July 7, 2003

Stats, Puppies & Show News

July 1 is always the ‘start’ of the new season for us. No real reason for that, except that I used to take a few weeks ‘off’ of running dogs in June and then would get back at it in July. The last couple years I’ve done without the time off, but the beginning of July remains the time we ‘zero’ the dog’s mileage and start from scratch. 

I’m blessed with a really handy ‘Excel’ database that my father in law custom wrote for me that allows me to track all kinds of interesting information on the season and I thought I would share some of the stats with you. 

This past season – 

• We hooked 212 dog teams up (if you figure on each team averaging around 12 dogs – that means we put on and took off over 2500 harnesses this season). 
• - the dog with the most miles this season was Gus with 3126
•  Between Mark and I we put 4936 miles on the trail
•  I logged a total of 3793.5 miles (2073 on an ATV, 1720.5 on a sled)
•  The dog that logged the most miles in lead was Camilla with 1760.5

It is rather intimidating to see the totals revert to zeros from numbers in the thousands, but it is also time to hope, dream and plan for the season ahead.

The puppies are doing wonderful. We have settled on names for them. Oreo’s pups are Chip (m) and Dare (f). Kluane’s kids have a ‘James Bond’ theme – with the girl being Jinx and the male Q. They have, pretty much, moved outside now – although I have been breaking down and letting them in the house at night. Last night we had 3 escapees from the whelping pools (all but Chip) – so the nights inside are about to stop. 

Just in time too – as Kaylinn is due a week from today! The disappointing news on the ‘whelping front’ is that it looks like Jumper is not pregnant. Maybe next year!

News from the show ring is good – great actually. At the Grande Prairie show last weekend Loki picked up 4 points towards his Canadian championship, as did Freya – which is amazing considering she is COMPLETELY out of coat. Even cooler was the fact that Mannie won 3 of the 6 Best of Breeds, a Group 2nd and a Group 1st. The Group 1st was particularly sweet, as Mannie has won a number of Group 2nd’s, but a Group 1 has always eluded us.

That inspired me to enter him in a few more shows this summer – now I’m praying hard that he doesn’t blow the lovely coat he has!

Loki is heading out to a few shows in July and August with professional handlers Cynthia and Kerry Seeling. Cynthia and Kerry are the only handlers that I will trust with one of my ‘kids’. You can check out Cyn and Kerry’s website at http://www.equinoxpermreg.com/~seeling/. You can even see a picture of Loki there, under their ‘Future Stars’ section.

More soon!
Karen