Take a Trip Without Leaving The Farm.

I had a scary few moments here at Peace Pups Yesterday. I was just coming back up the driveway at the end of my bike ride and heard a lot of commotion coming from the dog yard. I put it into high gear and flew up the hill and into the dog yard to see what was going on. Once in the dog yard I saw that Buck who is my main, go to lead dog was laying on the ground with a large amount of foam coming out of his mouth. Panic.. This is not one of my strong points with my dogs. I tend to become a tad emotional when I think one of them is in danger. Immediately I began worrying about what I'm going to do without my best buddy Buck. I ran over to him and got him to his feet, kind of.. He was staggering and seem to have lost some of his motor skills. His eyes were glazed and dilated and he didn't seem to know where he was. I ran to the house and called my veterinarian but only reached the receptionist. Both vets were on the road but she suggested I keep an eye on him and call right back if his condition got worse. I went back out to see how Buck was doing and found that he was walking much better and had shaken the foam from his mouth but when I started to approach him he growled at me. "Buck, buddy, it's me. You alright?" Grrrrr. This is one of the only three dogs I have raised from a puppy and he has never growled at me. I'm thinking Old Yeller at this point; but it couldn't possibly be rabies, all of our dogs are vaccinated regularly. Or could it be, maybe there was a problem with the vaccine? These are the kind of thoughts that flash through my mind. I went back in the house for another five minutes to grab some biscuits then back out to the yard. This time when I returned he seemed to be back to his normal self; wagging his tail and very happy to see me. I was also very happy to see him acting like himself again. A round of biscuits and a lot of hugs were in order!

I'm still not positive what happened but I suspect it was a toad and that Buck took a little trip with out leaving the dog yard. I have had other dogs pick toads up when I have been in the yard with them and they had a similar foaming at the mouth. This seemed a lot more extreme though. It's possible that Buck ate the entire toad. I spent quite a bit of time looking around his house and the surrounding yard for any sign of body parts and found nothing so I think he must have either eaten it or it escaped the yard intact. Buck seems to be fully recovered now and during play time yesterday afternoon he was running around like nothing had happened.

Hopefully Buck has learned to leave toads alone; or maybe he will be hunting for them now.. I sure hope not, I don't want to go through that again!

Summer Simmer

Wow, where does the time go?? Spring is gone and summer has been flying by here at Peace Pups. This year I decided to stay home this summer and focus on getting things done around here. During the fall and winter months I'm so busy with the dogs that I have little time to keep up with household projects.

After years of my wife doing our garden I have taken over that task. We doubled our garden space and now have close to a acre tilled and planted with every kind of vegetable you can imagine. I built a small green house and started all of my own plants from seed this year. Our berry and fruit trees are maturing and beginning to produce as well. It's so rewarding to be able to walk out into the front yard and pick dinner; not to mention how good the fresh picked food is too eat. All of our gardens and fruit are grown completely organic. I've even added some laying hens to the mix this year. No eggs yet as they are only around ten weeks old but hopefully by fall we'll be collecting fresh organic eggs. I see this entire project as a means of not only eating better but it also saving us money on our food bill. If only I could feed the dogs from the garden!

Front Yard Gardens

 The flower gardens are compliments of my wife. Since she's not doing as much with the vegetable gardens she now has much more time to plant flowers and plant flowers she has! There's not much lawn left to mow with all of the new flower beds she has tilled up but that's a good thing. One thing I don't like spending my time on is mowing lawns. There are many other things I would rather be doing so the less lawn the better.

Two skin boat kayaks were on the project list for this summer. They have been completed and we just returned from a  week of paddling and camping on Acadia Island Maine. Both boats worked very well and seemed to draw attention everywhere we went. They were a great conversation starter and I met quite a few interesting folks over the course of the week. I did see a couple of home built skin boats but the majority are plastic or fiberglass. This is a picture I took of both kayaks resting on the shore of Somes Sound where we paddled our first day.

Skin Boats on Somes Sound

As usual the coast of Maine was beautiful. We've never stayed in Acadia National Park before but I enjoyed it very much. There is a lot of traffic in July but there are plenty of hiking trails and open water where you can escape the crowds. We brought our bicycles and did several rides on the car free carriage roads. Of course I can't go to Maine with out eating some sea food and with our camp stove set up we were able to find plenty of that to bring back and cook ourselves.

Now that my one week vacation is over it's back to the garden and preparing for fall and winter. We usually begin fall cart training with the dogs around the beginning of September so with a little luck that is only five weeks away! We've had record highs here in July so I'm very much looking forward to some nice cool fall weather.

Off to do some weeding!

Looks Like An Early Spring Once Again

As it did last year it appears that spring has made a early arrival here in Lake Elmore. We ran our last dogsled tour at Stowe Mountain Resort on Tuesday, March 16th. There were bare spots on the trail that night which begin to grow rapidly once they start. When March temperatures reach 65 degrees the snow disappears very quickly; too quickly. This leaves me sitting here wondering where the winter went. After such a intense flurry of activity it is very anticlimactic when it comes to a screeching halt. We were able to meet up with some friends in New Hampshire for one last sled outing this past weekend. The conditions proved to be less than perfect for sledding but it was still great to get out on a sled with the dogs one last time.

Other than things ending too soon we had a fantastic sledding season with hundreds of wonderful guests from all walks of life and many parts of the world. Thank you one and all for your continued support. The dogs were also a joy to work with this winter. With all of the new dogs and fall training problems I had I was beginning to wonder if things would ever come together but they did. We ended up having two very strong eight dog teams plus a couple of extra dogs to help fill in the gaps. One of those extras was our one year old Pacem who is showing some amazing potential. She only ran one run a day this season but always wanted more. She ran in lead a dozen times and seems very comfortable with the roll. She has a lot of drive and adds a high level of energy to the front of the team. I'm looking forward to scooter training with her this spring and with a little bit of luck she may become one of my main leaders next season. In this photo Pacem is the second dog to the right following Buck who is in single lead. Buck is the best lead dog I currently have and the hope is that Pacem is learning from watching him. Bucks sister Etta is laying down next to Pacem.

On other fronts I have begun building a small green house. I am taking over the garden this year with the goal of increasing our food production and decreasing the amount of food we have to buy from outside sources. I just picked up our seed order from High Mowing Seeds yesterday and will be planting this afternoon. I'm a couple of weeks behind schedule but am hoping that the green house will help make up for that. The garden work is helping me keep busy as the sledding abruptly ends . Often spring can be a depressing time for a musher. Having something else to focus on can help one get through that period. Before I know it we'll be running with carts again and looking forward to another winter of sledding with the gang!

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.