two full teams. We’re hugely disapointed and are sorry to disappoint all of you who have given so much to us to get us here. Life suck at the moment. There’s nothing else to say.

Screw beavers, we’ve been busy as mushers lately getting ready for our first race of the year: this weekend’s Copper Basin 300. This will be Cole’s fifth time competing in the event and my first. It’s tough to describe what we’re feeling right now. I’m not sure if there is even an English word for it since it is a mix of excitement, anxiousness and full-blown stress from all we’ve done the last few weeks to get ready for this. Not just from all the training either, but all the packing and planning too.
For those who don’t sleddog race, let me make an analogy. Imagine how you packed for your last huge vacation. Now imagine packing three times that amount in cold weather gear and all your food and drinks for the trip, and now imagine doing it for not just yourself, but 12 others too, or in this case with Cole and I both racing, it’s really packing for 24 others.
As you can see from the picture above and below, we’ve been doing our frozen meat and goods outside in the driveway (late at night after running the teams for 5-6 hours after work). The photo below is in our kitchen, where we’ve been doing the dry goods-packing like booties, dog coats, etc. It is just a tremendous amount of work, especially since this race annually throws everything Mother Nature can at us. We have to be prepared for everything.

In the past Cole has seen temps dip below minus 50, she has broken trail for hours, mushed through winds so strong they would be classified as hurricane force down in Florida, and hit overflow that was waste deep. This year, as some of you may have seen on the news since it is making national news, we are having an unprecedented winter for cold and snow. Nome can’t even get supplies the ice is so thick, even for ice-breaking ships, and in Cordova and down in Homer, (an hour south of us), they’ve had snow storms bring as much as 14 FEET in one night. As I type this, my greatest concern isn’t getting to the finish line of the race, it’s getting to the starting line. Avalanches on the one road to Anchorage have closed the highway for two days, and over night we got another 6-8 inches here, and they always get more snow in “the pass” where these avalanches keep occurring.
The trail of the Copper Basin sounds like it hasn’t been missed by all the falling white stuff. Reports are there are feet of fresh powder down, which could make for one heck of a hard race if it hasn’t had time to set-up, or even if it has, and the winds come up and start moving it around. We could be in for hours of marching the dogs in deep snow. Combine how hard this is with the predicted minus 30-40 temps and you have a really challenging situation.
Deep snow often means hard work on the musher too as we may have to run behind the sled through the deepest parts or possibly even snowshoe in front of the team if things get nuts, and with this work comes sweating, which in the deep minus temperatures gets every insulating layer of our clothes wet and cold. At checkpoints 50-60 people will try to dry gear near one tiny woodstove, if you’re not in first, the best you can hope for is to leave for the next leg damp. Dry is not an option.
I know all of this sounds horrible and some may ask why we would even do it. To be honest, as the race gets close and the wings of the butterflies in my stomach are flapping their hardest, I often ask myself that question, and if I had to say an answer it would be for the hope of adventure. We’ve never had it easy in the Copper Basin, but we’ve never had a boring adventure either. When you sign up for this race, you can rest assured you’ll be cold, tired, and miserable at times, but you’ll also see some beautiful views, meet some unique people, and mentally and physically test yourself in ways that can’t be simulated on training runs at home. We may succeed, we may fail, but we will definitely have an adventure this weekend.
Hope all of you following the race on the Internet get a taste of that adventure too. Wish us luck, we always need it, and while you’re sending out positive energy, please send some to our house dogs that we’ll be leaving behind with a house/dog sitter. Our oldest dog Tatika (pictured below with our newest little guy, Diesel) and the rest of the angels and trouble makers who live inside with us won’t be far from our thoughts as we leave them behind for the long weekend. I look forward to returning home to them, hopefully as a Copper Basin 300 veteran.

We were the second people we know to rescue the Old Man, a.k.a. Sampson. We knew of a woman who lived in Salcha who did what we have done on more than one occasion…taking in unwanted dogs. Sadly, she was electrocuted while felling trees in her dog yard and few people tried to adopt her dogs after her death, which she had already adopted from shelters and other mushers. That’s a sad reality of this sport, most mushers have no problem breeding litter after litter in an attempt to be the next big thing, but few mushers want to step up and actually give a dog a home that may not be able to help them get to the finish line in first place.
Anyway, we were at capacity then in our own kennel, but sometimes you just have to dig a little deeper into your pocket when it’s the right thing to do, so we made the trip to Salcha with the intention of adopting one dog. We looked past the strong, friendly dogs in the hope they could go to a home with someone less experienced in dealing with troubled dogs, and instead looked for a dog no one would likely choose. We picked a young, super spooky dog that wouldn’t even come out of his box (this is Rolo for those who know our dogs), but as we were preparing to leave we noticed an old dog who’s circle looked like pictures I’ve seen of the beach at Normandy during the D-day invasion.
Apparently this old dog had a passion for digging, but he didn’t just dig holes, he dug caverns and trenches. Between his age and his destructive nature, we knew this guy wasn’t going home with anyone else, so we took him too.
Here at the kennel, he fit right in. He loved running in the team, even though he was so old he could never do more than a mile or two. Still, if he saw the harnesses come out, he would try to run up our legs and dress himself he would be so excited.
He continued to dig and in summer we would often look out to only see him flinging dirt into the air from one of his latest tunnels. His whole body would be below the surface and he loved every minute of it. We later figured out he was digging out of some kind of self-play game he had with his food bowl. If he didn’t have a bowl, he would spend the day resting in his box, but if he had a bowl, he would spend the day digging after it as if it were perpetually out of his grasp.
The only time he would actually stop pretending he couldn’t get the bowl was at feeding time, when he would magically suddenly be able to catch it. He would then just parade around with it in his mouth until he got fed. I’m not sure who taught him this, or if it was some type of stereotypy, but it was comical as heck to watch.
Sadly though, as I went out to feed yesterday morning that was how I knew something was wrong. I didn’t see Old Man running circles of excitement with his bowl in his mouth. He’s been deaf for years, so sometimes he wouldn’t know all the dogs were barking and he’d be fast asleep in his dog box until I tapped him to let him know it was time for breakfast.
I peeked in his box and he was curled up on a thick nest of straw. I tapped him to wake him up, but he didn’t move. I reached in and he was still warm to the touch. My heart sank. Our last dog to die was Bashful who died in our arms, and we found it crushing, but somehow this seemed worse. Even though it looked like he didn’t suffer and possibly died in his sleep, he died alone. We never got to give him one last pet or scratch or got to tell him how much we enjoyed the few years we knew him, or how much his silly antics brought a smile to our faces daily.
In the end we gave him more than most others would have, but still only half of what he deserved in life. That’s the hard part of living with 40 dogs…there’s only so much time in the day, so you never really feel like everyone gets that one-on-one attention they deserve. We do our best, but it never feels like enough once they’re gone.
God speed Old Man. We’ll miss you. Say hello to Kawlijah, Bashful and our other friends when you see them.

Cole’s good-bye:
When we showed up to the rescue efforts, the old dog wasn’t necessarily our first pick. We wanted to help out a sad situation, but were only planning on taking home one dog that was still young enough to run with the dogs we had. Within minutes of watching his ridiculous antics I knew deep down we needed to take him home… It’s like rooting for the underdog, or picking the kid that always gets picked last, first… we knew no one else would give this dog a home… whether it be because he peed on anything within streaming distance, he carried his bowl everywhere-making it quite the game at feeding time, or the landscaping job of four-foot trenches he excavated his circle with –in fact there were days when all we could see when glancing his direction was the tip of a wagging tail and a shower of dirt flying out of the latest crevasse. We headed out with our one dog, then without much more than a nod to each other, walked back to the dogyard and arranged to take this obvious misfit. This old guy needed a home for the rest of his life, no matter how long or short it would be.
We soon figured out that he was completely deaf, and one of the happiest little creatures ever. Never serious, always up for visitors (as long as they weren’t interested in his dog bowl which never escaped his attention) and if a harness was available he would gladly school you on how you should wear it. By others’ standards he would have been seen as just a mouth to feed and a burden to the kennel.
In the end, he was a joy to have known. Yes, he was one more mouth to feed, and I am thankful that I was the one to feed it. It breaks my heart to think of him alone on his bed of straw for his final moments without the warmth that he brought to the yard, and I hope his mind was on summer and he felt the warmth of the long sunny days and the dirt flying from his paws.
I wish I could have been there for you Old Man, I am truly sorry

Hi all, sorry it’s been so long, but December and January are always our busiest months. Someone asked us to put down what we do in a day, so here it goes, so you can understand a bit of our life right now.
We get up at around 6 a.m. and soak food, then begin getting things ready for a run, like packing the sled with gear and snacks, loading and tying the sleds onto the truck, and warming the finicky thing up. We scoop all the poop for about 45 minutes, then feed them, then load them up for a trip to the hills.
Once there (it’s about 30 minutes away) we unload all the sleds, dogs and gear, then harness and bootie everyone, and take off for a run. Depending on the snow conditions, the runs themselves are taking 5-6 hours right now, and that’s if we’re not breaking trail, which we’ve had to do almost every other run this year. This is also the time for one run, but we have been doing a lot of camping too, so that doubles all the times. We also have three teams to run, so we can only do two a day.
Back at the truck, we feed everyone, take off all their gear, load them and everything again, and return home. There, we put everything away, then feed them again, and scoop any new poop.
Then we begin the race chores, like sorting booties or cutting meat, which takes a few more hours each night. This past week we got through 3,000 pounds of meat cutting and bagging with the help of some hardworking friends (see below).

All of this on top of typical kennel chores, like re-strawing dog boxes, medicating geriatric dogs, updating the blog, ordering dog food, etc. There also is the responsibility of working for a living too, so on days we work, we typical, do all these same things, but we start at about 5-6 p.m., instead of 6 a.m., and then just run in to the night until about 2-3 a.m.
There also are the unexpected things that come up, like the dog truck also broke down, so it needed to go into the shop for two days, which set us back a bit, and then there is always celebrating Christmas too. Also, the past two weeks we’ve had to shovel our driveway, which takes about 6-7 hours to complete (see pic below of our homemade plow).

So needless to say, when we don’t write regularly, please don’t think we don’t want to keep you all updated. It’s just sometimes, there aren’t enough hours in the day. O.K. all for this week, except for one last plug. We still have Penny Porter shirts in sizes small through 2xl, so if you haven’t already please show your support for the kennel by purchasing one or more. They can be purchased via Paypal or by sending checks made out to one of us, NOT the kennel.

They’re finally ready. We have Penny Porter T-shirts!!! In our perpetual attempt to be able to afford keeping and racing all these dogs, we will be selling these shirts featuring our lead dog, Penny, with the logo from the Kassik’s Brewery beer named in her honor. Kassik’s is our major sponsor and without their help we could not have run the Iditarod two years ago and couldn’t afford it this year either. They have generously underwritten the cost of making these shirts to help get us to the startline of the Last Great Race. The cost of these shirts is $25 if you live locally, or $30 if we have to ship it to you. They are going fast! Get yours while you still can.

In addition to the shirts, Kassik’s has also bottled up another batch of the maple-sweetened Penny Porter beer. We can’t ship this, unfortunatley, but if you live locally, stop in for a bottle or growler. Proceeds from this beer also go toward supporting our Iditarod endeavor.

In addition to Kassik’s, we have several kennel friends who support us, and among our most devoted friends is Susan, our Idita-rider from the start of the 2010 Iditarod. She has very generously made the quilt pictured above, which features several photos and the names of the race dogs, as well as all the ckeckpoints in the Yukon Quest and Iditarod, and a profile of some of the mountain ranges the dogs traverse. She has donated this to the kennel as a fundraiser. It will be on display at Kassik’s, where a lucky individual will have a chance to win such a unique and beautiful item. Contact us if you are interested in trying to win this one of a kind item.

Here is a close up of one of the sections of quilt with a dog team siloutte. It’s just a beautiful quilt!!!