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!

Always Something

All has been well on the dogsledding front; the dogs are in amazing shape this winter the trail conditions have been great and we have been very busy. The past week has thrown some obstacles my way however. It started out with the clutch on the tractor failing as I was snow blowing the road. I just spent over $3,000.00 to have the engine rebuilt on the old Massy Ferguson over the summer and had hoped it would be all set for another fifty years after that. That was not meant to be apparently and off it went back to the shop for another major repair. We have to have the tractor to keep our road open. It’s a class four road so the town does not maintain it so we have almost a quarter mile to keep clear. So far it has been four days at the shop and we have not had any major snow luckily. If all goes well I may be getting it back today or tomorrow. Right after I had the tractor trucked to the shop for repairs I noticed transmission fluid leaking from my dog truck. I had just taken it in a few days before for a recall and apparently they messed up the rear seal on the transmission. I was advised not to drive it since there is no way of telling what the fluid level is on a Toyota Tundra. This prompted yet another call to the wrecker service. They are making some money on me this month... Of course no truck means no running dogs as I have no way to move them. We had tours booked at Stowe Mountain Resort but were unable to run them because of this latest issue. With a pretty full weekend of tours coming up I sure hope the truck is fixed today and I am able to get it back. I hate to cancel tours and disappoint customers.

So far this winter I have not had to cancel any tours. We have really been lucky with the weather. Each time it has been warm and rained it has been during the week and by the weekend things had cooled down and the trail has been fine. We are expecting one more round of mixed precipitation tomorrow (Friday) that is suppose to finish off as snow overnight so with any luck we will have good conditions again on Saturday.

On top of all of this I came down with my third cold of the season. I guess the timing for that couldn’t have been much better. With no truck and no way of going anywhere I had little choice but to sit at home and rest. I’m feeling much better as I write this and should be in great shape for the weekend. I’m not sure what is going on with my system this winter. Last year I was not sick once all winter long. This year I have been sick three times within a span of five weeks. It could be that I am pushing myself a little too hard with all of the tours I have had. I do typically have down time though so I’m not convinced that is the problem.

I’ll close for now and wait to hear about the tractor and truck. Not much else I can do...

Back to The Drawing Board

Given that I had exhausted all of my options in regard to getting the side bridge to work I had no choice but to start thinking about a way to make a bridge straight across the stream where the old logging bridge had once been. This was a 32 foot span; how was I going to get a bridge across that? I started making phone calls to get information on steel beams, laminated beams, anything I could use to span this stream. Steel was going to cost over $1,000.00 and the beams would weight around 1000 pounds. Without the ability to get some sort of a crane up there I would have no way of moving anything like that. I decided to ask about dropping some trees to build a wooden bridge and was given permission to do that. I then got on the phone and tried to gather as many people as I could to help out. I bought more lumber and was able to pull it all to the bridge site with my Skandic snowmobile. With everything in place we arrived at the day for the project to begin. It’s amazing what can be accomplished with five or six people in a day. We had a 35 foot by five foot wide bridge 90% complete by 5:00 in the evening. It was a full day and I was so tired I could hardly see straight but we had a bridge with no corners to make; just a straight shot across!

I could hardly wait to try it out with a dog team. I didn’t have to wait long; we had some more snow a few days later and after packing the trail again we hooked up some eight dog teams and gave it a go. The bridge worked perfectly and it offers a great view of the waterfall and gorge below. With that out of the way I was pretty well set up for running there for the winter. We have had a few other minor projects such as ongoing brush work to keep the trail clear and some shoveling to fill in some washed out spots after a rainy spell we had. I hope to do some drainage work on the road bed next summer to eliminate some of those wet areas. Over all it has been a fantastic location for running this winter.

The tours have been going great and I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of really great people this winter. Besides getting to spend so much time with my dogs meeting new people from all over the world is one of the things I like most about this endeavor. I do tend to get a little cynical from listening to the news and reading about all of the discouraging things that are happening in the world and all of the wonderful people I meet through dogsledding really helps restore my faith in humanity. The pups are a amazing bridge across cultures and lifestyles. We’ve had families from the Bahrain, Columbia, South Africa as well as just down the road from here. The business has kind of taken on a life of its own and I sometimes feel like I’m just along for the ride. Where will it take me? I really can’t say but time will tell.