One Of 'Those' Mornings....

So nothing horrible went wrong this morning, but it was one of those very frustrating, make you want to bang your head on a tree, kind of runs.

Well, maybe this tree disagrees with me that 'nothing horrible went wrong this morning'.

It got ripped out by it's roots after Xena wrapped her tug line around it a couple times.

I've long said that these runs are an important part of training for a number of reasons. First off, they make you appreciate the good runs when they happen, but probably more importantly, there is more training going on in one run like this morning then all the good runs added together for the season. And lastly, it is important for dogs and mushers alike to learn to work through stress. If the only time you ever end up in stressful situations is on a race (and there is usually stressful situations lurking in every race you run!) you will not deal with them well.
Create controlled but stressful situations throughout your training (and see them successfully through every time) and nothing will throw you off your game on race day!

A big part of the issue this morning was my doing in the selection of the team -

Runner is a fantastic leader, but he's not good at training young dogs, so paring him with Turtle was bound to create 'training situations'.
I also had a fair number of inexperienced dogs in the team.

The run had more then it's fair share of tangles, backwards dogs, and such but it didn't really go south until I attempted to go right through the dog yard at the end of the run.
Actually, going past the water buckets on the dog houses is proving to be one of the hardest things with my 'no neckline' experiment, so any time we come into the yard it is a bit of a zoo lately.
A lot of sweat, some nasty vocabulary (hope I didn't teach Corrine any new words), and a fair amount of 'dog tossing' (untangling and unceremoniously putting them back where they need to be) got us going again but the Explosions blew that in a hurry when they all scrambled to the fence to watch the team go by.
Another bout of sweat, swearing and 'dog tossing' (as well as pulling the afore - pictured tree out of the gangline) - and doing up some necklines got the circus underway again.

I was very glad to see the last of them put back onto their chains! PHEW!! I was filthy, stinky, and had a killer headache by the time that happened though.

Corrine restored her 'inner peace' with a good scooter run with Sprite and Isis...

And I restored mine with a good puppy run...

....and a great cup of coffee!!