Happy Holidays
While the holiday is a time for many to relax, this Christmas day is a busy one around the kennel. Our second race of the season – the Gin Gin 200 – is on Saturday and we leave to make the long 9-hour drive north tomorrow. This is a race Cole and the team have twice competed in and done well each time. She and the team were third three years ago and second two years ago. Last season she had hoped to win, but withdraw before the race after not being in a race frame of mind as a result of a close friend being killed that Christmas Eve.
This season’s race should be a good one. The field looks talented, but also the trail reports are hinting to a bit of a challenging course. To take just a few excerpts from an email sent this morning from the race organizers: “Expect windy conditions from mile 7-20… Deep snow and overflow in spots…We had to snowshoe some of this… Several miles below the cabin you will begin a jumble ice area… to Mile 60 you will encounter as many moose as you will ever see.” Sounds fun, huh? Oh, and I forgot to mention, the temperatures are supposed to be around minus 5 to minus 15 for the daytime highs, and minus 30 or colder for the nighttime lows.
As such, our goal for this race is just to survive. Just kidding. Seriously, we would love to finally win this race, but doubt this is the year it’s going to happen. Instead we are just hoping to place in the money, which for this race means placing in the top three. This is going to be tough, though. We have had a few injuries lately, nothing major, but with the Yukon Quest still to come, we are being very cautious with some of the A-team, so a few of Cole’s most trusted and proven race veterans will ride the bench for this race. That’s not to say the 10 dogs she will be bringing up aren’t capable of capturing victory in this race. It is possible, just not probable, but I guess we’ll see what happens. To follow the race visit: http://gingin200.blogspot.com/
In other news, we recently heard from Trucker’s family back in Massachusetts. Trucker left this past summer to go to a new home. He remains the only dog we have ever moved out of the kennel, and he only left because he didn’t show a love for pulling like the other dogs do. Still, we try to keep up with him as often as possible. This is something we want to do because we love Trucker, but also because we view it as being responsible mushers. Some mushers will euthanize healthy dogs that don’t pull well – putting performance above humaneness. Some others will “place” dogs, but they don’t really look into who and where these dogs are going to, and if they will be cared for permanently. These mushers are just eager to get the dogs out of the kennel, while still being able to say they didn’t kill them. This to us is an end run, because we have had several of the owners of these “placed” dogs call us weeks to months later to say outrageous things such as “Well, so-and-so musher gave me this dog, but I live in an apartment and can’t afford it anyway since I’m unemployed. Do you want it, or should I just bring it to the pound or shoot it?”
Anyhow, the point of this post is to not to be on the soapbox about pet owners doing things wrong, it is to focus on one couple doing things right. Trucker’s new family – Ross and Tamara Morrow – have given him a better life than we could have ever hoped. Here are a few photos they sent of Trucker enjoying the holiday, and them enjoying Trucker while snowshoeing with him just days before Christmas.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Yay! Unfortunately all the snow in those pics has now melted. Trucker and I went for a 4 mi jog in rainy 55 F weather yesterday. With all the sand/mud on the roads, his white areas are not so white anymore, but his big smile can’t be missed!