Happy Birthday Musher! - Bet

Howdy Ho Everybodies!  It's a very special day here at North Wapiti!

IT'S THE MUSHER'S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

We have a whole bunch of surprises and fun games to play in honor of the Musher.  There will be pin the tail on Tic (don't ask how he lost it... it's a long, gory story), the Pretty Curly Tails have dug a special sand sculpture of the Musher that sorta looks like a really big hole, and I'm making shrimp with pasta... the Musher's favorite!  Except there's no shrimp because someone had to taste it to make sure it was still fresh and well... ahem... there will be pasta.

As an extra special bonus, I've asked Grandmom to send me some pictures of the Musher when she was a little pup and I'm going to do a "This is your life" thing and stuff for her!

So, here is the Musher when she was very small.  This is a picture of the infamous diaper fire incident.

Nobody in the family can quite recall just how it caught on fire, but they did say that the Musher was a unique baby who really knew what she wanted, and was very innovative, and original even at such a young age... at least that's what I interpreted when they told me: "We knew immediately that she wasn't right in the head".

While other teenage girls were having slumber parties and painting their nails and doing all sorts of really cool stuff like having fashion shows with fashionable ensembles and things... the Musher preferred to stay home and recreate the Serum Run in her room with her "team".

According to Grandmom, she wore out the carpet in her room circling it 1,149 times every year.

It came as no surprise that most of the Musher's friends were the little chipmunks that lived around their Ontario cottage, but she had to bribe them with chocolate chip cookies and watch them come running when she called "here chippy chippy".

Things seemed to even out in her adult years.  She met Musher Mark and owned a camera store and seemed to be acclimating herself to the real world very well (and from what I hear, she actually wore dresses and pretty things too).  Then one day Musher Mark had a job offer in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and bribed the Musher to leave Calgary with a real sled dog... but it couldn't just be ANY sled dog, it had to be a PRETTY sled dog.

Libby

So, that's when Libby joined the family.  Libby gave birth to Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie and they became the Musher's very first sled dog team!

Alpha (Allie)

Bravo

Charlie

Their first "race" was a mile around their Grande Prairie subdivision.

Soon after that, the mushing and show dog bug had taken hold, but there was no way to hold down full time jobs and do what they loved, so the family said good-bye to the big city and moved to North Wapiti... and the rest is history!

A bazillion shows, a bazillion sled dog races, and 10 Iditarods later, she's still very tough on herself and demands she push herself to the limit, but she's a big smoosh when it comes to her Pretty Sled Dogs... and me, and Cricket, and Musher Mark... but not the cats... the cats are Musher Mark's.  She'll fight off big stompy mooses and swim the oceans for us all.

She's a role model, a good friend, a philanthropist, a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board, a good laugh to share, a mentor, and an inspiration.

Happy Birthday Musher!

Proud to be a member of North Wapiti and the Musher's freak.

- Bet
(and the Pretty Curly Tails, Cricket, those cats, Musher Minions, and Richard)