Colder

It got down to 21 below last night with moderate wind. The wind seemed to have died down this morning, and it was a beautiful sunny day but never got above 2 degrees, Fahrenheit. Lots of wood got eaten up by the wood stove. It seems the whole day gets planned around coming in at suitable intervals to feed the wood stove.

I decided to bite the bullet and run larger teams today. Yup, I ran a whole two dogs more. Twice. Six dogs have a lot more power than four dogs, so they go a whole lot faster, too. The trail from yesterday was still visible although somewhat soft and drifted. The first team had Charge and Breaker in lead. These two are littermates, but Breaker is small and Charge is large. They have the same enthusiasm and powerful lope, though. Charge followed his exact trail from yesterday even though it sometimes deviated slightly from a firmer snowmobile track that overlayed it. Silly guy. Nevertheless, the two extra dogs made it easy for the sled to bust through the drifts and the soft spots. Hydrogen and Helium got picked for their first time ever pulling a sled, and Switch and Current rounded out the team.

The run was over so fast that I had ample time to take a second team out and still nip inside to load more wood in the stove. The second team featured Ghost and Walnut in lead. Ghost is one of my best and oldest leaders, but at 9 years old, he needs to be training replacements for himself. Walnut is a 3 year old daughter of Ghost, and she has been very solid and enthusiastic in lead. The rest of the team consisted of Gravity, Coconut, Cinnamon and Nutmeg. They also had a great run, and I was surprised to find the sun still well up when we got back. How nice to still have ample daylight left for feeding.