Location: Armuchee, GA
Time - 8:24am Eastern Daylight Time
Temperature: 71 degrees F (22C)
Conditions: Overcast, humid
Forecast: Thunderstorms today and tomorrow. Lows in the 70s, highs in the 90s
The pack, minus Wilson (who escaped the photo session) in the upper yard.
As you can see, we haven’t gotten much done in the dogyard over the past week or so. Of course I’ve been taking care of the dogs and making sure they are happy and getting attention. And brushing them since they are ALL blowing their coats (yes, Calypso is finally starting to shed out).
But as far as projects go, they’ve come to a halt while we deal with other more pressing issues. Last week sucked. This week has been smoother and calmer but still tough.
I had a letter to the editor published in today’s Charlotte Observer (NC). This goes back to an article from last weekend about Martha Dobson of Mount Pleasant Middle School, who was selected as the 2011 Target Teacher On The Iditarod Trail. You can read the article here - http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/06/06/1478686/teacher-inspired-by-dogsledding.html I am excited about having a fellow Southeasterner as the Teacher On The Trail next year! Of course, the article resulted in the usual letter to the editor from the Sled Dog Action Coalition - http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/06/09/1486994/the-observer-forum.html (the SDAC’s letter is the 5th one down). I’ve been pretty active lately in trying to help counter the anti-sled dog racing movement, so I sent a letter to the Charlotte Observer as well. It was published in today’s edition, and I have included it below:
From: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/06/11/1491804/the-observer-forum.html
In response to “Iditarod is brutal on dogs, tell school children about that too” (June 9 Forum):
Take it from an animal lover, Iditarod dogs are treated well
It’s too bad Martha Dobson has come under fire for using the Iditarod as a teaching tool. Having been personally involved with sled dogs for years now, I can say without hesitation that the sport is not cruel. I’m an animal lover first and foremost. I’ve seen firsthand how naturally eager sled dogs are to run. It’s not something they’re forced to do. I spent two winters working for an Iditarod kennel, and I’ve seen others. Not only is the dog care top-notch, but the mushers really do love their dogs.
Alice White
Armuchee, Ga.
They edited the letter a bit (they took out a line where I pointed out that no dogs died in the 2010 Iditarod) but all in all I am pleased and certainly not going to complain!
As an aside, I got quite a cackle out of the last sentence of the totally unrelated letter that appeared directly above mine (see the link). Because of an unintended reference to something that has nothing to do with the point of that letter, unless the point happens to be dolphins. LOL! But I digress. I doubt any of you are going to “get” why that is so funny to me but I had to say something because otherwise I would explode.
But getting back to the point [sniggers], there is a great new webpage dedicated to providing good, solid information on treatment of sled dogs. Healthy Sled Dogs - http://healthysleddogs.wordpress.com/ It’s a work in progress but looks great so far! Big thanks to Diane for pointing me to it!
In the meantime, I am working on my ‘History’ page and have been thinking about how this crazy sled dog hobby/obsession of mine got started. I’ve come across some really old doodles I did when I was 8 or 9 of my “future 3-dog team” (consisting of April the spaniel, an un-named husky and an un-named Golden retriever). Things didn’t turn out exactly that way…but I do have a three-dog team now (four if I hook Wilson up and I’ve been thinking about doing that since he’s now at a reasonable weight). *Sigh*. I remember one November when I was quite small and my parents and I went to a Thanksgiving family reunion in Charleston, SC. I thought it was a loooooong trip at the time (nothing like driving cross-country for a week to change one’s mind on this. Hah) and remember staring out the window at the side of the road. Only in my mind the grass was covered in snow and I was watching myself driving that three-dog team alongside the car. Who knew at that point where I would be some fourteen years or so later. I’ve still got a ways to go to get where I want to be but I can see that I’ve come a long way.
When I first became interested in sled dogs it wasn’t because of the Iditarod or the Yukon Quest or Beargrease or any race at all. I just wanted to run sled dogs, work with sled dogs. Because I loved animals. That was one constant from when I was really little - wanting to work with animals. I also wanted to make movies (I wanted to be a writer/director). I never watched a huge amount of movies when I was small (at least, not compared to some other kids I knew) but those that I did watch made a huge impression. I used to fold a piece of paper in half and design a movie case - complete with a design on the front cover and a synopsis and screen-shots on the back cover. They were always movies of my own design, although they might be inspired by films that I’d seen.
When I was six or seven (I’m really bad remembering dates that far back in my not-so-terribly-long life so this might not be entirely accurate) I was obsessed with Once Upon A Forest and then (much to the annoyance of my parents) the Land Before Time series. I decided that I was going to become the leader of Universal Studios (I am not making this up, I really thought that!) and do all of these great films for them, especially Land Before Time sequels. Because I knew what happened next, at least in my head (I now know this is called fanfic - or fan fiction - but I didn’t know that term at the time). I had whole movies in my head. I’d listen to a random song on the radio, decide it had to be in a particular movie I was making up in my head at the time and then design a scene around it.
Seriously, I didn’t know a thing about filmmaking at the time but I had every frame mapped out and every camera angle even though I didn’t even know what a camera angle was. In a way I was choreographing music videos in my head, even though I’d never been exposed to MTV.
But moving right along, I had several original film ideas that had nothing to do with screaming cartoon dinosaurs. One of these original ideas I titled The Trio. It was about a trio of canines - Loper the wolf hybrid, Joet the timber wolf and Michael the Siberian husky. The story centered around the trio’s travels in Northern Canada and was set to music by Three Dog Night (my parents had made the “mistake” of taking me to one of their concerts and I wouldn’t stop listening to their music for months). In my head, The Trio was live-action but I ended up taking my toy models of wolves and filming a stop-motion production on top of our sterio system, using houseplants [HAH!] for trees.
I’ve never ever admitted this before but I’ve always secretly thought that The Trio influenced my interest in sled dogs a great deal.
But anyway, all this IS going somewhere. I do have a point. And the point is: dolphins. [Aghk! Couldn't resist].
Seriously, when I was a kid I remember someone asking me what I was going to do when I grew up. And I clearly remember saying: “I like animals and I want to make movies. So I’m going to make movies about animals.”
When I first was interested in sled dogs, I was going to run them purely for enjoyment and transportation. And I had several films in mind as well. My friends and I even started filming a couple of them (when I first had Aspen, we started a film called Back To The Wild which was successful in that what we filmed now has us rolling around on the floor laughing). I was going to have Siberian huskies and they were going to be movie stars.
And then I saw a PBS program on the Iditarod and a lightbulb exploded in my head. My life took a dramatic turn. Here was something I wanted to do more than anything else I’d ever wanted to do before. And then I really dove into the world of dogsledding.
You all know the story from there. Because I discovered that I LOVED the racing side of dogsledding and that I wanted to focus my life around having a sled dog kennel. And, after spending the better part of two years AT a kennel, that’s STILL what I want to do. The fire that was lit when I saw the Iditarod TV program has not gone out and I don’t believe it ever will.
But there’s another thing that hasn’t really changed. I still come up with stories in my head. I started writing some of them down as stories a long time ago and discovered that writing came as naturally to me as hugging a dog. But I still love doing stuff with film, and I still find myself mentally choreographing a music video whenever I hear a song (it can be kind of distracting, actually).
And one day, last November, the day it snowed (and the day after Blake thought it would be funny to push boulders behind my car to block it in but forgot that my car is a Shuttlecraft and can therfore fly. Don’t ask.), I was out in the dogyard with a wheelbarrow full of straw, distributing straw into all the doghouses (aw, I miss doing that) and I had an idea. An idea for a TV series based on mushers and handlers at a sled dog kennel.
Now of course I realize that getting something on TV is a long shot…but there’s no shortage of opportunities to do a webseries. And so I turned ideas over in my head, mulling it over all Season. And now I find myself working on a script for the pilot episode of a webseries which I have titled North City.
It centers around a ficticious sled dog kennel (all thought the events are *based* off things that really happened) and all the people (and dogs) involved. Although I know that trying to get my friends together to do a project like this is like trying to herd wet cats, I am confident that with the proper planning (and actually having a script!) we will be able to make North City: The Pilot happen.
And that is my ramble for the day and so it is too. Now I am off to read about algebra…(yep, using this time to review stuff).
All the best!
A
