Sunday, January 13.

last week it was pretty warm with some rain.
I couldn't train at all because the trails, even there is still more than 1foot of snow, were hard and icy. nothing for sledding or skiing or training with the rig.
actually during the intense trainings/ racing season I try to run the dogs at least every three days so that they stay max. for two days in the kennel.
1 week without running and these guys getting nuts and starting to run in the kennel like maniacs.
so I finally changed the tires on my bike to the studded nokian 300 and trained at least Luc and Kaillou on Sunday morning on our back roads.
parts of those dirt roads were completely covered with a sheet of black ice. I never could do that with normal tires.
But the real challenge on our back roads are the free running dogs especially if I run with Kaillou.
this time we encountered 7 of those. not the big ones are tough to come by but these small "fiffies"; so it was a good "ON BY" - yelling - trainings session.









BTW:
That paved road ends up there. everything else is dirt road, hard packed sand/gravel.
otherwise I would dress the dogs with booties.

moose anyone?

when I was in the White Mountains last week we came pretty close to a moose.
It came down the slope about 100feet on my right side of the trail and stopped when it saw us.

The dogs didn't realize the moose because they couldn't see or smell it.

What to do?


stopping? Ok, I heard a lot of different storries about the moose. most of them are more horryfying than fun.
but since the dogs were quite, I slowly grabbed the camera and took the first picture but of course the autofocus focused on the bushes. so I adjusted the camera and took a few shoots until the dogs realized whats going on and went nuts. the moose turned around and seemed to leave but then turned its head, when the the dogs started to screem.



there is a current topic at sleddogcentral right now.
where they give different opinions of what to do, from bearspray to a .44 magnum.
Since I'm from central Europe and not so used to guns as the folks here, the magnum isn't an option.

In the end I think bells put on the collars of the dogs, using caution and having respect to the moose in their invironmet is the only thing I can do. And hope simply not to run into an angry moose.

BTW.
last year at that time I almost run in to a black Bear. it was in the same area. that bear seemed to like running in front us on the trail. he also was 100 feet away and finaly left the trail to our rigth side. It looked actually quite funny because he looked like a giant loping gorilla in the snow. :)
the wildlife service which I called afterwards told me, beacause of the unusual warm wheather some bears did not start hibernating and were still looking for something to eat.
but that was last year, even it is very warm right now (+15°C) we still have 2-3 feet snow on the ground.

pulka training 12-30-07

it was a day with perfect conitions in the White Mountains.



first I run all four on the sled up the Bear Notch road and back the trails in the experimental forest.
then I took Luc and Kaillou for a Pulka run.



looks like the dogs are getting in a good shape but now I struggle to keep up with them.
to much cookies in the last time :)

But here a short clip how it is running behind the pulka.