Stepping Up The Distance

This week I stepped the dogs up to a 35 mile run. Up to now, we have been doing 15 and 20 mile runs. The dogs handled the longer distance quite well, but then I gave them a couple days rest afterwards. Next week I will try to do at least two or three of these longer runs. The problem is that it is still not safe for me to run large teams, so it takes a lot more time to do long runs with two separate teams. There are some road crossings and other tricky spots where I cannot safely control a large team if it decides to head down the plowed road or other such acts of disobedience or confusion.

Here is one of the possible hazards - a tree down across the trail. We went around to the right and bumped over the tip end of the tree. Even if I wanted to clear the trail with an axe, the dogs would never stand still long enough. We have had so much snow so quickly that even the groomed trail is not hard enough to hold a snow hook for long. The dogs always pulled out both hooks as soon as they decided it was time to go, usually after just a few seconds. It made it hard to get nice pictures.

Thank goodness for well trained, reliable leaders like Ghost. He knows when it is time to take a break and roll in the snow. The other leader with him is Charge, who may be one of the best dogs I own but does not have as much experience in lead yet.