Clips and Fids, or what to do on the last day of the year

Two of the dogs live inside full-time.

Guy (in front) because he's an oldster: I've had him for ten years, and he was about one when I adopted him from the animal shelter.  And Scout because she's Scout, and she is the apple of my husband's eye.  The other four dogs live outside all together in a pen, but come in at night when it's colder than -25.

Scout is visiting her family here.

When Scout and Guy go O-U-T, they get clipped to either the truck or the pen, so we had two leashes with snaps at both ends for this purpose.  Guy has never been a chewer of forbidden items, but Scout occasionally has lapses in judgment that result in a hole in my blanket or little pieces of tissue all over the floor.  A few weeks ago, Scout got impatient about being clipped to the truck and chewed through her leash, so I decided to make a new one.

I pulled out my line-making and harness-repair box:

I took one poly rope end:

and turned it into this:

like this:

The pencil-like metal thing is hollow and called a fid, and helps feed the rope end through the poly rope.

I put a handle in addition to a clip on the other end:

And I was done!

Then I made another one:

They work great, but it's too cold and dark now to take a picture of them in action, so I shall post one later.  In the meantime, it is New Year's Eve, so in honor of new beginnings, here are some pictures of the first time I ever stepped onto a dog sled:

This was about 14 years ago down in Paxson, Alaska.  It was great fun, and a few years later, I started handling for a distance-racing kennel and learned about working with sled dogs, wrestling with sleds and straw and bags of dog food, making lines, and having a sense of humor.

Happy New Year from all of us at Sally's Home for Wayward Huskies, and best wishes for a happy and productive 2012.

明けましておめでとうございます。

Who is Sally?

Winter solstice 1999 coincided with not just a full moon but, as I heard on the radio, an extra-bright full moon because of some celestial coincidences.  Not being a moon-brightness connoisseur, I didn't notice anything except that the moon was indeed full, that it was awfully bright out when I went out for a walk, and that I'd just adopted a dog.


I hadn't meant to adopt a new dog.  I already had two, an old one and a puppy one, but earlier that day I'd made the mistake of going to the animal shelter to drop off some food that the old one didn't eat anymore and the puppy one wasn't ready for.  There was a skinny husky with yellow eyes who looked at me like this:

and I was toast.


The card on her kennel said that she'd been running loose on Farmer's Loop Road, and though she was lactating, they didn't know where her puppies were.  She was malnourished but friendly, about two years old, and if she didn't find a home that day, she would be put down that night.


So, she came home with me.


Sally was a singular creature.  She always had the best spot in the house (the green ear in the top photo is from the shelter's post-tattoo antiseptic smear).

She liked to run (on the right, with Kobi)

but not too much.

She did enjoy having a job to do.  (I published this photo of her when I was managing editor of a certain magazine of dog-powered sports.)

She was the only dog of mine who really knew how to line out

which she learned from a former Quest dog named Sam (Sally's in lead on the right).

All the Wayward Huskies were in thrall of her.  She was a bully, she was lazy, she ate like a vacuum cleaner, and she was the happiest creature I've ever known.


Sally passed away in February 2010, but unfortunately, she might've had too much influence on one Wayward Husky in particular.  Here, Cricket is punching her brother Delroy.  If Sally had ever deigned to notice other dogs, she might've punched them too.

This is a photo of Sally's last run, on the day before 2010 began.  We had some guests from Japan and took them out on the sled.

Sally was not a good dog.  She knew how to sit and shake and lie down, but didn't see the need to keep proving it.  She rarely ever came when I called her, and even at the end of her life, sick and very weak, she used up all her strength walking wherever she wanted to and I had to go and get her and carry her all the way back to the house.  She smiled all the while.


Who is Sally?  Sally is the original Wayward Husky.

Reasons for November

There's a poem called "Reasons to Survive November" that you can listen to here, which inspired me some years ago to write a poem called "Reasons for November" about my own battle with the terrible eleventh month of the year.  The end of Daylight Savings this year came out of the blue for me, but then I think it does every year, too.  I blink, and all of a sudden it's really, really dark and cold out there.  I have a light box at work that I try to use all winter, but it's been so busy there lately that I've been forgetting to turn it on.  Which is all to say, it's been a while since I posted.

But never fear!  I haven't been hibernating the days away, as much as I would have liked to.  An exciting new development here at Wayward Huskies is the purchase of a fat bike:

The car you see in the back is to be sold to pay for the bike.  Anyone need a front-wheel drive Corolla with battery issues and fantastic winter tires?

Why have such a ridiculous-looking bicycle, you ask.  Well, let me explain.  Those fat-fat tires are great for floating on top of snow, and also on top of not-yet-very-snowy trails.  Up until now, I've been riding my LHT with studded tires in the wintertime, but that involved a lot of sweating and cursing in anything but packed snow.  With this, I'm able to just coast over it all like a dream--the wide tires make it very stable.  Also, it's great for bikejoring:

Bikejoring is a great way to work on commands, and Beenie did fantastic.  We met a few other dogs on the trail, and once he stopped to say hi to a really fluffy buggy, and another time he just went right on-by a two-dog skijoring team.  He did so great that I decided to bring him inside to sleep.  I left him alone for about five minutes, though, and I think he wanted to learn how to build birdhouses:

When I told him that books are for reading and not for chewing on, he felt very bad:

In addition to snow-biking, I've been doing some maintenance.  For example, I came home from work one day and found Delroy with no collar.  All that was left was an O-ring and this:

I believe that Cricket ate the rest of his collar, but I never did find evidence of that; of course, it may be that collars are highly-digestible.  Also, the s-hooks I'd used to attach everyone's tags were not up to the challenge of a Wayward Husky, and almost everyone's name tag had fallen off, leaving just a sad, lonely rabies tag.  Guy's s-hook had snapped clean in half at one point--I never did find his tags.  So when the new name tags I'd ordered came in the mail, I took everyone's collar off:

Then I got my tools together, including bigger s-hooks:

And I made one of these for everyone:

Ta-da!

The four oval tags are the puppies' from the Borough rabies clinic.  Ghost Dog's is the blue flowery one; she got her vaccine separately, at the Raven Vet.  So, some time with the s-hook tool later, and we were all set:

I had fixed Guy's collar some time before, which is why his isn't in this picture.

So I was doing stuff in November, but just as with the start of any winter here in Fairbanks, every little thing was so hard to do, and I could barely keep up the bare minimum.  On the plus side, it did snow quite a bit.  However, that meant shoveling the driveway:

We have a long driveway, and you can see the shovel on the left-hand side.  I'm only about a fifth done.  While I was out here, though, I saw a team cross the road on the trail, a six-dog team pulling a sled, and it planted an evil seed in my mind.  Of course, it got dark while I was doing my chores, though I did manage to organize the tarp garage:

And then I thought, it's pretty warm, there's a fair bit of snow, and mushing on the trail is apparently possible.  Maybe I'll go for a run.

At first, I decided to take just four of the dogs, as that would be plenty of power for a first run.  But as I was setting up the gangline, all six were so excited and I thought, I'll take them all.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, it was a pretty white-knuckle ride, and I'm glad that they were a little out of shape.  We tore out of the yard, and I banged my knee when the sled knocked into the tire I'd used to line out the leaders.  But no one else was out, and we sped along like a barely-in-control missile.  It wasn't until we were headed back home that I could let go of the handlebar enough to snap a spooky picture:

That's the moon at the top of the photo, three nights past full.  But below is the raison d'être of Sally's Home for Wayward Huskies.  Terrifying as this first run was, it was also terribly exhilarating, and the dogs and I had fun, despite the fact that it's still November:

Just a typical Saturday

The four-wheeler made its way back home yesterday on the back of a big red truck, with a brand-new blue cord that won't explode when it gets way cold.  But then, it was time to fix something else:

During our last run, I'd gotten everyone hooked up and was about to go when I noticed that Beenie was sproinging around attached just by his neckline.  Either Scout or he, and I strongly suspect he, had chewed through the tug of his harness.  That time, I'd just attached the gangline to the D-ring on his harness, but I needed to re-attach a tug.  

So I bought some cord, and burned the ends of a length of it.

Done!

Scout models the newly-fixed tug.  Guy is non-plussed.

Brother Beenie's harness is much too big for her.  It's a ManMat distance harness I picked up last winter at our favorite store.  He'd outgrown the hot pink one he'd been wearing as a puppy, and I wanted to give this kind a try.  It's designed to put less strain on a dog's back, though we don't go for distances long enough for that to matter really.  It is a breeze to get him in and out of it, and when I need to replace anyone else's harness, I'll likely go with it again.

So this morning, we went out for a run.  Scout is effectively hiding Beenie's harness and new tug in this photo, but you can just see the yellow peeking out over the top of her.  Behind them are the oldsters, Guy and Ghost Dog.  Everyone else has traditional x-back harnesses.

Off we go!  That's Delroy and Cricket in wheel.

It was cold this morning!  About 3 degrees when I first went out, which isn't really that cold, but my hands were chilled soon enough.  Thank goodness for heated handlebars on the four-wheeler.

The run was just the way I like them: uneventful.  With the four-wheeler, we run on the road, but luckily everyone who lives near here drives like a sane person, for the most part.  We did do a head-on pass with a Land Cruiser full of hippies (not an unusual sight on our road), but they slowed way down for us and we went past without undue fuss.

We got back and breakfasted--soaked kibble for them, toast and egg for me--and went about our Saturday.  Which means husky-curl naps for them, and housecleaning for me.

But before I could clean, I had to read some more of this book:

It's so good!  As you can see, I got it from our local bookstore, using up a tiny fraction of my indefatigable used-book credit.  Just when I think things can't get any worse for Jurgis, his world collapses around him and he's plunged into further misery.  Yeesh. 


Reading about wage slavery, though, I suppose makes me grateful to have a weekend, and I best get around to tidying the past week's indiscretions (unfolded laundry, dirty dishes, unswept floor, etc., etc., etc.).  Also must re-fill bird feeders.  Onward!

Waiting for (more) snow

27 October 2011. An auspicious day to start a blog? I guess we'll see.

It has snowed here in Fairbanks. Skiers are out on their rock skis, and I've even seen a four-dog team on the road already. But there's not nearly enough snow to anchor a hook, and as out-of-hand as the dogs are right now, I would definitely need that hook. Come to think of it, the sled's not really ready yet, either. I took the pad off this summer to try to figure out a better way to attach it, and then didn't get around to figuring it out. So I'll probably put it back on the way I had it last winter, and deal with the same annoyance (to whit, the cords get caught on the brake). I also need to modify the pad a bit by putting bolts through it, to create even more drag.

Let me tell you about my team. All of them are rescues, and all of them are fixed. Four of them are littermates, and one of them is their mother. Three of them are boys, three of them are girls. I love them all to pieces.

The four-wheeler is getting winterized (again, but for real this time), so that's out until either (a) it comes back from the shop, or (b) we get a bunch of snow. Unfortunately, (a) is looking more likely at the moment.

So we wait, and in the meantime, life goes on. I go to work, the dogs dream of kibble. There's enough snow to make for sketchy driving, not enough to have fun. Halloween is right around the corner, and I hope that Interior Alaska decides to dress up as a winter wonderland.