Reality Game Shows

Who needs reality TV? I've got my own reality shows happening this month in my own kennel.

The first one is called "Who Wants To Be A Race Dog?" and every few weeks a dog gets voted off the island.

I started with 23 dogs in training in August split into 2 teams. The first to leave was a female in October due to an unplanned pregnancy. Down to 22.

Next to go were the 4 youngest yearlings, when I decided running two small teams was taking too much time and wanted just one big team to run. Down to 18.

Then a male got voted off the team in late October due to a chronic elbow issue which was not getting better. 17 dogs.

One of the remaining 4 yearlings started to get too tired with the longer runs so I decided he needed more time to grow up. Down to 16.

Now I've got until the snow significantly falls to narrow the team down to 14, which is the maximum I want to run on a sled (and I need 12 to race, so that gives me two spares). So two more need to get voted off the dogteam in the next 4-6 weeks.... who will it be?

Will it be the youngest yearling (Nukilik), who wasn't expected to even make it this far into the season? He's showing some amazing promise and still hanging in there, despite the fact that his brother was voted off the team weeks ago.

Will it be the female who just had puppies and is returning to the team with a 300 mile deficit compared to the rest of the team?

Or will it be the oldest female, who is struggling to keep up with the faster younger dogs?

Hmmm, tune in to our next episode of "Who Wants To Be A Racing Sleddog?" to find out! :P

Then in my basement I currently have my other reality show, "Who's Your Daddy?" It's the mystery litter. Maja turns up pregnant. She was in a dogyard with 6 intact males. I never saw the breeding (and of course didn't realize she was still in season, otherwise she wouldn't have been in there). Two pups were born, one looks exactly like Mom. The other is a very traditional looking gray & white siberian who could basically be out of any of the 6 males. I'm betting on a dog named Matsi as the dad. My best friends are betting on a dog named Sully as the dad. But could it be one of the others? Only time (and the DNA test results) will tell!

So hey, who needs reality tv, right?

Stay tuned....

Wacky Dreams

Yesterday morning as Kendra and I geared up to go training I was telling her about the wacky dreams I'd had overnight. In one of them I dreamed I got up and went down to the kitchen where I found her crying and incoherent. I said, "What's wrong?" and she told me a friend of hers from school had died and she needed to go there to the funeral and she didn't know how she was going to get there, and a bunch of other stuff I couldn't understand through her crying. The dream ended shortly afterwards.

Kendra said, "Oh god, that's awful! I hope your dreams aren't prophetic!" I said, "No, no, don't worry... I'm not psychic in my dreams."

This morning as I laced up my boots to go training I said, "Man, last night I had another wacky dream. This time I dreamed that we were hooking up the team and the swing dogs chewed through the leader lines and let the leaders go, and the leaders ran off down the trail without us!" We agreed that made sense for me to dream that because yesterday one of the dogs got loose off the droplines and almost ran down the trail.

About an hour later we're hooking up the dogs at the training trail and we've got 2 more to go when Kendra motions frantically at the front of the team where just minutes earlier Kadee and Anya had stood in lead. And now were gone. Tristan, in swing, chewed through their leader lines and let them loose and they ran off down the trail without us.

As we took off on the ATV with the rest of the dogteam to go and catch the two loose leaders I turned to Kendra and said mournfully, "I'm so sorry about your friend."

:P

I'm Back!

I haven't been blogging here for a few years, but decided to return this season. I figure if I just keep the posts short and sweet, maybe I'll have more time to post.

Training's going well. Hitting all our goals for the season, and the team looks great. I started the season training up two teams and getting all the pups out to run, but earlier this week decided that was just way too much work and taking too much time, and training 11 dog teams was quite boring compared to training a string of 16-18. :P So I decided a few yearlings would sit out the season. I've kept 4 yearlings on the team for now, and they'll stay as long as they can handle it.

So training up this fall is:
Tristan
Anya
Viktor
Viper
Quinn
Sully
Hank
Emma
Weyekin
Matsi
Creek
Kadee
McKinley
Nukilik (yearling)
Toyuk (yearling)
Thunder (yearling)
Lightning (yearling)
Maja (yes, at the age of 10 she's still going strong!)

Stay tuned. :)