Saturday, September 19, 2009

What Defines a 'Great Run'

Today, despite the quite warm weather, we had one of those runs, that us, dog mushers call simply "a great run".
In a musher´s terminology, a great run is definited as either smooth running, great performance, no challenges or challenges dealt with smoothly, OR a bunch of rookies doing a great job, which was our case today.
Great run can be also acomplished by having good lead dog(s) work his or her art, OR a young dog showing a lead dog potential, which was again our case today.
But let´s just begin, one thing at a time :)
Today we had Magpie´s three sons (the rookies) on one of their first longer training runs (about 7 miles). The boys just turned 1 year last week, and our philosophy is never to push the youngsters - there is simply no sence in rushing anywhere with puppies and yearlings.
Hawky and Runner both perform with a lot of confidence since the very beginning. They´ve always been natural talents, since the first time we put a harness on them. Fast, focussed, smooth running and strong.
HuggyBear took a bit of time and required more patience from me. He would run and pull, but look back at times or suck (yes, suck, not chew) on the central line, while running, which was comic and also anoying to see. But today, the immature behaviour was gone and I had one solid, hard working and focussed young man infront of me.
This is overall an exciting, perspective group!

Music showing his tonsils again - for some reason he thinks everyone is interested in them.

Magneto and Runner at a watering break.

Magneto - a very handsome, sweet natured, honest working dog.
I look very much forward to seeing Magneto develop in our team. He´s been living with us only since May this year, so he has the whole season to get used to his new team and pack members. This is another one of our philosophies - we never evaluate and expect too much from dogs we "freshly" integrated to the pack. Patience and time pays off and we want the newcommers to feel fully at home and bonded with us, before we´d ask them to give us all they´ve got.
HuggyBear getting a drink from the creek.

Another part of the run, that I explained as a great one, was every musher´s pleasure: a new leading star rising.
But I´ve decided to leave that story for a separate post.

Comming next - stay tuned!....

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