Good News - Bad News

I always like to get the bad news out of the way so I can enjoy the good news without worrying so that said. The bad news is that my main team of dogs had a run in with a porcupine a week ago Thursday while running a night tour at Stowe Mountain Resort. Coming around a slight downhill corner with a full sled at about fifteen miles an hour I noticed a dark object in the trail ahead. In the few seconds that I had time to think "what the heck is that?!" the entire team had moved directly toward the object. I threw in the snow hook and ran to the front of the team to find a huge porcupine and seven out of eight dogs covered with quills. As the porcupine slowly waddled across the trail I tried with all of the energy I could muster to hold the eight dog team from following him/her. The porcupine eventually climbed a tree and I was able to get the dogs moving forward again. The next challenge was to convince them that we needed to take a short cut down the mountain to the truck and not continue to run the return route that they do every other time. I prevailed after a half dozen attempts and we made it back to the dog truck in five minutes. We said good night to our guests, loaded the dogs in the truck and headed to our veterinarian's office as quickly as possible. Two hours later with four heavily sedated dogs we were headed home and hoping for the best.

                                                             Buck and Muddy

That's the bad news. The good news is that after just over a week the entire team seems to be pretty well recovered. Muddy and Buck who were in lead on on my team took the brunt of it. Both of them not only had a mouth full of quills but their legs, shoulders and chests were pretty well cover as well. They have both been limping for over a week but have shown much improvement in the past two days.With any luck most of the quills have been removed and we won't have any long term issues resulting from this encounter.

In other news; back in the fall Peace Pups met up with the crew and producer of an Italian television show called Donnavventura. It is a sort of Italian reality show which follows a group of women as they travel to various destinations around the world. We met with them at Stowe Mountain Resort and did a scooter outing and cart rides with them. I was told that we would be on national television in Italy some time in February and that we would be sent a copy of the program on DVD.  I probably won't be able to understand any of it since it will be in Italian but hope to see it at some point just the same. In the mean time they have added a photo album from their visit to Stowe which mostly features the women and our dogs. Obviously they found the women and the dogs to make for much better photos than me so you won't find any mug shots of me.Donnavventura Stowe Photo Album . It all made for a very interesting afternoon and a great experience for all.