Friday 28 November 2014

Harness 'Breaking'

We are in the midst of a true winter storm. Not a 6 feet of snow kinda thing, but a few feet, cold and lots of wind. ATV training on roads in those kind of conditions is not the 'wisest', so I decided to stick down in our sheltered valley and harness break the puppies, Ditto and Carbon!

Let me take a quick 'sideline' - I use the term 'harness breaking' as it is easily understood by people; however I have never had a puppy that had to be 'broken' to harness. All we are doing is honouring the drive and instincts that are deeply ingrained in the puppies.
It NEVER gets old to watch how quickly and easily one of our puppies takes to the whole process.

Puppies on the ready chain.....


Harnesses on....



Into the gangline (last, of course)....



and we are off.....



A bit of praise and loving along the way ....


and by the end of our 3-mile run they were looking like absolute PROS!!!!



And yes, for the record, Ditto was running with her Momma, Molly ...


and Carbon with his Daddy, Todd.


It doesn't 'normally' work that way, but both of these puppies' parents are nice, steady running mates, so it worked very well - and was fun to see!!!

After the pups were taken out of the team, I took the remaining 14 dogs out for another hour, mostly staying down in the valley and breaking a lot of trail!!



Good experiences for all!!!!!

2 comments:

Nancy Hermle said...

Of course the pups are great in harness and will be an excellent addition to the teams. After all their Momma is Molly, and she is excellent at anything she does. Todd is not so bad either.

Mark from Ohio said...

I love watching videos of your dogs pulling! Glad you're getting snow, some places in AK are still complaining of very little snow. Keep well!