As I evaluated, earlier this week, about whether the dogs and I were mentally and physically prepared to enter the race, analyzing the training schedule, looking at the dogs, it was the matter of heart that got me back on the roster—I couldn’t stop thinking about that night run home. I couldn’t stop thinking about the long, tough Can Am trail.
Read MoreI keep a spreadsheet that calculates three years into the future for the dog team: total dogs in kennel, total dogs in training, total yearlings, puppies, total leaders. I’m always looking a few years ahead, while simultaneously looking at the dogs in front of me. It helps inject a sense of objectivity into what could be a very emotional evaluation—your dogs.
Going into this year, I knew I would need to let a lot of dogs go, part of the nature of a competitive racing kennel. After a year off of racing, there were 10 2 year olds and 2 3 year olds that I needed to understand what they could really do, what they were really capable of. Dogs don’t really mature until they are 3 years old. Understanding what these youngsters were capable of helped me find them the perfect home or kennel. I had many tough decisions to make about a team of very good dogs.
This year, the Shady Pines athletes have spread across the country and Canada, into some of the most tremendous homes. The dogs and I are very lucky.
Read MoreOn the run back to Fort Kent, to the finish, traveling through rolling hills I took a minute to realize where we were. The golden afternoon light lit up the mountains around us, dry leaves rattled in a few trees but otherwise the sound of winter silence was all around. The 9 dogs on the team moved seamlessly and powerfully, needing nothing from me for the moment. At that point, we were still in third place, I felt we had put enough distance ahead of the musher behind us that I felt secure.
I had no idea we were about to go team hunting, but not long after this I spotted a team ahead.
‘Gemma, it’s a team!’
Read MoreLooking at the dogyard, I do headcounts sometimes: how many intact females, how many neutered males, how many dogs from the last racing team in 2020, how many leaders. But the most critical numbers: there are 24 dogs in the yard right now, 18 of them were either born here or raised from pups, and 10 of them are two year olds.
What this means is it’s a very cohesive dogyard, a dogyard that I stay in tune with, but also a dogyard full of energy and unknowns.
Read MoreLaying on my couch, staring at the ceiling it came to me, I said the words aloud to register them:
‘I don’t want to get COVID-19.’
At this point, the major races I had been planning to sign up for had canceled: first the UP200, then Can Am, and then even the local Brownville 20/20 race. Left standing was the midwest races, the Beargrease for which I was already on the waitlist, and the Copper Dog 140 which would open signups the next day.
As I tallied up all these elements, the environmental vulnerability of the places I was traveling to race (and indeed the place I live myself), the vulnerability of my own family, and the loss of the community in racing, for my own decision matrix, the cons outweighed the pros. The decision that weighed me down, that clogged my prefrontal cortex, that had me glued to my couch on a rainy morning staring at the ceiling, suddenly came out of my own mouth.
‘We won’t be racing.’
Read MoreThis year: No Puppies. No travel. Just me, and the dogs.
Surrounded by my favorite mountains, we went for lots of hikes. Right in the geography of Shelburne, there is an array of options from one-hour to three-hours to full-day expeditions. I paired young dogs with older dogs, focusing in on the nine pups that I hadn’t seen all winter. When it got hot, I switched to the mountain bike, riding on a dirt road in town in the early mornings or evenings. When it got really hot, I stopped hiking and went swimming, and just spent more time in the dogyard during chores, brushing everyone and topping off their water buckets. Without much variation, that was the summer.
Read MoreThis year, the phrase ‘making room for puppies’ really was the force and guiding light between some serious deep thoughts I had to take, about the future of the team. With 9 puppies staying here, three yearlings coming back home, and the 18 dogs I’ve trained all winter, the numbers added up: there were some tough decisions that I had to make. I had to get down to less than 25 dogs, and for the first time I really looked long and hard at the dogs, knowing I would be placing some really good athletes and team members who still had years of running ahead of them. I also know I’d be placing dogs that I had raised from puppies, dogs that I have raced with for years. It also meant that in keeping all the 9 puppies, I was ultimately taking a chance on an unknown athlete and moving out a known athlete. In all cases, this was a really tough decision.
Read More‘We aren’t there yet,’ I kept saying to myself and the dogs, as the darkness settled, the cold drew closer, and the headlamp behind us diminishing and then disappearing. I didn’t let myself accept our lead, our first place spot, until we crossed the last driveway, less than half a mile from the finish and that short cruise down the ski hill, when I burst into tears.
We had won, won our first big race, won a Can Am race, the Can Am 100.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreIt’s the first week of October. There have been multiple cool mornings, and as I write this now the mercury hovers around freezing. Hard frosts have killed plants, although I still see yellow jackets stumbling around drunkenly. Somewhere, somehow, the foliage has exploded into the firestorm of peak colors, amplified by dry clear cold air. In short: it’s deep into fall.
And…..the dogs haven’t run yet.
Read MoreThis time of year I wonder: what does it mean to train a dog team? What is the feeling to put a dog in harness, attach them to a line, and then connect that line to a sled and we travel the wilderness together? The five months of summer, of the non-training season, pass all too quickly.
I wrote the below wrap-up, a logging and status-report of every single dog, to send to the sponsors and supporters of the team, writing it back in April but only just mailing them out this month. As I put the envelopes together, running my fingers over these words, it made me love these dogs even more, made me hug them tighter when I was in the dog yard and laugh with them when we are hiking on the trail. In mushing, and in working with animals in general, we talk about shared bonds. Reading through these narratives, I see not only these facts and stories, I see the blinding love and energy I share with each and every dog. These dogs are more than the workers, the athletes. We are a team.
Read MoreIt depends on how much of a gambler you are,’ Al Borak had said to me, in discussing whether we should stay in the 250 or drop to the 100, given this shift in leadership. I knew we would have a solid 100. To stay in the 250 was going to ask a lot of those young leaders. And ask a lot of me, in a way I did not expect.
So, I stayed in the 250. I took the gamble. I rolled the dice. I committed to the unknown, choosing the active embrace of that wide expanse instead of a contraction of fear. I made this decision, with likely a lot less awareness of how serious a gamble it was.
Read MoreTo retell the story is to resist the bone-aching narrative aligning to one unhelpful place, one tinted view shed. It cracks open the world, releasing the good: the wild love of these dogs, the aliveness of bitter cold and crystalline snow, the caught breath of crossing new mountains and lakes, and the company of other dog teams. It gives us the grace of recalling the multifaceted and glorious prismatic world of what traveling with a dog team is and should be: the wild places of winter, remeasuring time and space with the rhythm of paws and the squeak of snow under the runners, and the rare opportunity to be among mushers and volunteers who are all here for the same reasons, in celebration.
Read MoreExperience is not a slow accumulation of brazen confidence, at least not for me. It is a cycle, of things falling apart and then coming back together, falling apart and then coming back together. I have come to find that I can both be undone and together at the same time, the things that are together giving the solid ground to face what has come undone. It is really hard when the balance of confidence tips, sometimes, towards being undone. It is especially true when facing a new challenge, the first new race I’ve entered in three years.
Read MoreEvery time we stopped, the dogs grew more frenetic, the pitch and tenor of their screams accelerated. They didn’t like stopping, especially so much in the first mile. They had had a few days off and were super-charged. As I chopped and moved the trees, heavy and iced into the ground, it wasn’t the barking that bothered me but concern that Hilde or Nibbler would stop barking and start chewing. While I had brought my axe, as always, I didn’t have a rope to tie the ATV off to, so I worried also about the brakes giving way. When the dogs occasionally grew silent, I expected to see loose dogs running at me. I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on chopping trees efficiently and clearing a path.
Read MoreEarlier in the month, I watched the team and couldn’t tell what was going on. The rhythm and flow seemed off, there was no snapped-in-line-symmetry looking down the line. Everyone was happy, but I couldn’t tell if they, if we, were becoming a team.
That is already changing. The intuition that had me unclip everyone at the end of the run came from the gut feeling, from the knowledge, that the teamwork was forming. The identity was coming into being. The shared sense of purpose, the electricity that runs from my hands along the lines of the team, those are some of the reasons I train a dog team. The first step is teamwork. The next step is resilience.
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