On Vacation Again

Hello, everyone.  We are visiting our family in the beautiful state of Wyoming!

I took Joe on a tour of my old stomping grounds.  The Bighorn Basin is such a unique place.  This is the landscape that inspired me to become a geologist, and you can see why!  The geologic formations are colorful and interesting and so well-exposed…it’s a field geologists dream!   Sagebrush dot the landscape and provide a feast for all the antelope and deer, but you have to watch out for rattlesnakes and all the ground-hugging cacti.  I recall wrecking on my mountain bike a time or two back in the day and landing on a big cactus.  Not my fondest memory.

Here’s a view of the Absaroka Mountains to the west across the expanse of badlands.

And another great view to the east of the Bighorn Mountains.

 

We also went up to the Bighorn Mountains to check out the old fish hatchery and Tensleep Canyon.

 

We’re having a great time and enjoying the nice weather.  It’s an unseasonably warm November.

Stay tuned!  There’s more to come!

 

Dog Sledding with Friends!

Yesterday was a beautiful day.  The sun was shining and the  dogs were ready for an action packed afternoon.

Joe took Dino for a little run.  Dino is 2 years old now and we will be integrating him in to the dog sledding team this season. 

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Farmer and Luna, sitting in a tree…

A malamute owner in town was looking for a stud for his beautiful black and white mal, Luna.  She and Farmer ought to be having a litter in about 2 months!! 

 

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The puppies ran around in the big dog yard and stopped to say “hello” to Hooch.

It was a little bit frosty out there.  We finally hit sub zero temperatures.

Oskar teased Red with a toy he found in the yard. 

“Come and get me!”

 

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We’ve been hoping to get our friends out on the team with their 2-year old son before it got really cold, so they came over for a dog sled ride down to the river.   It was a lot of fun and their son loved watching the dogs run.  We all piled in the Cadillac-sized sled and let Daryl take the wheel!

 

 

 

Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Sleeping in the Tub

Charlie’s been having some strange sleeping patterns lately.  It must be the moon.

Last night at about 2 am, Joe found him sleeping in the bathtub!  Of all places!  I can’t get this guy in the tub for anything, then we catch him voluntarily sleeping in there?!  What gives, Charlie?  We wish we’d gotten pictures of that. 

 

Texan Dog Mushers

Yay!  Last night we had our first clients of the season for a Fairbanks area dog sled ride and what a great start it was!

We met Daniel, Beverly, and J.D. who have driven all the way up here from the great state of Texas as a graduation celebration for J.D.  These people were cool and we were so pleased to share with them our team of malamutes.  We love it when folks from warm climates come and brave the cold to experience dog mushing.  Awesome!

 

 

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The temperature hovered right around melting point all day, yet the snow is still too dry to make a snowball.  Go figure.

 

But Oskar, Melvin, Grace, and Red had the time of their lives running around in all the new snow.

Melvin is always burying his head in the snow in search of a stick.

Sometimes he doesn’t meet with success…

…but you can bet he keeps trying until he finds one!  It’s an obsession!

 

Hot Diggity Dog

It’s been snowing for the past two days and we finally have a decent base to run the dogs on!

Today, Joe took a small team out to start conditioning.  In lead, we have Boss and Bruno.  The team dogs were Buck and Birdy, and the wheelers were Kavik and Maggie.  Tails are up…everyone’s happy!

(Check out how dark it looks in this photo.  It was taken at about 2 pm.  We’re starting to lose our sunshine faster and faster every day.)

Kavik and Maggie haven’t been on an arctic expedition yet, but this year Kavik will definitely go along.  He’s is one tough dude.  He pulls with the strength of two dogs.

Maggie is a malamute that we got a while back from the Malamute Rescue of Alaska after her owner had passed away unexpectedly.  As with all rescue dogs, she’s taken some time to warm up to the other mals in the dog yard, but she is fitting in just fine now.  Maggie will probably stay home with me another year before venturing off into the wilds of the arctic with the expedition team.    She’s a sweetie.

While the team stopped to take a breather, Maggie and Kavik posed nicely for the camera (Maggie’s the one standing up).

 

 

 

 

Beautiful!

 

The Dog Days of Autumn

Yesterday the Two Rivers Dog Mushers Association and Raven Veterinary hosted a rabies vaccination clinic.  We took a few truck loads of our malamutes up the road for their shots, and as you can see by the look on Farmer’s face, it wasn’t exactly what they would call fun. 

It’s always interesting driving our mals around in this little mushing community.  We get some awfully strange looks from locals while driving down the road with a bunch of howling malamutes in the back of our truck…but hey, traveling with these guys is a challenge. They can’t fit in a dog box, so we just tether them into the back of the truck.  It’s hard enough to lift these guys into the truck bed…I can’t imagine lifting a wiggly, 110 lb. brute into a box above my head.  

Anyway, thanks to the TRDMA and Raven Veterinary for putting the clinic together.

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If I didn’t know better, I’d say Oskar was a bull getting ready to charge the matadors, Red and Grace.  Oskar is now weighing in at 50 lbs at 4 1/2 months of age. 

 

Oskar’s sporting a flashy new red collar.

  

Grace, Red, and Oskar spent the afternoon enjoying what’s left of autumn. 

 

 

 

 

Oskar is starting to get curious about the big guys in the dog yard, and today he wandered over and introduced himself to a few of them.

He told Nikko a secret.

He showed Hooch how he can touch his nose with his tongue.

And he exchanged a smooch with Mitch.

 

 

It’s a bit disheartening that we still don’t have any snow.  We don’t train our team at all until there’s snow on the ground.  All we need is an inch…any day now!

 

Memories…

GRACE

 

RED

 

OSKAR

 

Our little babies are growing SO fast!