THE TEMPS. ARE DROPPING & IT'S TIME TO START TRAINING

It’s finally cold enough to start seriously training the team! This fall we have started out with 27 dogs as the main team. Our oldest dog is Helen, now 7 years old. On the opposite end we have 10 yearlings this year, the biggest group of young dogs to ever train with the main crew since we began raising and running our own dogs. We feel that this is testament to our breeding program which has improved over the years as we have become more knowledgeable about the type of dog we are looking for and also buying proven dogs specifically for breeding from championship kennels.

We have started by running (w/ the dogs pulling ATV’s) 3 miles with 2 teams of 13 dogs each. Every week we are increasing the mileage by 20% until we have enough snow to be on sleds (usually by December.) Right now we are training on the gravel roads of our neighborhood, the surrounding fields and a few of the forest trails. Our goal is to have the team knowing how to pull steady and hard for a consistent run at about 10 miles an hour. They usually pull in gear—kind of like weight training, and at times we will put the ATV in neutral or give them gas to “loosen them up” and build in some speed training.

The hope is by the time we do make it to sleds we will still have 21 dogs ready to continuing the second phase of training. We plan to run 2 teams at the shorter races giving the younger guys a taste of race experience. It should be pretty exciting to see 2 screaming to go dog teams launching off the same truck!

Primarily fall is a time of “norming and forming” - building stronger bonds with the younger members of the team, training in new leaders and just having fun!