Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Another Rookie Run

No, this isn´t actually about harness breaking dogs, if that´s what you think.

How do you reward a young man, who came to spend his Easter vacation in the North, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by 38 dogs, and who worked hard his entire vacation scooping poop and shoveling snow in kennels?

You take him for his first sled dog ride!

Malte was hoping for this to happen, but the snow started melting rapidly, and the end of his stay was aproaching. So it was time to take action right away today :)

I hooked up a team of six and found three nice, easy going dogs for Malte´s team: Ziggi, Bliss and Nugget. The plan was that he will follow me out of the yard, we´ll go down to the swamp, I will tie my team around a tree and help Malte pass us, then help him turn around, go back to my team and lead us up the trail back home.

All actually worked out perfectly fine.... BUT, on the return trip, there is a fairly sharp curve right after the start (after turning the dogs around) and Malte unfortunately lost the balance and his sled went streight instead of making the turn, and ended up between the small spruce and birch brush. It turned out he jamed his hand between a tree and the sled´s handlerbar. As the well-listenig student, he didn´t let go of the sled, as I have instructed him before we left the dog yard. Tough guy! :)

After aplication of first aid, he was all ready to go and by the time we arrived back, he had wide grin on his face again. And as the real musher, he took care of his team and the equipment, and helped feeding dogs in the evening.

Looks like he might have cought the mushing bug! :)

Final instructions

Getting ready for start

Three pros and a rookie :)
(Ziggi, Bliss, Nugget, Malte)

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