Mushing Boot Camp

Fall dogsled training season is in full swing here at Peace Pups. I just spend the past two weekends at dog sledding events and have been having a great time with the dogs. Next to winter this is my favorite time of the year with cooler air returning, the hillsides covered with fall colors and the anticipation of the coming snow.

Two weekends ago Shelby (who works with us) and I went to Maine for to attend Mushing Boot Camp. It was a great learning experience for me and the dogs. Even though I now have ten years’ experience working with the dogs it is always amazing what you can learn from someone else watching what you are doing.  We did a lot of passing with other teams and even some basic agility work. There were eight other dog teams at the camp so there was plenty of opportunity for the dogs to be socialized. I brought puppy Pax and Shelby brought her dog Kanzi. Neither of them participated but they had a good time being around so many other dogs. The best part of it all was the fact that I got to spend four full days with nothing else to think about but the dogs and my interactions with them.

Our home for three nights

Tired puppy Pax. It's a lot of work hanging out with the big dogs!

Passing practice on the trail

This past weekend was the annual Sled Dog Trade Fair in New Hampshire. I had a booth with scooter demos as I have the past two years. Even though it was a rainy weekend it was still a lot of fun to hang out and talk dogs with many old and new friends. The pot luck dinner on Saturday night was a nice addition to the trade fair and a good opportunity talk even more dog talk in case you hadn't had enough during the day! As usual there were many interesting presentations on dogsledding and dog training by some very knowledgeable speakers.

We're back home now and settling into a steadier training pattern as we head toward winter. With the cooler temperatures the dogs will begin to increase in strength rapidly. It won’t be long and we’ll be back on snow!

Where Does Time Go?

I'm not sure where this summer went but it's clearly past. With leaves beginning to turn and many even falling to the ground already it's sure looking a lot like fall here in Lake Elmore. Not to mention the frost warnings in the forecast for the next two nights!



Summer Gardens


Summer really did fly by this year. I kept busy with the garden and working on single track mountain bike trails in the back yard. The garden has done quite well again this year despite a very wet spring. Things always seem to even out in the long run and a very sunny July allowed most things to catch up. I was able to ride more than I have any summer in the past ten years and so far have logged around 1,200 miles this season. This helps keep me slim and makes it easier for the dogs to pull me up the hills; not to mention keeping me healthier. We didn't have any extreme heat this summer which is always a bonus for me. I think we had a total of three days that approached the ninety degree mark. Otherwise it was a lot of mid-eighties and many days in the seventies. Now that's my kind of summer!

We've started running the dogs again and our run yesterday brought a huge smile to my face. We have the same dogs on our teams this season that we had all of last year and most of the year before that. They all seem very well adjusted to working with each other (finally!) and with yesterday only being our second run of the year they blew me away. Granted they have a lot of strength building to do yet but what a nice straight gang line! Both leads stayed to the right of the road perfectly, everyone had a tight tug meaning that they were all contributing and it was a beautiful afternoon. All of which left me smiling and once again reminded me of why I do this.



Puppy Pax


We've had one new addition this fall. I bought another puppy from my friends at Husky Works in southern Vermont. His name is Pax and he is now about three and a half months old. He has brought a lot of joy into my life and I enjoy every minute I get to spend with him. Puppy hood goes by almost as fast as this past summer did! We have enjoyed morning walks every single day rain or shine which has gotten me out into the woods much more than I typically would and it's a great way to start the day. As a bonus this year Pax and I have found several nice patches of Chanterelle Mushrooms on our walking trail. Not only are we getting in nice walks but we're bringing home treats for dinner. Pax won't be running with the team for a while yet but he will be riding shotgun and going along on all of our winter outings so if you come to visit this fall or winter you'll be sure to meet him.

Summer 2008 Dog Yard Renovations

As I wrap up my dog yard project for the season I’ve decided to do a brief (?) write up. Peace Pups had a great 2007-2008 season with great snow conditions and plenty of great guests joining us for tours. I promised the dogs that I would fancy their lodging up in return for all of their hard work over the winter. With out them there would be no Peace Pups.

As the temperatures began to warm in April my thoughts turned to what I would do to improve the yard. One thing that was fresh in my mind was all of the shoveling I had to do in the yard this past winter due to the large amount of snow. It got to the point where the entrance to each dog house looked like the entrance to an igloo with a small tunnel at each. There was a point when you could not even see half of the houses and could walk right other the top of them. That’s fine for insulation and wind protection but every time we received another couple of inches of snow or the wind blew I had to go out and shovel those tunnels out again. It became a almost daily occurrence and my back was not especially happy about it. Another ongoing issue with our dog yard has been water and mud in the fall and spring. We are on a slight hill side and there are a couple of small springs above the yard. In the spring when there was lot of water in the ground we would have a small stream running right through the middle of the yard. This could also happen in the fall when we have November rains and the ground becomes saturated. Last summer I created a ditch through the middle of the yard to pull some of the water away but it wasn’t great having a ditch in the center of the yard.

My first thought was to build a dog barn. This would provide a nice dry space for the dogs. Having grown up and then worked on a farm as a teen I was familiar with the set up for dairy cows. Why not dogs? I began to look into scour some of the fantastic resources available on line for information on dog barns. They are being used in some areas such a Alaska where the weather is much colder and many mushers are running shorter coated dogs. I believe the main goal for these barns is to keep the dogs warmer in the winter. I also posted questions in regard to what I was planning and began to receive some feed back.

The first issue I ran into was tethering versus pens. Initially I was going to build eight pens to house two dogs each. The meant a very large barn and many gates to work through. I have had two kennel pens as well as tether set ups and came to the conclusion that I really prefer the tethers. To me it feels like the dogs are a more open environment and easier to interact with when I’m walking through the yard. They also have their own private space where they can be away from any other dog. I find that many of them enjoy this and are much more relaxed if they don’t have to be “on” all of the time. I also find it easier for me to do my chores. Feeding, clean up, watering, shots etc. seem to go much more quickly as I walk from dog to do without having to open and close gates and worry about anyone getting out.

It became obvious to me that staying with tethers would work better for us. That decided I revisited the barn idea. Was there a way to build a barn that would work with tethers? The only thing I could envision was a large twenty four foot by eighty foot roof covering the entire yard. One problem I foresaw with that was snow load. With roof that big in order to have it shed snow it would have to have some kind of amazing height. Another consideration was smell. I had read of others that had fully covered runs and issues with odor and dust due to lack of rain. I read about one person installing sprinklers to flush the runs out from time to time.

What about flooring? If one of my main goals was for the dogs to be drier it seemed like I really wanted a space for them to get off of the ground. As I went round and round with this there were days where I was ready to bag the whole barn idea but I didn’t.

What all of this evolved into was what we have taken to calling the doggie condos. The condos have a six foot by six foot deck for each dog. Their houses sit on top of these decks and each has a six foot by nine foot thirty degree pitch roof over it. These are light enough that they are able to be moved if need be. They provide a dry space for each dog to hang out. They provide great shade. They are very open so they don’t block the breeze in the summer and they will keep the snow off of their houses in the winter. I have them set up so it will allow me to drive my snow blower through the center of the yard to clear the snow if we have another heavy snow season like the past one.

A bonus to this set up is that for our town a building permit is not required for structures under eight foot square. The doggie condos are basically glorified dog houses.

Next is a brief photo essay of the project as it progressed over the last month.

Step one: Preparing the actual yard and improving the drainage issues. I rented a mini excavator to level the yard out so the doggie condos would sit flatter and along the same plane. We had four or five stumps in the yard which had always made it difficult to place tether posts. The excavator made short work of those! I also dug a four foot deep curtain drain across the back side of the yard to pull away and water that might come down the slope. I then had thirty five yards of sand delivered which I spread through the newly leveled side of the yard. I had filled another section of the yard with sand last summer and was very happy with the drainage and lack of mud. This is a picture of the yard leveled; evenly spaced tethers and new layer of sand.

Step two: Building the decks. I put together a lumber order and had it delivered and unloaded in our driveway which would become the doggie condo construction shop for the next two weeks. I built the units so the roof could be separate making them much easier to move. Here we are framing the decks in the driveway.

Moving the decks into the dog yard so that cars can once again pass through the driveway. The deck seem to be a immediate hit with the dogs!

The decks in place in the dog yard.

Step three: The driveway becomes a roof assembly line. These projects always seem to take on a life of their own. When I put the first metal roof on I had the bright idea of painting it to see how it would look. Well with one painted they all would need to be painted in order to match. Some of the metal had rust on it so of course that needed to be wire brushed off before painting. Before I knew it we had another two hours of labor per roof. I think the final result was worth the time though and it should help the metal last longer.

Now we are almost done. All of the roofs are on, my wife says she thinks it looks like a state park... I still need to buy 50 cinder blocks to block the corners of the decks up off the ground then do the final leveling and I think that will be it for this summer. The doggy condos seem to be working out very well. We had a rainy day this past week and we had multiple places to stay dry while hanging out with the dogs. I can’t wait for winter to see how they work with snow!

Did I Say Spring?

Well; it seems like I have been referring to spring for weeks now and according to my calendar it is "officially" but if I look out the window it sure doesn't look like it. We still have a LOT of snow for the end of March and it's snowing again this morning. What a long winter; good thing I'm into dogsledding. I'm sure there are some raging cases of cabin fever around this year. It will be a long time before our flower bed is seeing the sunshine here in Lake Elmore. In the photo below the snow pile on the left is right on top of our spring flower bed. I think it's going to take a while for that one to melt away!

In the mean time as long as the trails are good we continue to run the dogs. It could make for a short off season this year if we run through April. That will leave May, June, July and August before we begin our fall cart training again in September; not bad..

Thoughts of cycling are starting to creep into my mind as we've had a few days with sunshine and temps in the 40s. It's always hard to believe it will be warm enough for riding in shorts at this time of year but it will happen. Last year on this day I went for a road bike ride and it was 50 degrees and sunny. I don't think I'll be getting out on the bike today; in fact I have a dogsled tour this afternoon.

Spring Mushing in Vermont

Ah; the signs of spring in Vermont. Rain one day, snow and five degrees the next, town meeting day, the primaries, and song birds beginning to return.

The weather makes maintaining a dogsledding trail a real challenge. Yesterday morning when I went to set up for tours there was two inches of fresh snow (a good thing) with three inches of wet slush hidden underneath it (not a good thing...). Luckily it was about ten degrees at that point so after a grooming run the slush below began to freeze up making for a very nice mid winter type trail. Sometimes we get lucky and the snow gods help us out.

Last week was Vermont town meeting. I always try to attend our meeting here in Lake Elmore. It's a great way to meet more people from our town as well as a chance to see what is going on in local politics. We didn't have any huge issues on our meeting agenda this year so things moved along pretty quickly. That was followed by a walk across the street to the Town Clerk's office to cast a vote for the Vermont primary. I try to remain optimistic about this whole election process but it becomes harder and harder each time around. Looking back over the past twenty years our prospects for presidential candidates have not been great and I'm not convinced it is looking much better this go round. With corporate America having more say than the population it's hard to see how things can improve. That said; I cast my vote and hope for the best...

Time get moving. Off to feed the peace pups and begin to get ready for a few tours. With a predicted twenty eight degrees and sun today it should be a lovely day to be out on the trail with my furry family! Every day is a blessing at this time of year. You never know which one will be the last. It could be seventy degrees and melting in a week.