Muddy times

The cold temperatures did not stay for to long, it is around zero again, we have really wet snow
and the whole yard is a big mud puddle.

the training is going good, we are doing the 15 km easy now.

This weekend I will go to Fairbanks with Frank and our guides to the ADMA Symposium.
It will be a long drive but for sure interesting.

The following weekend I will take part in a workshop here in Whitehorse. I can bring one of my dogs and will learn how to diagnose injuries and take care of them.

Winter is coming

Finally it is getting colder, we had -11 degrees Celsius this morning and I had a super run with my dogs, they just love the cold so much. Unfortunately I did not bring my camera.

Not just the temperatures indicate that the winter is coming.
My summer/fall staff is leaving and my winter crew is arriving. There are only two to go which arrive on Thursday this week and we are complete.

Yusuke will be back on the 29th of October, I am so looking forward to see him again and work with him together and hopefully do some races with him.

Last week Thursday I picked up some new dogs. 14 all together. A friend had some sad things happening in his live and could not afford his business anymore. He could not find any place for his dogs to go so we decided to take his dogs. We try to find homes for them in families for all of it are older dogs, but they still love to run so they will join our teams for as long as possible, I hope they will enjoy it.

I hope we will have another cold night so the river is freezing soon, me and my dogs are ready for it.

Hello Everybody

First of all I have to say sorry that I just stopped giving you updates last winter. I frostbit my toes and could not do the race and was a bit upset about it. My dogs though could still go in the race, I switches position with my Handler Thomas from Switzerland. He ended up doing the race and I was handling for him. My dogs did great, I had a happy team crossing the finish line in Pelly.

I had a summer to take care of my toes, but they are still not feeling right, so I decided not to go for any races this year. My friend Yusuke who will join us for his third season here in the Yukon will do some mid distance races and will help him training as much as I can and I will find out how much cold my toes can handle, so who knows I might end up in a race, but I do not want to plan for it, the disappointment would be to big.

Anyhow, Yusuke wont be able to be here before October So I started the training almost 3 weeks ago already and it is so much fun to see the dogs run again.
I or better we will have a real young team this year. The oldest dog will be Elsa with 8 years everybody else is 4 and younger. So far I am training 24dogs. Two 12 dog teams. They doing pretty good and the 5 km loop so I might be able to go up to 10 km by the next week.

OK that is everything for today.

Cold!!!

First of all, sorry that I did not give you any news for so long.

We have a cold strech here at the moment, it is about a week now that we have -35 and colder, this morning we had -40.5 degrees celcius.
I was camping the other night with Yusuke, it was cold but good, the dogs did great. It was my first time beeing out there just me and my dogs in - 40 and I would say I did really good. We had a nice run up the Dawson Overland trail for about 5 hours, set camp and went back the next morning. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures because my camera does not work at this temperatures, but I have some pictures from my first camping about two weeks ago.

We stayed pretty closed to the house that night, It was a training camp for me as well as for the dogs. As you know I have a pretty young team and they are not use to sleep away from home, especially Gimli, it was his first time not sleeping in his doghouse.
That night Graeme and Yusuke joined us and Graeme had a team himself with a pup from last year, a brother to Gimli with the name Strider.

Our first Comment the next moring to Frank was. " It went way to smoth for the first camping".

The dogs were just great, Gimli and Strider setteld real quick, Tasman who chewed his dog coat or better almost eat his dogcoats last year did not touch it, and Yahtsee who used to be up all night and chew through lines slept all night. I am so proud of my dogs.

The cold temperatues are a chance for me to catch up with the other part of the race. I need to order the meat I need for the food drops, the booties, I need some more gear myself, especially more wool gloves which all involves money so I have to work on the sponsor part again.

First time on Dawson Trail

We were blessed with some good snow Sunday and Monday and now I finally can go further distances without loading my dogs and drive to the snow.

Yesterday I went up the dawson trail for the first time this season and I was pretty excited about it. Yusuke took one of my teams out so I had both teams at the same time on the trail, it was the first time for Yusuke to be on this trail at all so he was even more excited than me, and

Frank telling us that there are free dogs out there and he met them when he was up there with the skidoo did not help.

On the way out I had to brake trail, or better the dogs because the trail got blown in over night, they did so good, I had Elsa and Carter on lead. Frank usually runs Carter but I borrowed him and I might actually keep him in my team, I could need another experienced leader to train my young guys.

We had a real good run, all the dogs did great, and we did not meet the dogs Frank metioned, I saw them but they just barked and stayed in their property. It was a gorgeous day and both Yusuke and me really enjoyed it.

Another Training Day

Today I had a real nice day on the river. I took both of my 8 dog teams out which means I was on the river pretty much all day long.
And today we finally had temperatures below 0 again. It was around -8 all day, which is good for the ice, but I am still waiting for more snow.

there are lots of movements in the Ice at the moment which leads cracks and overflow, nothing deep or dangerous but still very exciting.

Yesterday I lost my team on the way home, now I know how that feels and it is not a good feeling believe me.

One second of not paying attention and they are gone, but my lovely Nutmeg turned them around when I called her and David who was running on lead stopped as well as soon as I called him. I was really lucky just to have to run for about 30meters behind them and just having little tangle. The funniest thing was the look at David sitting in the sledge and wagging his tail and looking at me like, did you see that I stopped them, to bad that at that moment did not accur to me to make a picture.

Heute habe ich beide meiner teams trainiert, Ich laufe im moment zwei 8 Hunde teams da ich immer noch nicht genug Schnee habe. Und dazu kam dann auch noch das unglaublich warme wetter diese woche, heute war der erste tag das wir unter 0 grad hatten, es war so um die - 8 heute.

Durch das warme wetter ist natuerlich auch jede menge bewegung im eis, einige risse. wasser was ueber das eis tritt und stellenweise schon wieder gefroren ist was es dann noch haerter macht um den schlitten zu stoppen. Trotz allem hatte ich wieder jede menge spass heute.

Gestern hatte ich ein nicht ganz so spassiges erlebins. Ich habe mein Team verloren. Eine secunde unachtsamkeint und weg sind sie. Gott sie dank hat Nutmeg meine rufe erhoert und das team umgedreht und David hat ebenso gebremst als er gesehen hat dass ich hinter dem schlitten herlaufe. Er is in wheel gelaufen und als ich am schlitten ankam ist er im schlitten gesessen und hat mich angeschaut als wollte er sagen, hab ich das nicht gutgemacht ich hab sie alle angehalten, leider habe ich in dem moment nicht daran gedacht ein bild zu machen. Keiner war verletzt und sie waren auch nicht zu arg verzettelt in ihren leinen das es und nicht lange gedauert hat um gemeinsam den heimweg anzutreten.

I am on the river

finally I am on the river, I still do not have the amout of snow I would like to but it is enough to run a 6 dog team. It feels so good to be on a sled again.

A short Video from my early run this morning, sorry it is a bit dark, there will be better ones I promise.

Endlich kann ich auf den Fluss, ich hab zwar noch nicht so viel schnee wie mir lieb waere, aber es ist genug um 6 hunde zu laufen. So ein gutes gefuehl endlich wieder auf einem schlitten zu sein.

hier ein kurzes Video von meinem run heute morgen, ist etwas dunkel noch, es werden bessere kommen ich verspreche.