kitsu

This past weekend was my dog mushing class.

On Saturday, we went to the instructor's house. She has a few dogs of her own (mostly Alaskan huskies), half a dozen Icelandic horses, and a reindeer or two. The horses were neat--I'd never seen that breed before. Very bulky. We were shown how to put booties on the dogs and how to do various things with rope (make leashes, collars, and leads). There was an adorable golden retriever puppy.

After that, we went to the Vanzyles' house. Apparently, Jon Vanzyle is rather famous. He's run the Iditarod a number of times, and paints a lot--many of which are used to illustrate children's books. He gave all the students autographed prints of his.

We also checked out their dogs. They have eighteen, and they are all very friendly indeed. There was also this really neat giant hamster wheel. The "dog ferris wheel" or some such, I believe it was called. All the dogs were set loose (they're usually chained to their houses), and everyone had a great time being completely swarmed with huskies and malamutes.

Yesterday, we went to a dog mushing track in Chugiak. There were four races (3-dog, 4-dog, 6-dog, and however-many-dogs-you-want) before we went mushing. They were neat, though it got a little boring after a couple hours. The 10-dog teams were fun to watch. When the team goes up to the track, the dogs go crazy. Barking and howling and jumping and pulling at the lines, trying to run. It's quite a sight.

I was surprised to see that one guy had a 10-dog team almost entirely of German shorthair pointers. For those of you who don't know, I have a German shorthair pointer back home. They are amazingly fast dogs, that love to run, but they're so small, and with such thin fur, that I wouldn't expect them to make the best sled dogs. But there they were.

I was also surprised to see that the temperature kept dropping as the day went on. Meaning, it was colder at noon than it was at ten a.m. By the time the races were done (around 1:30), it was about -10 degrees. I didn't feel cold, because I'd dressed well, but my hands were freezing. And I mean that literally. Despite two pairs of gloves, I started to get frostbite in my left pinky. But, I went inside and warmed it up, and it turned out alright.

After all that, we got to mush. We each paired off and got a sled with four dogs, and ran a 2-mile track. One person would sit in the basket, and the other would stand in the mushing area. Then, halfway through, the two switched off. I thought I'd be nice, and let my partner go first, while I took some pictures of the dogs running. Unfortunately, the guy who said he'd take pictures of us on our way out and way back in seems to have slacked off. So we have pictures of her mushing with me sitting, but none of me mushing with her sitting. I'm incredibly disappointed about this, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

 

Apparently, people don't shout "mush" to get the dogs to go these days.  To get them to go, you shout "hike!"  To stop, "whoa!"  To turn right, "ji!"  To turn left, "Ha!"  To pass another team, "an bai!"  We were shouting "hike" an awful lot.

It was a lot of fun. The dogs are pretty fast, despite the fact that we had the slowest sled (the old-fashioned wooden one--slowest, but coolest-looking), two people riding, and only four dogs.

Anyway, as usual, check out the pictures at my flickr page. I should have some more (with me in them) in a day or two, because we'll all be sharing our photos tonight.