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.