The day has finally come when the dogs are finished working for the season! That means that they will need to get out for some exercise before all the snow melts and the trails turn to mush! With the weather as nice as it has been, this is the perfect time to help out Corine and Mike by letting the dogs pull us around!
We finally got our chance to take the dogs out for a run. It is great!
This was my dog team for the day. Flake is the lead dog!
We moved a bit faster this morning so that we could be outside around 8:00 to help Corine harness up the dog teams. It was quiet for the first 10 minutes but then we started to pull the dogs out of the yard and they all broke out with excitement! Corine had made up the team the nigh before. She always considers the distance the dogs will be covering, the conditions of the snow, and the size of the load they will have to pull. We also were trying to get an early start so that the day would not warm up too fast for them. The dogs can overheat pretty easily and get sick.
We made a big loop course out to an area called Fish Creek.
You stand on the back of the sled with rubber pads under your feet and a metal brake in the middle.
Corine gave me the name of the dogs in my team and I started to help her place them in the harnesses. My lead was going to be Flake. She is a good lead dog and takes her time when making a turn. Behind her was to be Greyling and Shrimp! I thought this was pretty funny because one of them is a larger dog in the yard and the other is the smallest! Shrimp was all excited and ready to go. Behind them we had Jade and Spunky. Jade is the mom of Sky and Biscuit and she is a sweet dog. Then the two dogs closest to the sled would be Skully and Thing. These are the only two dogs that I have never worked with before, but Skully loves to be rubbed and paid attention to.
We also had another clear view of Mt. McKinley. What a day!
We would stop and let the dogs roll in the snow to cool down. The day was warming up pretty fast!
We were off like a shot and the dogs were loving it! We made our way out past Eight Mile Lake and continued on in a loop around Fish Creek. The day was beautiful and clear and we even had some good looks at Mt. McKinley in the background. The day was warming up faster than expected so the return trip home was quite a bit slower than the way out. We took it easy and I even ran behind the sled on the up hill parts to help the dogs. One of the new puppies had come out with us and was running free next to Corine’s team. He was enjoying the exercise until we were almost home and he just ran out of energy. At first he couldn’t keep up with Corine, and then he got passed by Elizabeth’s team, and pretty soon he was way behind me but still running. He was really happy when we reached the yard! It was a great run with all the dogs looking very satisfied and worked at the end.
Watch the video of the dog sledding: http://