BEDHEAD SLED DOGS

In June 2005, I wrote about Todd Seymanski and his Black and Tan hound dog named Ruby.Ruby’s been a busy girl since I last saw her. Todd and his wife, Debbie, and daughter, Tia, 13, have spent the last four years driving to United Kennel Club (UKC) events and field trials in Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Indiana.

And all of the travel was worth it.

“Last fall, Ruby became the second coonhound in UKC history to make it to five titles,” Todd explained. “She just missed being the first dog to do so by a week, a male hound got all five titles just the week before. But she’s still the first female and first Black and Tan hound in UKC history to earn all five titles.”

Ruby is now a Grand Field Champion, Grand Night Champion, Grand Show Champion, Water Champion, and Confirmation Champion.

“The water championship was the hardest,” Todd said.

In water racing, a pulley system drags a stuffed coon across a body of water and up a tree on the other side. The hounds, simultaneously released from their starting chutes, leap into the water and swim, chasing the coon to shore. The first hound to the tree wins.

“Water racing is a male-dominated sport. In Utah, we made it to the final four which was exceptional. But we were feeling pretty small at the starting line - the three males must have weighed 70 pounds a piece while Ruby’s just about 52 pounds. But she beat them all. That says a lot for her head and her heart. Ruby’s got desire.”

Todd and Ruby are taking a short break, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped training. Todd runs his dogs three days a week, logging 6-7 miles a day. On the other days when it’s warm enough, he swims Ruby in the Missouri River. Todd ties a raccoon hide and a milk jug to a long rope and tosses it out into the water; Ruby swims against the current, power-housing her way up stream after the elusive coon.

“Most dogs are good at one thing or another,” Todd says. “But Ruby’s unusual. She’s an all-around balanced dog. She’s pretty good at everything she does. We’re going to keep working on getting Grand Champion in Water and Confirmation. And then she’ll have it all.”

Then there’s Grody

In my August 2007 column, I wrote about the new, exciting and half-crazy sport called canicross. Canicross is a dog-powered cross-country competition where a harnessed dog pulls a human runner.Nolan Taylor introduced me to the highly competitive sport that is already quite popular in Europe and South America. At the time of my column, Nolan was training with Grody, his year-old German Shorthair Pointer, in preparation for the East Meets West Dryland Challenge in Brainerd, Minn. Nov. 17-18, 2007.

“So you know the routine…” Nolan wrote me in an e-mail after the race. “Train for nearly a year, put in tons of time and money, show up at a race, and one time in a hundred things go just about as perfect as you imagine! That’s how things went this weekend.”

Nolan’s words were an understatement. He and Grody won the pro-class division of canicross with insanely fast runs of 7:02 for the 1.7 mile course on the first day and 7:03 for the same trail on day two.

“We ran two days of 4:08-ish miles,” Nolan said. “That gave us a two-day total of 3 minutes and 30 seconds faster than our closest competitor.”

In the starting chute, Grody knew what was coming up.

“When there was just 10 seconds left in the countdown, Grody started hitting the harness and screaming this crazy, wild scream - the sound of pure joy.”

Nolan says one of the best parts of going to canicross competitions is seeing people and dogs of all shapes and sizes having fun together.

“This one lady in the sportsman class was running with her English Bulldog,” he said. “I’m not sure who was working harder. One of the good parts of dryland racing is seeing everyone giving it a shot.”

May your pooch take you to great places in 2008. Happy New Year.

Keep up with Karen Land at www.mymusher.com.