A Good Dog Team Trumps A Bad ATV Everytime...

My ATV has been acting up lately. If you ask it it's side of the story, it would surely say something about been submerged in the Tawatinaw River a couple times a few weeks back. Okay, so that story is pretty true and I guess since I haven't talked Mark into changing the oil (that is probably now as much river water as oil) it probably is pretty justified for it's poor performance of late.
And despite it all, it did fire up and drive over to our 'staging area' without incident this morning. However, when I went to start it to leave the yard with the team, it wouldn't start and wouldn't come out of 1st gear.

No way I was telling 16 jacked up, over excited sled dogs that they weren't going on a run - I had to figure something else out. After some swearing and running through the checklist of potential solutions I decided the dogs were going to have to sort this out.
Using my limited ATV knowledge, I forced the machine into a higher gear and then hollered at the dogs to get it moving.

Despite our 'out trail' being uphill, the dogs managed to do what had been asked of them and turn the engine over. After dog power running the engine for alittle over a mile I was able to get it down into neutral, shut it off and get it to start probably on it's own.

It ran fine for the rest of the run.

It must have realized that resistance was futile...

...a good dog team trumps a bad ATV everytime!!!


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Just a few more pictures and one more small story from our run today...

See led along with Smartie (who was a TOTAL star) on today's run. See was the last one to be put away and as she is one of the candidates for the HOUSE HUSKY position, I just unhooked, unharnessed her and turned her loose to see what she would do

She followed me for a bit while I picked up harnesses, came over for a scratch - and then went to lay down. This is where she lay down....

I guess a good lead dog always knows her place!!

=) =)