Wednesday, March 14, 2012

The Gods Heard Us!

The Gods have heard our prayers - It´s snowiiiing!!!!!!! After training for weeks on trails that resemble concrete narrow roller-coaster, the white gold is quickly covering the ground!

We are SO thankful.

Our nerves can now relax and are thankful.

The dogs are thankful.

The doggy feet and all their muscles are thankful.

The doggy wrists are extremely thankful.

Our feet and ankles are very thankful (try to ride drag brake on concrete ice for hours almost every day, while a team of dogs in good shape drag you around as they feel no resistance (and mercy).

The doggy shoulders are thankful.

The mushers are super thankful (wait, I already said that, but at least you see how very thankful we are!)

Of course our handlers are thankful - ask them how it is to feed and work with dogs without having ice skates on.

We prayed for snow, all the way during the short, recovery run today after yesterday´s long and hard run. Hard not in terms of distance, but the surface is crazy. The risk of injuries is very high and every run we pray and hope no one from the kids will get injured, and we drive the teams as carefully as one only can in such conditions. 
Yesterday, Star showed no signs of lameness and came all fine home after the 70km run, but her left wrist joint was painful when we examined her after the run. Despite massage, REIKI and bandage, her joint was painful and warm this morning, so she is on Rimadyl for a few days to take the pain, swelling and inflammation away.

Grayling started to limp about 25km from home. Knowing the trail will be mostly downhill from that section and even more icy and rock hard than the previous 45km, I loaded him in the sled. We can´t afford losing one of the absolute top dogs and adepts for the Pasvik Trail race. Fortunately, the biggest dog of our kennel and his about 25kg of weight was no weight for the remaining nine. 
A session of massage with Emu Oil (of course in the bed, where else?! :)), REIKI and application of wrist wrap over night helped tremendously and the limping (and pain) was gone by morning, but he will get couple days off just to be sure.

So now you can imagine and fully understand why we prayed for a few centimeters to come, cover and soften the trails. And the Gods heard us!

One more time: 

T H A N K   Y O U ! ! !

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