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August 18th, 2002

Nearly a month has passed since our arrival in McMillan, Michigan.  Ourselves and the dogs are all settled into our temporary quarters at Al Hardman's UP training camp.  Al's dogs are in Ludington in the summer, so that left an empty dog yard for us to fill...and overflow!  We have purchased adjacent property to Al's which makes our building process convenient since we can live next door at his cabin while building.  We have our dog yard, house and barn areas, trails, and driveway cleared.   We installed our own septic and drainfield system and have begun our home construction.  We will be building the entire home ourselves so the thinking and planning process will probably take longer than the building process!
We have begun fall training, running out of Al's yard and have been in awe at the number of trails in the area.  The soil is very sandy so all the trails are sandy two-tracks or backroads.  We have a great 5 mile loop that we've named the "Ward Wallin" as it has great puddles to run through to keep the dogs cool.  (Ward took us on the wettest northern Minnesota swamp trail we'd ever seen last fall!)  Since we struggled to find good, safe trails in Minnesota for years, we can truly appreciate trails with no major road crossings and no traffic!  It's great to be able to hook up the dogs early in the morning without having to worry about waking the neighbors.
We have already had our first new Michiganders arrive.  Weasel had a litter of seven, 2 boys and 5 girls, born in early August.  They are very healthy, chubby puppies!  We are expecting Momo to have a litter early this fall, so the kennel is continuing to grow!
We are adjusting well to life truly in the backwoods.  We run the generator to pump the water several times a week, use the lights sparingly, check the propane appliances, turn on the inverter to charge the computer batteries...and suffer ever so much as we watch Direct TV!  It feels like we enter into major civilization when we drive with the summer traffic on US 2.  Maybe we do miss some conveniences of Duluth...Dairy Queen, Mendard's and Sam's Club to name a few!  But, we have traded those with the luxury of commuting to "work" on a 4-wheeler as we hook up the dog team each morning.

August 27th, 2002
The endless summer is wonderful building weather and close to perfect for the early morning dog runs.  The little puppies love it too so they can crawl out of their house and snuggle close to mom.  We have never had a litter so active at such a young age. They were crawling, or should I say tumbling, out of the house at 2 1/2 weeks old. They just like to follow mama around regardless of how much effort it takes!

House dog Nature is in her glory at our new property as she hunts, but never catches, those pestering chipmunks.  She thinks that we could make a fortune selling the place to all the squirrel loving dogs in the world.  She loves the new lifestyle of spending all day with mom and dad.  She thinks that there's something to the stay-at-home-parent movement.

We've had some very pleasant surprises running the huskies during this early fall training period.  Sneeze, who Tasha fell in love with and spent a good deal of time with during the past year, has turned out to be a great lead dog.  She has since been taken off the "for sale" list and sold to Ed :.) We'll see how she does once the distances increases, but for now she's holding her own as our youngest in the team.  We've also found that some of our immature adults from last season have really grown up over the summer.  Mickey and Mouse still act like they have not seen each other for months when they get to run along side each other.  But, Joker and Found have finally pulled it together and are really pulling!  We're training 42 adults at the time, and right now all 42 are happy and ready to go!
  Ed has been working hard bulldozing the new dog yard and trails!!

September 14, 2002
A few additions to the kennel have arrived! Mohawk (Momo) is currently having puppies as I write this!  She has 4 so far, and judging by the way she looked the past few days, I think there may be a few more.
 
Our house is still very much under construction but we have the dogs moved into their new homes!!  We hooked up a few teams and ran the dogs in harness from Al Hardman's cabin onto our property, about 1/4 mile away.  It was a great way to move. The dogs seem to like their new place, but I think that regardless of where they move, as long as they all go together, they are happy.  Pooh had to be driven over in the truck because he has a sore toe.  He was the last to join the others and while he was waiting at the old dog yard alone, we thought he was going to die of a broken heart!  It is amazing how much the dogs rely on each other for companionship.

We have also moved onto the property, but not into the house.  We are staying in a travel trailer for a few weeks until we have the house roughed in.  Since the dogs are there, we want to be near them.  Al and his handler, Rick, are supposed to be here any day with the dogs as well, so we wanted to give them their space back.  We are still going to Al's to use the hot water shower and electricity!!

Our September dog training has been pretty poor due to the warm weather.  However, after a day of rain today, I think we'll be back into the cooler temperatures.  We will run out of our kennel for the first time, so I hope those Gee/Haw leaders are paying attention!  The trails will be nice and wet so the dogs will be happy to have the chance to get cooled off again.

September 22, 2002
Well, we certainly we have our priorities in order. We have two buildings constructed:  the kennel shed and the dog barn.  We still have one building seriously under construction:  the house.  Since the dog priorities are all in order, we can now continue on our goal of achieving "comfortable living indoors" by winter.  The "comfortable" part may become more and more rustic as time goes on. The warm fall has been nature's blessing for the builders in us, even though the mushers in us have complained.  It has been nice to build in t-shirts instead of fleece hats (although I do think Ed would prefer to wear the hats).  Today the weather did take a turn toward the cooler side.  Although, every time it gets cool I say it's time to put away the shorts, but it seems like within a day we need them again.

As the number of building projects has increased, so has the size of our kennel.  Mohawk (Momo) gave birth to 7 puppies on September 14th. We always hope for lots of boys in our litters, but this year has been the "year of the female".  Momo had 5 girls and 2 boys.  Since we couldn't send the girls back with the stork to exchange them for boys, we've decided to be happy dog owners anyway.  (I'm tempted to say dog parents, but we are definitely NOT the ones taking on parental responsibility at this early stage of live, Momo deserves all the credit for that.)  Our total puppies for this year include 6 boys and 12 girls.  Ed will have to get used to running with a harem instead of a football team.  His team of girls may not have the physical strength that the team of boys would have, but they will sure be cute!  Better luck next year!

Rick Minard, Al Hardman's handler, is now up here for the season with all the dogs. It's nice to have a neighbor close by so Ed and I can talk to other humans other than ourselves!  Al's dogs are ours have been recently been singing back and forth between the two kennels (about 1/4 of a mile apart).  If there are any other neighbors around, they may think that a giant wolf pack has taken over the area.

Our biggest challenge of late has been trying to find a sturdy post-pounder.  Ed's ultra-sturdy, home-made-work-of-welding-art-post-pounder fell apart after more than 45 dog posts were pounded into the ground here (and hundreds before that).  We've borrowed one from Al, that lasted 9 hits, and purchased one from Menard's, that made it through one post.  We have just enough posts in the ground for the dogs that we have now, but need put about 45 more in for the future or for visiting dogs.  So, the search for another ultra-strudy-homemade-work-of-welding-art-post-pounder continues.  You wouldn't believe how hard it has been to locate one!  Anyone have a donation??

I guess if that is the biggest challenge, then things are progressing along nicely.  Especially in the puppy pen with Weasel's puppies. Just when I think that the last litter of puppies were the cutest, another litter comes along to beat the previous one.  This litter is 10 weeks old and has stolen my heart.  It's a very unique litter in that each puppy has a very different personality from the next.  Joyce and Sandy are very out going and brave, but the smallest in size.  Sumo is built like a bowling ball and stumbles into the ground every 5 steps he takes.  Rhen runs circles around the pen looking for someone to chase her and Mille is the largest female but the most shy. . Gum just wants to be held, and Clarence is always looking for trouble and food. They have "recess" everyday, when I take them all out of their pen and let them tromp around while Weasel and I sit together on recess duty.  It's much more relaxing that first-grade recess; no one ever tattles or whines, and wrestling is definitely allowed on this puppy playground.  However, I don't know if this litter can uphold the high standards set by our litter from early this spring.  Dave, Stacey, Chris, and Audrey are now about 7 months old and the most well behaved litter we've ever had.  I'd like to attribute that to my puppy training, but I'm afraid it may just be that they are the smart ones. I free-walk or quad run them every day and not once have they gotten into trouble.  Every other litter in history has gone through the "chew, steal, rip, tear, destroy anything that you can get your teeth on while you are free" stage. These four angels follow where ever I go, and if I am doing chores around the dog yard, they are near by wrestling with each other or Nature.  Their only episode of stealing was a can of Diet Sprite that they stole off of Al's porch and punctured with their teeth today.  It was quite amusing because every time the can sprayed they leapt back and stood there with their heads cocked, looking at it like it was ready to bite them back.  It was far more entertaining for me than it was for them!  Wouldn't it be great to be a puppy for just one day?!

October 8th, 2002
Rain.  That is all I have to say about October.  Rain. We run dogs in the rain, we put dry clothes on and get wet again in the rain, we listen to the rain at night, we get wet in the rain in the day, we run dogs in the rain, we work in the rain, we get our boots wet in the rain, we stomp through puddles in the rain, we run dogs in the rain, we change to dry gloves and it rains again.  We had better see the sun soon or Tasha will be moving to Arizona for the winter.  I don't think it will ever stop raining.  Needless to say, we are doing just about everything in the rain except build the house.  We are supposed to be putting on the roof, but you guessed, it's raining.

Luckily, the dogs have adjusted to the rain, and they just sit in it, play in it, eat in it, and watch us suffer in it.  They laugh at us humans sometimes I think.

On one rainy day last week, we decided to purchase a new dog truck, so we could get out of the rain.  (Well, that wasn't the only reason, but it seemed like a good one too!) We purchased a nearly-new fully enclosed big rig.  It is essentially a converted cube-van (like a ryder truck) that has 1/2 living quarters and 1/2 dog storage.  It can carry 20 dogs and tons of gear!  The living quarters are just great, with a pull down couch and a full sleeping mattress in the upper bunk.  It's fully equipped with a microwave, heater, generator, inside lights, and a CD player!!  We have moved into it while the house construction is still waiting for the rain to cease.  Anyone want to take a spring break trip in our new motor home??!!  I'll get some pictures published of it soon.

Here's to a sunny day tomorrow!

October 12, 2002
I was thinking of putting some beautiful fall color pictures on here, but I am still waiting for a sunny day for me to take a picture. Yes, it's still raining.  No, I haven't moved to Arizona.  We did have one sunny day, so that eased my pain for the next week.  I may have to get some full-spectrum lighting in the new house just to make it through the fall.

Since our house construction has been limited due to the recent UP hurricane season, we have been running the dogs a lot.  It's the only thing to do when it's wet and the dogs' generators run just fine in the rain.  In fact, they run so well that they wore out the brakes right through to the cylinders on our four-wheelers so fast that Ed has to spend the evening replacing quad brakes tonight.  (Actually, that's a sight in itself as Ed is currently outside our travel trailer, squeezed under the awning with the four-wheeler so he doesn't get wet!).  Due to our recent brake mishap, we've realized that we may have to alter our training methods slightly.  We prefer to run our four-wheelers in neutral, so the dogs pull the entire load.  This really gives us a clear picture of which dogs are pulling their fair share, and which are along for a free ride.  We run big enough teams (10 to 14 dogs) so that we never have to turn on the gas and the dogs can run at a decent pace.  So, what does all this have to do with the brakes?  Well, generally Ed and I always run together, with one of us leaving the dog yard just a few minutes before the next.  The second team, the chase team, always wants to catch up to the lead team.  In order to control the team and keep them at a reasonable pace, whoever is running the chase team is often holding the dogs back by using the brakes, and therefore wearing them out.  We've decided that if the second team, the chase team, leaves ten minutes or more after the lead team, the dogs won't be in such a hurry to catch the leaders. (They always seem to know just how far ahead the leaders are and if they are in catching distance!) Also, since the dogs are now in much better shape than they were in the beginning of fall training and since the weather has cooled, we will begin to allow the teams to run more "all out", meaning we won't hold them back much at all. As long as the leaders can handle the pace the team sets, we'll let the dogs decide how fast they want to go.

And, speaking of running dogs (like what else do I have to speak about?) Chris, Audrey, Dave, and Stacey, the 7 month olds, are our newest sled dogs.  They had their first  run last week in harness and have been going strong ever since.  Old man Trapper leads the team with Joker, Chris and Dave are the point dogs, and Audrey and Stacey bring up the rear.  They are quite the bunch heading down the trail hooked together.  The puppies always seem to run more side to side than forward at first, but they are really figuring it out now.  It's great to see a litter of puppies that are such naturals (or maybe it's just the Scooby Snacks they get at the end!).

October 29th, 2002
Ok, ok, it's been a few weeks since the update, but what can I say....it's been SUNNY and too nice to spend time typing into a computer.  However, with the daylight savings time change, night falls early so I have some spare time to spend in the dark.  Pups are a runnin', Ed is a buildin', and Nature is a beggin'.  Glad to see some things never change.

With this recent onslaught of wonderful dry weather, we have slightly altered our dog training.  We were running four teams of dogs, but we recently divided the dogs into two 16-dog race teams and one team that we named the "bench".  I had first pick for the "Beargrease Team" and Ed took second pick for the "UP 200 Team".  However, I have been training all the teams to give Ed some extra time to finish our roofing project before the snow comes to stay.  I have bungeed a radio to my four-wheeler so I wouldn't go insane riding around the trails all day with just me and my thoughts. The reception (for the 2 stations we get) is pretty good for 10 of the 17 miles we've been running, but when we're down in the gully I have to sing along to fill in the static.  I also think the dogs prefer country music to light rock.  Who would have thought??!!  I think all the solo training has been good for both the dogs and myself.  Until now I have never trained the dogs much alone, so I've been forced to rely upon my knowledge to get us through instead of waiting for Ed to come around the corner to save us.  Today Badger had a brain-fart and didn't take the gee command onto the trail that I had expected him to.  When I finally got around the corner with the four-wheeler, we were headed down a new trail.  To make a stressful story short, the dogs learned to back up while I gunned  the four-wheeler into reverse. Nevertheless, a major tangle still prevailed.  I quickly got the leaders to stand out, told Woody to relax (he has an annoying habit of whining to go), and began un-tying the cable knot.  When I looked around a minute later, I realized I had undone a few too many tugs and necklines and 3 of the 11 males wandering around loose, Prowler was tangled underneath Nana and kissing her, and Stone was pulling us over so he could pee in the woods.  It was like a party.  Not one growl or snarl came from the bunch.  You'd think we played jam pile everyday.  What nice puppies they are.  It really increased my confidence to know that this team, which seems out of control flying out of the kennel at 18 mph, can quickly get under control only 5 miles into a run in order to give me the time to do some fancy knot work.

I do have to hire my handler Ed to run the teams for the next week though as I take the dog show on the road.  Mole, Clover, and I are headed to the Lansing and Belding areas to do five programs in six days.  After being away from school for a few months, I think that speaking to over 1,000 kids will remind me that I'm content to be listening to my radio on the four wheeler. I'm a little nervous to leave all my puppies in Ed's care, but I guess he did raise a few litters successfully before I met him!  I think with the building and dog care, he'll have his hands full and be begging for his own vacation when I return.  I guess I'll have to treat him to McDonald's.

November 9, 2002
The dog road show has returned home.  Clover, Mole and I spent the past week speaking to schools in the Belding and Lansing areas.  If my calculations are right, about 2,000 kindergarten through eighth graders have a new appreciation of mushing.  One of the most memorable groups was the Super Science Saturday class at the Capital Area Math and Science center in Lansing.  Mole and Clover were very patient as the twenty five middle school students took their heart rates, lifted them onto the scale, checked their ears and followed them all around the room.  Mole spent most of her time lying on her back with her paws in the air waiting for the next vet to check her out.  She definitely wanted to be cuddled and loved while Clover wanted to get the students to play.  The students also had to make a model dog sled, a project that proved to be harder than they had expected.  The students stated that they were very pleased with the class because they got to build something to take home and could handle the dogs, things they never get to do in "real science class".

However, after six days of being loaded and unloaded, petted and hugged, kissed and touched, Mole was very excited to be back to her cuddly straw bed.  Clover, on the other hand, really wanted to stay at the elementary schools and play with the Kindergartners!  She thought it was just great that a gymnasium full of children were coming just to see her!  But all vacations must come to an end, so she'd back to being a sled dog instead of a show dog.  I think she's adjusted just fine though.

Ed is glad to have us back too. He was dealing with about a foot of snow that fell while we were gone.  Luckily, for my sanity, it was just about all melted by the time we returned.  Driving home it was very fall-like the entire way, until we reached the last 5 miles of our drive, where fall turned abruptly to winter.  I think it may be a sign of things to come.  All the leaves are off the trees and the dreary November weather has settled in.  Ed is trying to fight his seasonal affective disorder.  He complains that the sun never shines.  I tell him that the sun is always shining, he just can't seem to let it shine through his cold, cloudy, heart.  I believe he'll be getting some full-spectrum light bulbs for Christmas, or at least some grow lights.  He can sit in front of those and grow.  Provided we get some electricity hooked up soon.

November 11, 2002
I'm back to being a musher instead of a celebrity.  (One always feels like a celebrity when around young children.  When I went to the grocery store in Belding after speaking to nearly every child in the district, I think about ten kids whispered to their parents, "that's the dog lady, she was at our school, and she has 60 DOGS!" I could just hear each parent say quietly, "ohhh reeeaallllyyy, you must have heard wrong dear, I don't think anyone has THAT many.") I do admit, it is kind of fun to be famous!

But, I'm back to musher life for now.  We are going "day camping" tomorrow.  We plan to run out about 30 miles, feed the pups some snacks and let them lie in the straw for about a 3 hour nap, and then run 10 miles or so home.  We don't know the trails really well yet, so hopefully we at least make it home.  I was going so say that hopefully all goes as planned, but nothing ever goes as planned around here (just ask Weasel about here last litter of puppies, ha, ha).  The dogs will still have fun regardless, they never seem to know when the humans mess up anyway.

November 28th, 2002  Happy Thanksgiving!
Winter has officially arrived in the UP.  We have about 9 inches of beautiful snow, more than we accumulated all last winter in Duluth!  We could run small teams of dogs with the sleds, but we've continued to use the four wheelers so we can run our 16 dog teams.  The dogs have had some pulling practice to break trail through the deep snow.  We are supposed to get more lake effect on Saturday, so we may definitely get on the sleds by next week.  I guess we'd better get those snow hooks out and the runners on the sleds!  We're somewhat apprehensive of trying to find our way around the trails with the sleds.  There's so many trails and many may dead end or end up in the front yard of someone's cabin.  Who would have thought we would be complaining about too many dog trails!!

We traveled south for Thanksgiving to warmer weather across the bridge in lower Michigan.  Our friend Geri, who spent the past month running dogs with us in McMillan, offered to stay on the ranch and feed the dogs for a couple days while we visited our families. It was a nice surprise to have the opportunity to go on a short vacation!  It's hard to find reliable people to watch the dogs so we can get away together so whenever we have such a generous offer, we take it!

We will be back to work on Saturday, after two days of "dog rest and relaxation".  We have recently been doing many daytime camping trips. We run the dogs for about two hours, camp for a couple hours (feed the dogs, pass out some straw, build a fire, and roast some hot dogs), and then run an hour or so back home.  Our goal right now is to train the dogs to lay down and rest whenever they have straw and to eat well out on the trail.  We want all our training runs to be positive and fun for both us and the dogs.  The two-year-olds haven't figured out the rest routine yet, they find it much more entertaining to watch the squirrels up through the trees.

Hopefully by the next journal entry, we'll have some sled pictures to add!  If anyone is having snow fever yet, you are welcome to visit us!

December 2, 2002  Oh Happy Snow!!!  O Happy Snow!!!

Yes, it has finally arrived!  We have enough snow to use the sleds!  For the past four years in Minnesota, we waited for snow like this, and now we found it!  The quads are permanently parked for the season, so should I say buried for the season.  I don't think we'll have to play the "get the sled out, put the sled away, get the quad out again, put the quad away" game any more.  The locals say the snow is here to stay.  In fact, Ed has been so geeked, that he has been running 16 dog teams, while I've preferred to stick with my conservative 10.  Like mom always says, "Better safe than sorry."  Ed doesn't always listen to his mom.  We think that we have logged more sled miles in the past week than we did for the entire season last year.  I'd say that's progress!

I guess the snow means that race season is just around the corner as well.  We are still trying to train our two 16-dog race teams, but we have had a few minor injuries as we have increased our mileage.  Allie has a sore shoulder and Mole has very sore feet.  Woody is still struggling with the increased speeds and distance, so he got bumped down to Ed's "B" team and I got two-year-old Pooh in return.  Now that we are really increasing the mileage, we will see who can cut it and who can't.  The majority of Ed's team is two-year-olds so he may find out that his team can go the distance, but may just be a little slower to recover.  My "A" team always seems to be fired-up and crazy.  Little Maple is our super-star, up and coming leader.  The problem is that he gets so excited to go around a turn, that if I give a command that is different from the natural turn, he can't seem to hear me.  I think he reads the snowmobile trail arrow signs because he gets excited when he sees the signs, long before he can actually see the turn.  I recently found that he's a terrible point dog though, because he always wants to over-run the leaders and push them faster than they want to go.  He either needs to run in lead or back in the team...an nice problem to have!  The other super-star of the season is Sneeze.  She is our only yearling and is still hanging tough on Ed's team.  In fact, she's trained with the "A" team the past few days due to some extra runs.  Ed ran the entire 16-dog "A" team yesterday and Sneeze led all of them!  Here we wanted to give her away as a pet last spring because she was an accidental puppy!  Oops!!  You never know what an accident can bring!

As you can tell, more time is spent running dogs than building our house.  We have kind of put things on hold until spring.  I guess we can't have the best of every world right now.  We'll do what we can do, and worry about the rest another day.  We made this move to place the dogs first, and that is what we are doing right now.  We can resume our building once the race season is over and all the dogs are taking a well deserved rest!
 

December 10th, 2002
I think we have the best sled training right now in the mid-west, actually maybe even the whole country, including Alaska.  Rick (Al's handler) was just up there for the Iditarod Rookie Meeting, and there is now snow in Anchorage nor the entire state.  We still have 2-3 feet of snow and glorious trail conditions.  Our biggest problem right now with the trails, is that our dogs are eating dog booties that they find along the trail.  I was moving happily along the trail today and Maple (my leader) picked up something in his mouth and proceeded to carry it.  I looked closer and it was a dog bootie.  I slowed the team down and called his name to get him to drop it and he didn't. (The dogs sometimes carry odd items they find along the trail.)  I then decided to stop the team and retrieve the bootie, and buy the time I got up there, he had gulped it down.  It had better come out on the other end within a day or two, or I'm going to be out an outstanding leader this season.  When I got home, I told Ed about this silly catastrophe, and he had three dogs do the same thing today.  We decided that we must stop soaking our dog booties in bacon grease before we put them on the dogs so they are not tempted to eat the booties they find along the trail.  Guess we better carry some more treats with us on our long runs so the dogs stop eating garbage!

December 18th, 2002
No Dad, we don't really put bacon grease on the dog booties.  That part was just a joke.  We did, however, successfully retrieve many of of our digested dog booties.  We probably could have just washed them and re-used them; they came out in such perfect form.  It's amazing what can pass through those small intestines!

Our perfect winter o'snow is quickly becoming an ice skating rink.  We have had temperatures in the mid-30's the past few days with freezing rain and drizzle.  Ed is out with his team today on the less-than-ideal-trails, so we'll see how fast they return.  Al is planning his Seney 300 training run for this weekend and I hope that we can keep the snow around until the end of that.  The forecast is not good for tomorrow, but then a little snow is expected.  It looks like our white Christmas may be kind of gray.  We had scheduled some Sled Dog Rides with Santa Claus to help out my sister's 5th grade class in Charlevoix this coming Saturday, but we've had to cancel.  Santa doesn't do too well driving a sled on grass.  Looks like we'll re-schedule for January and do rides with Frosty the Snowman.  Anyone got a suit we can borrow?  We were thinking of postponing until February so Ed could dress as Cupid, but he wasn't as excited about it as we were.  I think he'd look great in a toga with wings!

We had a visit from our Duluth friend Chris Hazelton, and his buddy, John, from Oregon, last weekend.  John had never been dog sledding and he jumped at the chance to give it a try. John took out a 4-dog team on Friday (in picture), and by the end of the weekend he was running 6 dogs and camping out with us.  Ed and I find that we get caught up in our day-to-day activities and view our lifestyle as very ordinary.  It was fun to have someone reassure us that this is far from ordinary! Clover, Nana, and Mole rest during our camp out.

The biggest kennel news is that Weasel's 7 puppies are now "big kids".  They had to move out of their puppy pen to make way for a new litter, so they went out on chains this past weekend.  It's always the saddest day in puppy-ville when the little guys have to get used to sleeping in separate beds and eating out of their own food dish.  This litter did exceptionally well figuring out that they are confined to one area and can't tear around the pen.  This is the youngest we have put puppies on chains; they were 4 months and 3 weeks.  We usually wait unit about 6 months.  But no matter how long we wait, the conversation usually goes like this:

Ed: "I think we need to get the puppies out of that smelly puppy pen, they are too big for it."
Tasha: "No, they are just too little, look at how cute they are."
Ed:  "They are bigger than Momo and Hedgie."
Tasha:  "They are just really fat."
Ed:  "They are old enough."
Tasha:  "Ok. But you have to be the bad guy and hook then up. I don't want them to hold it against me for the rest of my life."
Ed:  "I'll do it.  As soon as I feed them, they'll forget all about it anyway."

I guess they were old enough though.  All of them figured out how to jump up on their platform and sleep in their house by the first day.  By the third day, there were no more puppy tears, and they were happily gnawing on their rawhide chewies.

The litter we are waiting on is one that we are splitting with Al.  He had an accidental breeding this fall and we agreed to take care of the mother and puppies, in exchange for keeping some of the pups.  The mother, Lulu (better known as Honolulu) is a German Pointer/Alaskan Husky cross. She is completely black, except for a small bit of white on her chest, and has big floppy hound ears.  Right now she looks like an over-weight black lab, but I think she'll be shedding pounds very soon.  It appeared that the puppies have "dropped" and this morning she didn't eat much food.  I'll keep checking on her today as I think she's about to be a new mother.  I'll have to start a list of Hawaiian dog names!

We'll keep you updated on the snow conditions here.  If anyone ever asks, tell them that the snowmobile trails are terrible and we would not suggest anyone riding them.  However, the dog trails seem to still be ok, and I'm sure it will snow again soon!

December 20th, 2002

Christmas has come early to the kennel. Lulu has brought us a gift of 7 puppies! All are plump and healthy! Ironically, every litter we have had this year has been a litter of 7.  Weird!
 
 

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