It snowed all this morning and well into the afternoon, so conditions for running the sleddoggies on snow, with sled, were definitely improving. As it usually does, the snow was having a very uplifting affect on my mood. The sight of everything covered in a white blanket, as more of the white stuff continued to fall, brought a smile to my face and before long, enough snow (3-4 inches) had fallen that I felt confident we could attempt a run. However, I decided that since I wasn't sure how well the fresh snow was going to pack down, I'd take just four dogs rather than the usual 7-8. I also used out tobboggan training sled since this, although heavy, operates better on fresh snow than my big long race sled.
The change in weather had my sleddoggies feeling pretty good too. It was a given fact that Bessie would be coming along, as she is my best leader and the only one I trust 100% to take good care of be and the rest of the team. Although Breena has been co-leading a great deal the last few weeks and doing ok, I chose to let Hadrian co-lead today. He's a super enthusiastic guy and doesn't get distracted as easily as Mango does. Zorra and Breena were the wheel dogs. Soon we were streaking off, not nearly as fast I prefer to run, but understandable considering the ungroomed trail and number of dogs on the team.
Running alongside the hwy is always interesting, because in addition to being able to watch the mutts run, you also get to enjoy all the attention from passing motorists. As usual, lots of people were gawking as they drove by, one girl was taking pictures with her cell phone (and wildly waving), another guy gave me a thumbs up, and the rest just stared. The dogs and I are obviously a novelty to most people. Musher-public relations are always important (we want the general public to sympathize with us and *not* listen to the lies of the animal rights community) so I waved back enthusiastically to every viewer. Kind of weird though because I saw three or four different veicles which contained three or more elderly men, just struck me as odd. Maybe there was an old persons club meeting going on today in town?
We ran about five miles, all I wanted to go under the circumstances. In retrospect, i should have taken all the team, save Sprout who is still in Alaska, but still, it was fun enough. It always is. Afterwards, my brother Trevor took out his five dogs and one of mine (Boogie) and did the same run, and when he was hooking his dogs up, my four teammates were yapping to go again. They weren't tired at all.
Dogs fed, gear put away, npw I'm back inside making spaghetti. Musher's got to eat too you know! :)
Woof!
~Garrett
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