Glacier
01-03-2004, 07:56 PM
I know no one else here runs a dog team, but I am so bloody proud of my mutts that I have to post this...
I was talking with another musher a couple weeks ago about when a run becomes a RUN and a team becomes a TEAM--everything clicks and they run in perfect harmony...Today I took out a six dog team--four shelter dogs, one alpha male and a musher cast-off dog. We ended up doing 25 kilometres, the last 7 or so on a very busy trail that I normally avoid like the plague. We passed FOUR other dog teams--all mushers I know who are highly competitive--run the Yukon Quest and make a living with their dogs. These guys were not just out with their dogs, they were training and they get testy with dogs getting in their way.
I dread head on passes. They can be a nasty mess. All four today were FLAWLESS!! My dogs acted like they were used to running with other teams--no hesitation, no tangles, no snarls, no trouble from the other mushers.
My team of rejected, cast off dogs--dogs no one else wanted to deal with--acted like real sled dogs. And today they were--who cares that they don't match up in size, that they have issues when they aren't in harness--they were a TEAM in every sense of the word today. For just over two hours today, we ran our own Iditarod and we ROCKED!!!
I was talking with another musher a couple weeks ago about when a run becomes a RUN and a team becomes a TEAM--everything clicks and they run in perfect harmony...Today I took out a six dog team--four shelter dogs, one alpha male and a musher cast-off dog. We ended up doing 25 kilometres, the last 7 or so on a very busy trail that I normally avoid like the plague. We passed FOUR other dog teams--all mushers I know who are highly competitive--run the Yukon Quest and make a living with their dogs. These guys were not just out with their dogs, they were training and they get testy with dogs getting in their way.
I dread head on passes. They can be a nasty mess. All four today were FLAWLESS!! My dogs acted like they were used to running with other teams--no hesitation, no tangles, no snarls, no trouble from the other mushers.
My team of rejected, cast off dogs--dogs no one else wanted to deal with--acted like real sled dogs. And today they were--who cares that they don't match up in size, that they have issues when they aren't in harness--they were a TEAM in every sense of the word today. For just over two hours today, we ran our own Iditarod and we ROCKED!!!