September 7th, 2007 Fall Training Run

http://picasaweb.google.com/northwapiti/RunSeptember7 (Photos)

I love fall!! It is such a wonderful time of year!!!

Last night we changed the sheets on the bed back to flannel – well, upgraded flannel – microfibre sheets. They are so cozy!! The temperature was dropping quickly – down to 5 C as we went to bed - and crawling into those sheets was wonderful. I slept so soundly!!

Mark’s alarm goes off at 4:30 and I don’t even remember him getting up. I did manage to drag myself out of my cocoon around 5:30, when my alarm goes off.

I made coffee, caught up on a few emails, figured out a team for the day and started a load of laundry before Mike stumbled up to the house (yup, he is still here!) at about 6:30. We chatted and generally stalled for a bit before rolling out of the house at 7.

Once out the door there is no more dragging. The dogs know the routine and their excited anticipation of the upcoming run is contagious.

It rained hard overnight and I had to take time to dry off the seat of the quad before moving it up to the dog yard, running out lines and starting to select dogs from the yard.

First Q and Charge – today’s leaders; then Batdog and Hector; super enthusiastic Jinx and Sprite; Xena and chubby little Roary (I swear that dog could live on 4 kibbles per week); followed by handsome Wolvie and most Xcellent X; Herman and obnoxious Nitro; and last but never least, Irving and Boom.

I laid out harnesses and got everyone ‘dressed’.

Q held the line out like a pro while I corrected Charge 400 times for not staying ‘up front’ – leader training can be very tedious. Finally the big nerd got the idea and kept his feet planted while I hooked up the rest of the lot.

Nitro got reprimanded for grabbing X by the tail as I walked him over to the gangline. This is a new hobby of Nitro’s and one that MUST end quickly.

Just as I was hooking up Boom, the last critter for the day, Mike’s team rounded the corner coming up from the bottom of the yard – or Carmichael Meadow, as it is called at this time of year.

The previous night’s rain and the cold temperature (1C) had highlighted all the spider webs in the woods. It was gorgeous, but rather bothersome to think of the all the spiders that represented!

When we finally climbed the hill on the driveway out of the valley a glance over my shoulder revealed nothing. The heavy fog completely enveloped our section of the valley. 

A few neighbors honked as Mike and my teams worked their way along the freshly mowed highway ditch.

The dogs roared down the hill back into the valley. Charge checked out the girls back in the middle of the team while I was unlocking the gate to get us into the grazing lease next door. When I sharply called his name he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

We whipped along the Riverbank Trail and then over to Beaver’s Gully, where I discovered that the darn beavers dropped a big tree over the trail.

It was not completely detached from the stump, so I couldn’t move it. It was too big to get the quad over and the trail was too tight to turn everyone around unless I REALLY had to. Mike had taken a shorter route home and that meant no backup so I scouted out a path through the trees that would allow me to bump over the fallen tree where it was smaller.

Charge was really not ready to lead us on a bushwhacking expedition, but Q seemed to figure out what I was up to without too much trouble. A few small saplings were sacrificed in the process, but otherwise our detour worked well.

I handed out fish to all, including Kara and Fly, who always show up as soon I start snacking

We did our ‘long’ ‘go around’ loop, scaring a beautiful pilated woodpecker out of the woods, before calling it a morning.

I love fall!

Karen

September 4th, 2007 Fall Warm-Up Weekend (By Jeff deGreeff)

Hi everyone,

I just had to share my experiences of one of the most exhilarating weekends I have had in a while.  Actually, I have had a lot of wonderful working-Samoyed weekends this summer but this one tops it!  Karen Ramstead, a purebred Siberian Iditarod racer, had a fall training warm-up weekend this Labor Day long weekend and she invited people to head up to her place for a fun weekend of food, learning and of course, mushing training!  It was an absolutely wonderful weekend!

I learned so much this weekend and it was great to see so many fantastic teams there with such wonderful mushers!  Karen was an incredible hostess and I have no idea how she can handle 29 people and kids running her dogs - yes she allowed us all to take her Iditarod-class dogs out with a scooter - training with her own teams, entertaining, cooking, 90 additional dogs not including 65 of her own, playing with her puppies (she has three litters on the ground right now) and still staying sane!  She was truly an amazing woman and hostess!  Actually, her husband Mark deserves a lot of credit too since it is very cool how he supports her "habit" so wonderfully with all the work he does with the dogs and all the cooking he did in addition to what Karen did.

There were two definite highlights for me.  The first that I wanted to share was that I had the opportunity to ride an ATV along while Karen worked with her puppy team.  That was an excellent experience.  I was able to watch how she worked with her young puppies, helped them through their problems, put them in situations so that they could work through them and just watch how she interacted with her dogs.  I was amazed at their power and strength, even though it was only a short fall training run, it was still incredible to see them at work - even if they were not Samoyed!

The other highlight was the privilege to run Nakoda with a true Iditarod sled dog!  Karen was kind enough and trustful enough to allow me to hook up Nakoda with one of her dogs, Holly (hopefully I spelled that right).  I have had a lot of fun working with dogs from around our area last winter but it has soured Nakoda a little bit.  Well, this was just a fantastic experience for Nakoda and I think she enjoyed the privilege as much as I did.  I have never, ever seen her run in harness like that before and I am not sure if it was the lack of experience of the dogs that normally run with her, the difference in structure or fitness levels of the Sammies she normally runs with or what but she absolutely flew!!!  It was breathtaking for me!  I went back on my GPS readings this morning and we had readings over 20 mph - maybe normal for a Sibe but pretty good for a Sammy from what I have heard.  I am even more excited by the fact that there were only two dogs pulling the scooter on a soft, sandy trail with lots of moderate hills and I had the brakes on for most of the run!  We ended up doing just under 2 miles with an average speed of about 6 mph including two breaks and a wrong turn.  Throughout the entire run, there were only 3 times that I had to put on the brakes a little more to get Nakoda's tug line tight but then, I had to do it a couple of times for Holly too.  It was just an absolutely awesome experience for Nakoda and me!!!!

As another fun note, it was definitely interesting to have the only Samoyed there out of 155 dogs present.  There were Alaskans, Mal's and Sibe's as well.  I would guess that about 90% were Siberians with about 4 or five Malamutes, my little Nakoda and the rest being Alaskans.  I actually ended up running Nakoda with Sibe's all weekend just to make things fun for her since since that was a major goal of mine for the two of us.  I found it to be a very good match but the real cool thing about this was to be able to observe the difference in how these two breed of dogs is built.  I am always trying to learn and it was fun to see how a Siberian goes from a trot to a lope and then a full run while a Samoyed goes from a trot to a run.  It was also cool to see Nakoda keep up to a loping Siberian while she was still trotting - I hadn't thought that would be possible until I saw it with the two running ahead of me.  Obviously, when Holly or the other Sibe Nakoda ran with the rest of the weekend, picked up the pace, Nakoda would go into a full run but it was pretty cool to see how well matched she was with the Sibes she ran with.

Anyway, hopefully this tempts your ambitions in the future and maybe we'll see some of you out this way next year - so I won't be the only Samoyed owner there!  I saw quite a few large teams there (more than half a dozen dogs in a team) and everyone was absolutely wonderful.  Every single musher I spoke with was very encouraging to me, even though I had and "odd" breed there.  Every single team was great, some still learning but still very good as far as teams I have seen goes.  The gamut of mushers ranged from kids and people just doing it for fun to the professional mushers and all were just as friendly and helpful as the next.  I can't recommend this weekend highly enough as a great kick off to fall training!

I hope all of you have a wonderful fall and have fun working with your Samoyeds!

Dave

September 4th, 2007 Fall Warm-Up Weekend

(By Rhonda Surmon)

Hi everyone.

I know I told lots of you that I was going out to my Karen Ramstead's place on the long weekend.  Here are some pictures from her open house.  It was so fun! I even got to ride on the ATV behind the dogs.  I even got to help handle a few...though I'm sure Karen won't be calling me to help with the Iditarod race anytime soon.  :-)  ... those dogs are STRONG when they are excited!!  Anyway, it was very fun!!!  Here are the pictures;

http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/shared/19911/zwb4c6hl7rpndv2

August 22, 2007 NorthWapiti Lines In Obedience (Brag)

- By Jackie Wepruk

I would like to take an opportunity to brag about some of our boys, which have close ties with Northwapiti, and show just how diversely talented these lines are. A few weeks back Triton (Tucoldturain's Triton - GroverxKadie) and Hugi (Northwapiti Tucoldturain Hugi CDX CGN APDT Rally Level 1 - StikerxBreezy) were each entered in Rally Obedience trials.

Rally obedience is a relatively new sport with trials through the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT), and very recently starting through the Canadian Kennel Club. If you want to learn more the APDT website is a good resource (www.apdt.com). There is another association - CARO - that also hosts trials.

Hugi was entered in the first ever CKC rally trial in Alberta. He received a perfect score of 100. There were a few perfect scores, so 1st place was determined by fastest time. Hugi did not have as fast a time as the 1st place dog, and other placings were not given out. However, Hugi now has one leg toward his Novice Rally title with CKC. Hugi is a sibling to Kara, Lokie and Odie.

The star was Triton, who was entered in two APDT Rally trials the same weekend and walked away with 2 High in Trials. A perfect score in APDT rally is 210. His first round was a 206. His second round - a 207, could have been perfect except for me! The last exercise is a bonus one for 10 points. Triton did it perfectly, but in my enthusiasm, I released him before putting his leash back on - 3 point deduction. Triton is a Grover son (which automatically makes him special).

The judge for Triton's second round is a gal who has been working with Karen & Dasher in rally obedience. So, I issued a 'challenge' to Karen through our judge that I want to see her in the rally ring. :-) It's public now,
Karen...vbg.

Jackie Wepruk
Tucoldturain Siberians
http://users.xplornet.com/~tucoldturain/index.html

August 21, 2007 My Trip To NorthWapiti

- By Mary Uhlir

I have just returned from a visit to North Wapiti and had the express instructions from Karen to write a diary entry. Those of you who know me know that I am not much of a writer, but here goes anyway.

I haven’t been to Canada since I was a little girl. The first thing I noted on the drive from Calgary north was how clean Canada is. I’d heard that from other people but it was so nice to see. I was also amazed at how clean and organized everything was at North Wapiti.

Karen does such a great job with her diary entries that I felt that I knew many of the dogs even before I met them. Kind of like Karen, too. During the kennel tour I could recognize many of the dogs although, I’m still not sure I have all their names correct. Here at home I scoop what I consider a lot of poop so I never thought that I would enjoy scooping poop so much, especially so much poop. But it really gave me a chance to meet the dogs in a relaxed manner. During the initial kennel tour, Nate was so excited that you could see his whole body quivering. Later on, while I was cleaning up, he was still high energy but much easier to be around, which is saying quite a bit about Nate.

Poor Kara. She must really have wondered about this visitor. At least the princess showed benevolence. Years ago I had a good friend who had a dog named Cara, as in cara, mia. So each time I said her name Cara came out automatically to be self corrected with Kara. I am sure she had no idea why I consistently called her Cara Kara. But, as any good monarch she just smiled and carried on.

Kara’s puppies are 8 weeks old and Karen was bemoaning the fact that she still wanted to nurse them so she was keeping her out of their pen for awhile. Later on Karen and I were in the next pen playing with the Hillbillies and we see Kara holding a dead mouse in her mouth and circling the pen trying to find some way to get it to her “starving” puppies. Did she learn that from Bait?

On my last day, it appeared that she was beginning to think this nursing thing was getting old. She went into the puppy pen and stood on a support half way up the side of an “A” frame thinking that she could see the puppies but they couldn’t nurse. It worked for a few moments and then those smart puppies figured it out. I did get some pictures and hopefully you’ll be able to see them. Just pretend not to notice her rather sad coat. Even princesses blow after a litter.

Fly’s hair is growing out and he is looking quite handsome. Cricket is a sweetie with a huge Great Pyrenees head and large feet. I think I remember at one point when I asked Karen how Cricket was working out she said that Cricket “appears to be a Siberian in big, white hairy clothing”. Well I don’t think she can say that any more. On Thursday morning, quite early I heard that wild screaming of Siberians, not the usual group howl or bark of anticipation or interest, it was “the scream”. It quieted down quite quickly so I gathered either Mark or Karen had intervened. Well, it turns out that somehow a very fat muskrat had gotten into Cricket’s pen. It must have really wanted in as I had no idea they could squeeze through such small openings. The screaming seems to have been disgusted Siberians. The muskrat was dead but still whole. Any self respecting Siberian would have eaten it before it could be removed. In the light the next morning, I noticed that both Olena and Kluane in the adjoining pens had tried to dig into Cricket’s pen. I’m sure to eliminate all traces of the offending vermin.

The first morning it was cold enough for me to tag along on a training run. What an experience to sit behind Karen on the ATV with 14 athletes out ahead. They are awe inspiring, and it’s just the very beginning of the season. I run a small team here in Tucson and like to pat myself on the back for doing that. I’m always telling people that they have to run their dogs to really see their strengths and weaknesses, and how form affects function. But there is no comparison. What a fantastic experience.

A friend of mine, who has had Siberians for 30 years and is an AKC judge, met Karen for the first time in PA. He said ”I thought I knew a little bit about Siberians, but after meeting Karen I realize how little that actually is.” How true. The best part of the entire visit was being able to discuss all aspects of Siberians with such a knowledgeable and caring person.

- Photos from Mary's Trip -

Barq		Camilla
Bongo		Charge
Crunchie		Hilda
Irving			Moses
Paxson		Shooter
Barq & Irving		Nate
Nik		Loki
Kara & her pups
Togo
Newt	Xena	Trigger

August 20, 2007 The Life of Kara

At the request of my very spoiled lead dog, I thought that I'd take a few moments to update everyone on 'The Trials and Tribulations of Kara'.

First off, I don't think I mentioned the stress we took out of Kara's life last fall. During the process of a few house renovations we had the smoke detector moved to a spot 'away' from the kitchen (our house is little, it isn't really 'away' from the kitchen - just not as close as before). It took months to convince Kara that my cooking and burning things was no longer going to cause the evil box to squeal. In fact, it was has only been the last month or so that she has relaxed to the point that now she heads INTO the kitchen to see if their might be any scraps for her when I'm in there rather then running for the screen door!

Life was good in Kara's world - then came The White Monster aka Cricket. Now Cricket has settled wonderfully into our family and is day-by-day turning more and more into a viable 'replacement' for Fly in the dogyard. She plays with all the dogs in the yard, walks nicely with puppies and loves Fly - she does, however, hate Kara. When you weigh 38 lbs - as Kara does - having a 90 + lb enemy is not good - even if you have the backing of your Mom and Dad.

There have been 2 incidents between Kara and Cricket. Both happened in front of me and were VERY quickly stopped. Kara had no injuries other then slobber on her fur, bruised pride and a crushed ego. There was no doubt that she was simply appalled that this had happened to her. It had just never occurred to her before that anyTHING would DREAM of actually attacking her.

Of course, there is nothing amusing about the incidents. We understand the dynamics that are creating this situation - we are treating it seriously and are actively working getting the two of them past this - but that is not what this entry is about.

What it is about and what is amusing is Kara's reaction to all this.

First off, you must remember that Kara is buck-naked after having her litter a few months ago. She has virtually no undercoat, just some scraggly guard hairs, so when she lifts the hackles on her neck and butt every time she sees Cricket, she looks much like Pumba, the Warthog in the Lion King. It's very hard not to giggle at her, but the killer looks she shoots me when I call her Pumba do stop me in my tracks.

It took a bit, but she has regained her confidence in the dog yard and, with hackles raised, trots back and forth from the house to visit her babies (who are still not entirely weaned). However, when she is in the house and Cricket is loose in the yard, Kara insists on remaining out of sight of all windows and doors. That limits her to my office, the bathroom and our bedroom. Watching her sneak from room to room is like watching an episode of 'Mission:Impossible'. Dund. dund, dund, dund..

Now, in order for the world to be in balance, if Kara has this added stress in her life, there must also be something good happening to her - and there is. It came in the form of the 'cat door' Mark installed in our screen door off the living room. Now, it is well known that Kara only tolerates the cats (or that is the official 'position') so how could a door allowing the cats to come and go at will bring so much joy to her life??

Well, I believe I mentioned in an earlier entry that Bait had begun bringing dead and partially dead things through the door and into the house. So now, the cat door has become some kind of special 'Special Delivery' window for Kara.

I'm not sure whether Bait is intentionally giving his kills to Kara - or whether she just takes them, but the pattern is now (on occasions that I foolishly leave the sliding door open when not in the room to enforce inspections when the cats come in) that I will hear the cat door flick, there will be a flurry of feet and toenails clicking on the floor, and then Kara will trot into my office smacking her lips.

The result is that Kara is quickly regaining the weight she lost nursing her puppies. I'm not sure I recommend the 'Bait Mouse and Shrew' diet for anyone looking to gain weight, but it is sure working for her - and keeping her happy while we work to resolve her conflict with Cricket!

Karen

August 15, 2007 Roary's Burp

IOkay - first off, let me tell you all, this story has a very happy ending! No need to fear!

Yesterday afternoon I was giving a kennel tour. We were taking our time talking dogs and visiting with each one while we worked our way through the yard - the usual.

When we got up into the bitch section and started to walk over to Roary, she didn't seem all that happy to see us. I asked her what was wrong and she moved away from me to sit down in another section of her area. Not normal at all for our friendly little redhead.

I coaxed her to me and reached down to put my hands on her belly. As I touched her stomach and noticed it was tight as a drum, she let out a yip and moved away from me again. These symptoms are typical of bloat and torsion, very dangerous conditions in dogs. Roary's gum color was very good and she still seemed quite 'bouncy' for a dog to be in critical condition, but we take no chances. I called the vet, who as always, found room in their busy schedule for us and loaded Roary into the van. She was very happy on her walk to the van, but yipped a few more times, especially when I picked her up to load her into her crate. Mark and she headed off to Westlock. 

 

Apparently once they got to Westlock, she yipped again when Mark placed her on the scale. When he got her into the exam room, she let out a big burp as Mark put her on the exam table. When Collin started to go over her, she just stood there and wagged her tail at him. No tenderness in the belly, no tightness, no yipping. His professional opinion - "She had a fart go 'sideways'" - and the burp had fixed her.

Mark paid the bill and drove the 40 minutes back to Perryvale. Roary is a red dog already, but I'm hoping under that red fur she at least had the decency to be blushing about the whole incident!

Karen