On Simplicity and Re-grounding

‘That’s it?’ I’ve been saying to myself, as I move from the trail to the yard back to my desk. It is effortless movement, ending a day well. 

‘How did I truck dogs for so long?’ 

I did it because I had to. Pure and simple. The home our family moved into in 2011, was chosen for where it was, and what it was, for my human family. I was 29 years old. I had wanted a sled dog team, and picked the rise behind the house, among the trees, as the location for the dogyard. The concept of a 20 dog yard, of puppies, of training a long string for 250 miles, I couldn’t see it because I didn’t know it. I couldn’t dream a dream that big. 

As my own dog team evolved, I began running longer runs. In the second year of having my own dogs, I quickly decided to move to 100 mile races. I acquired and built a larger team. That’s loading 12-16 dogs into a truck, every time, and then driving a minimum of 30 minutes to get to the trailhead. For those of us who hike, or bike, or snowmobile, we ask ‘what’s the big deal?’ 

In the past few weeks, as I’ve been running two 10 dog teams, it takes less time, less emotional energy, and less physical energy to run two 10 dog teams directly out of the front yard than it takes to run a single 12 dog team the same distance by loading, driving, unloading, running, loading, and unloading back home. Imagine your mountain bike ride always starting by completely disassembling and loading a dozen bikes onto your roof and into a trailer, walking up and down a hill to retrieve each bike, maybe one bike decides to get loose and take a spin around the front yard, maybe one bike hits you in the face because it’s so excited, maybe…ok, maybe there’s no real way to translate the drain of loading dogs constantly. 

I started the training season this year by loading dogs for 3 mile runs. After one week, I was already emotionally drained by the process. Part of this is because I knew we would be running out of our front yard shortly, so what was the point. But part of it was also the admittance that my day job takes a lot out of me, and I just didn’t have any extra energy to spend loading dogs and driving them around. Add to that the three-week effort of building a new dogyard, of constructing 22 houses and setting posts, amidst windstorms and power outages...there was a lot going on. 

I’ve wanted to run smaller teams for awhile now, believing that dogs learn more in smaller teams, but it’s unbelievably hard to do so when trucking dogs adds three hours to every run. Over the years, the string grew longer, to 17 dogs on a single ATV. A long string limited the kinds of trails I ran on, sticking to wide gravel roads with few turns and intersections. I couldn’t control the speed as well, and it was easier for some dogs to not work. 

In the past two weeks, the dogs have slid quickly into teamwork, in these smaller teams.  Already I feel the power building, an aliveness that pulls us forward, pulls the ATV uphill. I was messaging my friend Chase last night, and I told him I have no immediate plans to go back to the 16 dog team. ‘Dogs learn more in small teams,’ he said. 

It feels strange to be running 7-10 miles right now. It feels strange because every other year, by Thanksgiving we’re running 15-20 miles and doing checkpoint runs, back to back runs sometimes back to back, logging five runs in three days. My shoulder is usually numb, bone grinding on bone from loading so many dogs and stiff-arming the ATV along frozen ground, from dragging the lines inside every night to rinse the grit off and thaw out the ice.  

There is still a lot of work to this. The puppies are being left behind in Shelburne, and I miss them but also need to keep them cared for. I still am trucking dogs to and from Upton, and am realizing the reality of travel in all types of weather in Grafton Notch. I have to consciously schedule time with my partner Chuck. There is still a lot of work, but loading dogs once a week is easier. Full stop.

There is a mental groove I fall into, seven years of training a team for long distances. When watching the dogs run, paying attention to what makes them sing and what makes them dig in, how my eyes still widen when I watch the sheer bulk of Hawkeye lean into his harness, there is a mental habit that has already popped up. My mind has been building a team for races we won’t be running, building a UP200 team, building a Beargrease team, and, even, building a Can Am 250 team.  I’ve been choosing leaders for trail legs, my brain marking the curves and turns of the trails between checkpoints. I’ve felt the sluggish warmth of that sunny run to Portage on the 250 trail, and the sleepy disorientation of the third leg of the UP200. These are races we won’t be running, but these are races that have defined the training experience for me, for the majority of the years I’ve trained a dogteam. 

Next year. 

I mean. The dogyard. It’s right there. Right outside the door. Right outside the window.

I am still enjoying the ease of movement, from my front door to the dogyard, from the dogyard back inside. The transitions are shorter, partly because the lift is lighter. I can step out the door and the dogyard is right there. There is a new closeness, between myself and them, as the world shrinks to focusing in on them. When Foxtrot, one of the new leaders, led for the first time, after the run he ran up to me and clearly expressed his joy and thankfulness for being allowed to do his job for the first time. ‘You are so welcome,’ I responded instinctively, as he licked my fingers. 

So, yes. I did set a goal for this year, which is the Can Am 100. It feels like a comfortably simple goal, a 10-dog 100 mile race at the end of February, when I’m training 19 dogs right now, but that’s also the reality of where we are, transitioning, and re-grounding in why I run dogs and why these dogs run. Setting us up for next year, and the years after that. 

We got this.