A Day In The Life
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
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.