Wolf Moon Dogsledding

Location: Northwest GA
Time - 8:06pm
Temperature: 89 degrees F
Conditions: Partly cloudy, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. Highs in the 90s, lows in the 60s

Here is an article on the 2009 Iditarod sign-up, which is today.

From: http://www.adn.com/sports/story/449408.html

Rush is on to mush in Iditarod
SIGNUP STARTS TODAY: Entry fee is $4,000, which is a grand more than ‘08.

By MIKE CAMPBELL
mcampbell@adn.com

Published: June 28th, 2008 02:14 AM
Last Modified: June 28th, 2008 04:00 AM

Mushers will start signing up for the 2009 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race this morning — and they better have a fat checking account.

The entry fee for next year’s Last Great Race is $4,000, up from $3,000 this year and $1,860 in 2007 — a 115 percent increase.

Chas St. George, the Iditarod director of public relations, said 15 entries have already arrived by mail. Mushers who sign up early get to draw for the more-favorable early start positions.

Last year, 110 paid to enter the race and 96 left the Fourth Avenue starting line in March. This year’s field will be capped at 100 mushers.

Even with a $4,000 entry fee, said Iditarod board member Mark Moderow, mushers are paying a fraction of what it costs to stage the long, cold adventure.

When last calculated, the cost per musher of putting on the Iditarod came to about $12,000, said St. George. Sponsors and revenue from Iditarod-related enterprises make up the difference.

Concerns about fuel prices and insurance costs contributed to the board’s decision to raise the entry fee and reduce the race purse from $900,000 this year to $660,000 for the 2009 race in March. The winner will still collect $69,000, said Iditarod veteran Moderow, but the prizes going to other top mushers will be reduced.

Iditarod president Stan Hooley said race expenses — excluding prize money — have shot up nearly 500 percent since the mid-1990s, going from $208,000 to more than $1 million.

“At times,” he said, “various expenses … grow at rates that outpace our ability to grow our revenues.”

But a handful of hardscrabble, back-of-the-pack mushers hanging on along the rural road system may be hit hardest by the price hike. One of them earlier this month said he can’t afford it.

“It is very unfortunate that the sign-up fee has gotten in the way of an otherwise great sporting event between mankind and the great canine athletes,” said G.B. Jones, who has finished two of the six Iditarods he’s started.

Last year, 56 mushers signed up on the first Saturday and another 15 arrived by mail

A general membership meeting starts at 10 a.m. at Iditarod Headquarters, Mile 2.2 of Knik Road in Wasilla. Election results for the Iditarod board of directors will be announced. Three seats are being contested.

• Mike Owens of Nome is seeking re-election.

• Richard Burmeister of Nome is stepping down after 12 years, including three as board president. Burmeister ran both the 1979 and 1981 Iditarods. Donna Quante and Aaron Burmeister, Richard’s son, are running for his seat. Aaron has finished 11 Iditarods, with six consecutive top-25 finishes. He was 19th this March.

• Dan Seavey of Seward is seeking re-election.

A volunteer appreciation picnic begins at noon.

[end of article]

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 7:29pm
Temperature: 89 degrees F
Conditions: Partly cloudy, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. Highs in the 90s, lows in the 60s

Not every run goes well. This morning’s scooter run, for instance, was not what I would consider a success. To start with, it was warm. Calypso was starting to get bored with the trail we’ve been running every morning. I thought I would take her on a shorter trail since it was warm and that it would go well because she wouldn’t be bored (since she hadn’t run it in a long time).

First half of the run went well. Halfway through, though, Calypso became bored and just wanted to sniff and goof around. So the second half was slow. I kept having to lead her back onto the trail, line her out and tell her to “hike!”

So no, it’s not all smooth sailing…er, mushing!

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 6:33pm
Temperature: 87 degrees F
Conditions: Partly cloudy, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms today and tomorrow. Highs in the 80s, lows in the 60s

Calypso is a fantastic little brat of a Siberian Husky. She was born in July of 2005 at Kristari Kennels (then based in Louden, Tennessee) and came to live with me that September. She was, and still is, a ball of pure energy. One of the most high-energy dogs I have ever met, Calypso proved to be a challenge right from day one.

I trained Calypso as a sled dog and she took to the sport immediately. She loves to scooter, canicross, bike or sled whenever she gets the chance. Her running drive is strong and she is extremely competitive. If there is another team (or anything else) in front of her, she isn’t happy until she passes them!

Calypso is a great dog and is amazingly well-behaved with small children. She is demanding but I don’t mind. I love her greatly and we have a lot of fun together. Besides mushing, she loves swimming, playing with her squeaky toy (she’s rather obsessed with the squeaky if the truth be known) and eating.

Visit Calypso’s Dogster page by clicking here.

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 6:23pm
Temperature: 87 degrees F
Conditions: Partly cloudy, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms today and tomorrow. Highs in the 80s, lows in the 60s

April is an aging English Springer spaniel. She and I grew up together and, to this day, she still believes I am her litter mate! I used to crawl around on the floor and wrestle with her when she was a puppy so she still thinks of me in that way.

When I first decided I wanted to do dogsledding, I tried to train April as a sled dog. She tolerated me running around with her, trying to teach her sled dog commands at first but never showed any real interest. In fact, she seemed to really dislike mushing when I tried to work with her again later so I didn’t push it.

April is the oldest dog here and has seen a lot. We all love her and care for her. She’s slowed down a little in her old age and is partially deaf but she is still bouncy and enthusiastic just to be around people!

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 6:11pm
Temperature: 87 degrees F
Conditions: Partly cloudy, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms today and tomorrow. Highs in the 80s, lows in the 60s

Wilson is a hound mix that showed up on our doorstep one rainy day in November 2002. We believe someone dumped a litter of puppies nearby and that he was one of them. I have seen another dog that looked just like Wilson running with a half-wild pack on the far side of our mountain.

Wilson, or Willy as I call him, had obviously been abused by his former owners and, although he is fine with me and the rest of the family, strangers distress him greatly. He has taken up the position of guard dog and screams (rather than barks) when he believes anyone or anything is around. This is good when he alerts us to people but annoying when the intruder is a bird or squirrel.

I’ve done a little sled work with Willy but he has never been very into it. Although he likes to pull, he doesn’t have much interest in working in harness. He used to run long distances with April off-leash but we have since put a stop to that since it is too dangerous for them to run off-leash together when unsupervised.

Wilson is a fun dog with an ever-wagging tail. We believe him to be a Beagle/Black and Tan Coonhound mix.

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 11:42am
Temperature: 82 degrees F
Conditions: Clear, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms today and tomorrow. Highs in the 80s, lows in the 60s

A few days ago I hit the trail early with Calypso and we were the first ones out. I looked up ahead towards a grassy patch and sure enough there was a little brown rabbit just sitting there. Oh great.

Calypso continued along, looking at the sights and sniffing the air. We came closer and closer to the rabbit and it still didn’t move and Calypso still didn’t see it. We ran right by it and it finally hopped away into the brush. Calypso STILL didn’t see it, she was looking at the other side of the road.

Goofball!

So we continued our run and stopped at the creek to rest and cool off. Unfortunately we couldn’t use the water in the creek to cool off because THERE IS NO WATER in the creek anymore. Yes, we’re hoping for rain.

We turned around and I thought for sure the rabbit was long gone. But we came around a curve and there it was! Just sitting there beside the road. And this time Calypso did see it! Her ears went up as she honed in on it and you could just see her focus switch. Dogs run entirely different when they are after animals. The rabbit for some bizarre reason decided it would be a good idea to hop down the road in front of us, so we had a rabbit for a loose leader!

Finally it hopped away into the bushes and Calypso tried to follow. I yelled “on by!” (it seems like I yell this a lot) and, of course, she didn’t listen to me so I had to lead her back onto the trail. But it was a fun run and we all had a good time. Well, Calypso and I did.

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 10:23am
Temperature: 76 degrees F
Conditions: Partly cloudy
Forecast: Sunny today, thunderstorms tomorrow. Highs in the 90s, lows in the 60s

Photo from http://mck-blog.blogspot.com/2008/06/summer-time-fun.html. Check out the link for more cute puppy photos!

Well, some of you already know the news. The rest have heard me hinting about it for weeks and are probably wanting me to tell you what it is already! So that is what I am going to do.

In August, Calypso and I are heading up to Finland, Minnesota (near Ely). We will be living at Manitou Crossing Kennels (aka Jedeye Kennels) where I will be working as a handler for mushers Blake and Jen Freking. So this Winter will be very different for us. I will be working with the Jedeye racing huskies and helping train the pups. It’s going to be very exciting and I may have opportunities to race in some mid-distance events in the Midwest. The dogs at Manitou Crossing are mostly Siberians, which is very exciting. Calypso will be among her “own kind”!

It is possible, although by no means a certainty, that I will attempt the Beargrease Marathon in 2010 with a puppy team. I have decided that this is my goal for now.

Be sure to check out the Manitou Crossing Kennel blog at http://mck-blog.blogspot.com/ to read about their current happenings and to see pictures of the puppies I’ll be working with (there is nothing cuter than a litter of Siberian husky puppies!).

So this Wandering GA Musher is wandering from Georgia to Minnesota. Another step closer to living the life I have wanted since I was eleven. Actually, I WILL be living that life this Winter. Experiencing it through the eyes of a handler…

Wish me luck!

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 5:55pm
Temperature: 75 degrees F
Conditions: Mostly cloudy, few sprinkles of rain
Forecast: Possible thunderstorms tonight, sunny tomorrow. Lows in the 60s, highs in the 90s

Aspen was my first Siberian husky. She was born on January 20th, 2000. I adopted her as a puppy when I was eleven and felt very strongly that I wanted to be a musher and live among sled dogs, although I knew ridiculously little about the Siberian husky breed. Looking back, it is amazing that I was able to handle a husky at that age! Even more amazing was that Aspen was calm enough for me to handle. She was nowhere near as high-strung as Sibes I have met since then. I adopted her from a backyard breeder, something I would be very hesitant to do again.

Together, Aspen and I learned to mush. At that point, the dog mushing community did not exist in Georgia so we were quite on our own. I usually did canicross and bikejor runs with Aspen and somehow we became a team. We even went on a couple of kicksled runs in Tennessee when there was snow! I always wanted to take her North to snow country but sadly, that never happened.

On the evening of June 20th, 2005, when I was bringing her inside as I did every day, Aspen collapsed and died of what we believe was a brain aneurysm. That was the worst day of my life and even now, three years later, it still hurts dreadfully to think about it. I still miss her, even as I work with the dogs I have now. I still remember Aspen. The First Dog.

This year, I put up a Dogster page in memory of Aspen. To visit it, please click here.

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 3:43pm
Temperature: 84 degrees F
Conditions: Mostly cloudy, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms tonight, sunny tomorrow. Highs in the 80s, lows in the 60s

I’ve been involved with the mushing community for a long time now and I know a lot of mushers and dogs. It’s a wonderful community united by dogs and, for the most part, I really enjoy the other mushers.

However, there is something that bothers me - the way mushers go at each other. Not all mushers are like this. In fact, most aren’t. But I’ve heard Musher A slander Musher B to a crowd. Here’s the thing - I know and really like both Musher A and Musher B. So it’s hard for me being in the middle (it’s part of the whole TAKE SIDES mentality that drives me nuts). In fact, I often hear some mushers dis another musher (never to their face, mind you) for one reason or another. Generally it has to do with treatment of dogs - and believe me, I don’t want anyone mushing if they aren’t good with dogs. Most of the time I don’t know diddly squat about the musher in question and just sort of go along with what is being said. But there is slander that I KNOW isn’t true.

I have a friend who is musher and whom I really respect. I’m not naming anyone here for a variety of reasons but this person is very experienced and very good with dogs and really seems to be on the same wavelength. I’ve known this person for a good long time now. Recently, I said something about this particular musher to another mushing acquaintance (who did not realize this person was my friend) and this acquaintance launched into this diatribe about how the musher was cruel and didn’t care for dogs, was completely clueless and self-absorbed, etc. (those are common attacks in musher vs. musher slander). That really threw me as I KNOW THAT NONE OF THAT IS TRUE. And there is nothing that makes me madder than that.

So what the heck to do in a situation such as this? Do I give the person spreading this stuff a piece of my mind and tell them to lay off my friend and that their rant was uncalled for? No, that wouldn’t do anything good and would make things worse for the whole TAKE SIDES mentality. Sheesh.

Somehow, I’ve always been able to be friends with people on opposite sides of seemingly un-bridgeable issues. Now it seems I am friends with mushers who, for one reason or another, basically hate each other. Weird. So where does that leave me?

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Location: Northwest GA
Time - 12:04pm
Temperature: 80 degrees F
Conditions: Partly cloudy, cool-ish
Forecast: Partly cloudy today, thunderstorms tomorrow. Lows in the 60s, highs in the 80s

Well, after a nasty late spring heat wave, we’ve had a few VERY nice days. We had rain about a week ago and it filled up the creek again (although it is beginning to run dry again by now) and it heralded cooler temperatures. Think 50s. Nice training weather.

It was 53 degrees yesterday morning, which made for a brisk scooter run. Calypso is loving this weather as much as I am. Yesterday it was cool enough to see our breath, a welcome change. It feels like Fall although I know we’ve got Summer ahead of us (it starts today or tomorrow, I can’t remember which).

We’ve been running the same short trail every morning and I’m frankly surprised Calypso isn’t bored with it yet - and it’s a straight trail too! We saw a squirrel this morning which made for an interesting run. Also, last week a coyote left some scat in the middle of the road and now Calypso wants to stop and sniff it EVERY SINGLE MORNING! I’ve been yelling on-by quite a lot and managed to get the line wrapped around the front wheel once or twice.

I think the coyotes are denning near here. I hear them howling at least two or three times a week. I’ve been sleeping with my window open and I hear them a lot at night, singing and howling. I think they must have a den because some of them CANNOT carry a “tune” like the adults do. It sounds like a bunch of kids singing off-pitch. I have an idea as to the general area of the den but I haven’t investigated further as I don’t want to disturb them. I enjoy hearing them sing at night and seeing their tracks in the mud and sand.

Calypso has lost a LOT of her Winter coat and looks much better (the ground has a fuzzy appearance now but that’s another story). I’m sure she feels better too.

As I’ve been hinting for the past month or so, I have BIG NEWS. I’ll be announcing it here on Wednesday though it’s not really a secret and a lot of you probably already know. But it’ll still be fun to write about!

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