Sledding Season Winding Down?

It's hard to believe it's March already. Seems like I have been plugging along with blinders on all winter; nose to the grind stone shoveling snow, grooming, loading dogs, you name it. All of a sudden it's time to turn the page on the calendar and March is upon us. Where did the winter go??? If the cold season drags by for you I highly recommend getting involved in dogsledding. The winter will go by so quickly you might miss it if you blink!

We're starting to get into the time of year where we expect a real mix of weather here in Vermont. It might be 55 degrees one day and 0 the next; raining one minute and snowing the next. Of course this provides all kinds of challenges with keeping the dogsled trails runnable. Yesterday morning it was 50 here, this morning 30 with a lovely mix of rain, freezing rain and sleet. We have snow in the forecast toward the end of the week so it looks like the trail will be good to go again this weekend. We still have close to 4 feet of snow in the woods so unless it gets real warm real fast we should have snow for quite a while to come.

I've been dealing with a injured dog over the past week. Not sure what happened to the poor guy but last Monday Mycan was having problems standing on his rear legs. He had been in a bit of a scrap when we were having play time the day before but there were no apparent injuries; no bites, swelling or signs of him being hurt. Two days later he was unable to stand. He was in for xrays last week and nothing appears to be wrong there. The thought now is that he has some sort of disk issue. After a full week of treatment and acupuncture he is standing again and functioning normally. I don't know if I will ever have him work in harness again. I hate to risk any sort of re injury to his back. Once he is fully recovered I will either bring him in to live with the other two couch dogs or try to find him a good pet home. He's a sweat little dog with a ton of energy but it looks like early retirement from the life of dogsledding.

With the warmer weather my thoughts are beginning to turn to spring. On my list of spring projects to keep me busy between seasons is a dog barn for the peace pups. I am so sick of shoveling snow this winter and keeping all of the dog houses clear that I decided to build a enclosure over the whole dog yard. I'm also planning on fine tuning the bike tour facet of my business to see if I can get that off the ground this season. Biking in the summer and running dogs in the winter; now that's a life for me!