It's All Good

After a pretty good start to the season I've found myself struggling in the last month, and I have to confess it has been a bit discouraging. It started with Jovo having a suspicious tumor removed (completely excised, thank goodness) right before Christmas. Then the trail conditions meant cancellation of the annual Camp K Christmas Vacation. So we made lemonade out of lemons and I spent a little time running dogs at Chrystal Springs. There I made a serious "rookie" mistake and let the team blast out of the starting gate at full charge, which turned out to be more than little River could take, and she had a complete melt down on the trail and refused to run. River is a young, extremely enthusiastic sled dog, and a dog refusing to run was something I had never dealt with before. It was my friend and Iditarod racer, Karen Ramstead who gently reminded me of the hazards of letting a team blast off like that and she suggested I rest River until she stopped worrying about what ever got into her head (in all honesty I think she realized she is too small to keep up that starting pace) and wait till she got bored and wanted to run again. While I was waiting for River and not running her, we had a particularly difficult run on awful crusty icy snow conditions and Impi damaged his feet a bit. Some first aid and rest for Impi. To add final insult to injury, hormones abound in the yard right now as Ellie is suffering from a case of PMS, and took out Hilda at the knees last week temporarily reducing my team by yet another dog, while she recovered from a pulled hamstring.

And then there is the weather!!!! El Nino is in full swing this season, making the temperatures in the double digits above 0, and my camping sledding trip was cancelled 2 weekends in a row, while we waited out rain and avalanche risk. GEEEEEEESH.

This past weekend I loaded up the dogs and headed into the interior. Would Hilda be recovered? Would River want to run again? Were Impi's feet better? Well the snow conditions are not much better in the interior, I was limited to fast slippery roads, with no place to set a snow hook. With this in mind I took out 2 smaller teams of 4 and 5 dogs. For the first time in a month River was screaming to get back in the team, and she ran a fabulous run with no hesitation and wagging tail. Impi also showed no signs of foot problems. Then I took out 5 dogs, with Hilda in single lead. She was raring to go, leaping high into the air and screaming to start running as I hooked up the other dogs. When we turned around I decided to give baby Raven a turn in lead with veteran Hilda on my team (see previous blog entry on Raven's leading adventures). Mary understated Raven's performance. She set such a fast pace that I kept both feet on the brake for the entire run, and although it was so slippery the sled tracked a bit like a weaving drunken sailor, it was so much fun it made up for the last months doldrums in spades.

Yep, just as the legendary Bob Dylan says:

Whatever goin down, it's all good!

Here is a wee clip of the team coming back to the truck. My full weight is on the brake here, you can hear the scrape of it on the ice behind the music at the end.