A New Record??

I think we might have set a record in the yard yesterday - we hooked up and ran 9 teams. Now this wasn't like the Fall Warm Up Weekend where we have numerous mushers here running their own teams, this was all teams from here hooked up and run out of the yard! It was a blast.

To start out I took 8 main string dogs, my friend Lisa was riding in the sled basket (as we still don't have enough snow to safely hook down 8 dogs), and Colleen was following with a 4 dog team.

My first 8 dog team - Togo, Q, Crunch, Jr, Barq, Wolvie, Bingo and Wonder.

Colleen with Holly, Olena, Loki and Shooter

Next up, I took out Dasher, X, Watt, Charge, Boom, Flash, Rocket and Jinx with Chris as a passenger

and Lisa came along with Moses, Odie, Banshee and Casey.

(BTW - it was Lisa's first time driving a team - you can read about her thoughts on it at her blogspot - http://tailsfromthedarkside.blogspot.com/)

After a quick break for lunch and a swap of 'handlers' (Lisa headed home to play with her border collies and sheep and the Gabi and Anna dropped by) we were on the trails again.

My third team of the day - Tess, Spider, Isis, Sprite, Wifi, Newt, Fritz and Herman

This time it was Chris's turn to come along. He had Runner, Hector, Minto and Trigger along with him.

For my last run we decided to add some real excitment to the mix and took Kim, Kelly and Colleen's Twizzy (littermate to Turtle, Peeps, Smartie and Chiclet) out for their first run.

Unfortunately, by this time it was getting pretty dark for pictures - and I was alittle too preoccupied with the puppies anyway - but my team was Dasher, Jinx, Charge, Togo, Kim, Kelly, Twizzy and Colleen's Sparky (littermate to Charge, Watt and Tess). Gabi was following with Moses, Odie, Comet and Xena.

Kim took off with no hesitation, Kelly was a bit timid and Twizzy was rather convinced that this was not something she wanted any part of. I had originally put Sparky beside Twiz so she had someone she knew next to her, but Sparky was not impressed with his 1/2 sister's tentativeness and started getting in her face, so we stopped and swapped Comet from Gabi's team with Sparky. That worked much better and in no time Twizzy was pulling like a demon.

By the time we got back in the yard, all 3 pups were hard in their harnesses and doing great.

We wrapped up the day by sending Anna off with Olena, Irving and Runner. She had a fast, fun run in the dark.

With 5 people helping, we knocked off the evening's feeding quickly before heading to the house for homemade turkey soup and bannock.

My kind of day!!!

Of course there are more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/northwapiti/December272008

Karen