MUSH!

Even though I was waving, I had a death grip with my right hand

The weekend I'd be waiting for since we moved to Alaska finally arrived. Dog mushing turned out to be even more awesome than I thought it could be. We started with a 3hr classroom session last Tuesday. We got our itinerary for the weekend, met a former Jr. Iditarod champion and Iditarod finisher, Melissa Owens (please note, there will be A LOT of name dropping in this post). Melissa brought one of her lead dogs - the dogs in the front, and went over how the dogs are harnessed, what qualities make a good mushing dog, a good lead dog, and what it's like on the trail. Our teacher, a retired musher, gave us some background on the race, and everything else involved in mushing. We left class knowing we had a long weekend coming up, but pretty excited to see how things would go.

Just outside of Wasilla, Ak

Saturday morning started well before dawn. We dropped Ellsworth off with some friends and picked up a couple underclassmen in our class who needed a ride. We arrived at the start of the Jr. Iditarod around 830am on Knik Lake, just passed Wasilla. We were there to help out as needed, observe the teams getting ready, and talk to any of the racers or teams that had time for us. Jr. Iditarod racers are some pretty hardcore kids. The race is open to 14 to 17 years-old. The race is 150 total miles and goes overnight. Racers camp out at the halfway point and then finish the next day. Mushers run teams of 10 dogs and came from as far away as Massachusetts.

Checking the gear before the race

The race started on Knik Lake and finished in Willow

By all accounts the weather was perfect the morning of the race. It was clear, sunny, and 3 degrees. The dogs run best when it's below 0. Personally, I would've operated a bit better had it been above 10, but I'm no teenage musher. We followed race officials from team to team, checking to see that each musher had all the required gear. Every musher seemed to have all the optional equipment for the dogs, but had none of the optional stuff for themselves. Crazy kids.
 

Those icicles formed in about an hour

Kelly, in case you can't tell

By far, the two calmest dogs

Once the pre-race checks were done teams started securing their dogs to the sled. It's truly amazing how excited the dogs were to get out and start running. The vast majority of the dogs were barking, howling, or whining in excitement. At the start line a lot of dogs were straining their harnesses, pulling to start. I found out from a race official that you can tell a well-trained dog by whether or not they pull before the start. The better trained dogs conserve their energy for the race and don't strain against the harness. Only 1 team out of 12 had dogs that weren't pulling before the start, but they weren't the winners.

Ready to go!

It's amazing how excited the dogs get

 After all of the racers set out we left for a quick tour of Iditarod headquarters before heading for Eagle River and the home, kennel, and studio of official Iditarod artists Jon and Jona van Zyle. Jon and a  Jona have kennel of Siberian Huskies, the traditional mushing dog. More and more the Alaska Husky (mixed breed) has hound bred into it for speed. The van Zyle's are old school.

The huskies were gorgeous dogs. They also love people

We were able to play with the dogs for a bit before we got a tour of the van Zyle's studio. We got some small prints signed by Jon to finish off the day. Jon and Jona were fantastic hosts and really epitomize the kind of friendliness we've found almost everywhere we've been in Alaska.

The dogs are trained to wait on their houses to be petted

A slightly larger hamster wheel

The second time I've seen a creepy baby doll randomly placed in Alaska

Stay tuned for our actual mushing adventure.

New Addition

Meet Chuck

Two weeks ago, after nearly 4 years about talking about adopting a dog, we finally adopted a dog. Although we hadn't really planned to adopt at this point in the year, we could resist once we met Chuck. The original plan was to wait for spring and avoid walks in -20 degree weather or during blinding snow. It would've been nice...Unlike Kelly and me, Chuck loves the snow and cold. He's a mix of German Shepard and Alaskan Husky. The Husky in him loves jumping into snow drifts and sticking his head into snow piles.

He loves to smash the ball into the snow and then try to find it

Like most adopted dogs, Chuck has his set of issues. When he came home two weeks ago, he wouldn't let us touch his paws. He's terrified of the vacuum cleaner - he can't even look at it. He's also confused and intimidated by the air vents. We've seen some separation anxiety build over the last week, he gets really worked up when we leave for work. Thankfully he isn't a chewer, doesn't bark much, and has excellent bladder control. He's torn up a bit of the molding near the front door, but that's an easy fix.

Chuck has one blue eye and one brown eye

Chuck is about 1.5 years old and still has a lot of puppy in him. He has the standard giant sized paws for a German Shepard and clomps around on them. When coming downstairs in our house he often goes too fast and ends up running to the front door. When he gets excited and runs around on the hardwood floors he usually ends up sliding all over. He's generally just a goofy dog, he fits in perfectly.

The stress of having a new dog and rearranging our schedules aside, it's been a great first two weeks with Chuck. We're working on training him. He responds well to treats when training, but we need to start moving him away from treats every time. We can touch his paws now, but he's still not comfortable enough with us to let us apply moisturizer to keep his pads from drying out and cracking. Hopefully we can get him used to us coming and going soon. Obedience classes on on the horizon, along with learning how to skijor. Next time we talk about Chuck, we'll be calling him Ellsworth, in honor of one of our favorite Deadwood characters.

Someday