Gealach Mor Siberians
Working sleddogs - just for the love of it..............
September 2006
I so enjoyed keeping my diary during the Winter of Adventure a couple of years ago, that I have decided to do something similar this year. I doubt there will be quite as much happening and it will certainly be much more mundane, but there are some interesting times ahead.
I have always given our dogs the summer off from running, we are fortunate enough to have a large field at home in which they can free run and chase any birds stupid enough to try landing.
September is usually when I would look to get training started, small teams, heavy rig, and work on muscle strengthening and reminding them how to behave in harness.
Friday 1 Sept - might as well get started, running from the yard, only hooking in 4 dogs onto the 200lb Fritz Dyke cart plus me. It was only a mile, but it looks like they haven't forgotten absolutely everything over the past few months.
This run was repeated on the 4th and 6th, and then bumped up to 1.5 miles for the runs on the 8th, 11th and 16th.
It's nice to be able to run short distances with small teams right out of the house. Everyone seems to be getting back into the swing of it all.
Sunday 24th - arranged to head over to Aberfoyle and meet up with Michael of Coiregrogan Siberians.
14 C and rainy..... and up at 5.00 am - oh yes, I remember why we do this. 6 dogs, 4 miles - we have a lot of work to do. Old boy Bhu was dragged out of semi-retirement to see if he could contribute to the second string team and indeed he did, taking a very unaccustomed place at lead.
Another couple of shorter runs from the house during the week, and back to Clashmore on the 30th. Same teams, same distances but reversed trail. A little improvement even from last week. Oh yes, it wasn't raining either.
