Race Calendars

Last night I was looking at the web sites of different mushing clubs race schedules.  I was writing down the dates and started getting the butterflies.  It's so exciting just thinking about it.  We are getting snow here in Fairbanks, not lots, but more than years past.  So that means the local preliminary races here should be a go.  Filling up the calendar with the potential races, the mileages etc and I can't believe it's almost that time.  Would be nice to get on the sled soon.  The past 3 years my first run on sled has been on Christmas day at my parents place. Hope I get my annual Christmas present a little early this year.

We are still training on the 4 wheeler and running a 14 dog string.  All the dogs are looking good and we have them running in some really good pairs.  One of our young leaders, Jackie, has been doing such a great job up there.  We gave her a rest and ran some other dogs in front on our last run.  We used good ole Oscar and one of our new dogs, Red, in lead.  Red did great.  He was running in swing but we moved him back to wheel because he wanted to argue and get tough with the dog next to him.  In wheel we were closer to the problem and could get his attention better when he was doing wrong.  In a 14 dog string the swing dogs (the ones that run behind lead)  are so far away that when you yell at the dog to stop, he can barely hear you.  So he ran in wheel for several runs.  He ran next to Moose and he didn't put up with Red's attitude. The one thing that we both noticed though was that Red's line was tight every run.  He was never distracted by any traffic, loose dogs, people etc on the runs.  It was just his "short mans" syndrome that kicked in at the start of the run.  We figured that we would try him with Oscar because he is a dominant male and strong.  So he wouldn't take any crap from Red and would be able to pull him where we wanted them to go.  Jerry has been helping us and knows the frustrations we have had with Red. So when we put him in lead Jerry said "what possessed you to do that?" We said "just watch, you'll see"  sure enough he did a great job.  Looks like we have one more leader in the group.  You can never have enough leaders that's for sure.