Every year, the weekend after Jamie’s ‘ButtonBox’ weekend, she holds her ‘Big Falls’ trip. Where Buttonbox is a fun, easygoing, weekend filled with socialization – Big Falls is WORK for dogs and humans!
Normally the trip is 120 mile round trip adventure. This year, bad trail conditions forced a change of plans and instead of trekking to Big Falls we headed out to a friend’s place near Marcell, Minnesota, adding an extra 22 miles to the trip.
The stories and adventures from the weekend are many, but I think my favorites involve our passage through the town of Big Fork on the way out and back. On the way out we passed through at around 12:30am. As we were watering dogs by the Big Fork River, the local police officer - Officer Babcock appeared. He chatted with Jamie for quite a while – after all, she is a celebrity in the state and then we ended up getting a police escort through town (not OUT OF – I’d like to make that clear!). Lights flashing he lead the 5 dog teams through town and then as we traveled a few miles along the end of the highway, he tagged along behind to warn oncoming traffic. When we came to the spot where we had to cross over the highway and onto the snowmobile trail, he blocked off the highway (although there was actually no traffic at that time of the morning) and directed up across. How nice!!
On the way home on Sunday afternoon, I felt like I was part of a bad western – you know the ones where the outlaw gang is riding into town and the Mothers are scurrying to get their children into the houses – as our teams threaded their way through streets of town, folks where hustling their dogs into houses and backyards! Too funny!!
The trip was definitely a tough and arduous one, but the team did wonderfully, even though dogs like Grover stayed home! All 5 of the 2 year olds made the trip and did great. Olena is always one of the first on her feet ready to go!
Now we are doing some shorter runs for this week as I ‘wind’ the team down from the last few weeks of hard work.
All for tonight – despite two days off of running dogs, I’m still pretty tired and can barely keep my eyes open!!
Karen
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