PUPPIES PUPPIES PUPPIES...

Tuesday, December 29th.

Another beautiful day in the swamp...I was on a high from my two runs yesterday. They were great. Tok is an awesome leader and he proved it yesterday.

Today, the plan was to put on some miles. I was hoping to run the "A" team for 40miles. We were doing great and just had completed Lost Lady Loop and we were on our way back. Up ahead of me I saw a snowmachine coming and then I notice all of the puppies. Oh no...as I flashed back to last year and my puppy encounter. These guys were older dogs, about 8 month olds. The were full of themselves and so full of energy. They ran right into my team and were wanting to play with my leaders. Ned was so distracted by the puppies that it was all I could do to keep them going.

The handler tried calling the puppies, but they were not going to stop following my team. I went aways and then stopped and waited for the handler to come and try and retrieve her dogs. No handler. This was getting rather frustrating. I had puppies jumping at my wheel dogs, puppies running in front of my leaders and stopping. I had puppies in the middle of the team. Oh my, this was not what I had planned. We ended up with 6 puppies who followed me about 8 miles.

When we left the swamp and was on the trail out to the kennel, I saw Mary with a team coming at me. I thought that this wasn't a good thing and it wasn't. She ended up with the puppies in her team and her sled hit my wheel dog Spot. She couldn't figure out what was going on...why would I be running loose dogs??? Well, I went on to the kennel. I realized that I only had 2 puppies with me...she had picked up 4 of them. When I got to the kennel, I hooked my team down and jumped on the snowmachine to help her. I thought that maybe the puppies would follow me rather than be messing with her sprint team.

By the time I got there, her husband was there on his snowmachine and he told me that the handler picked up the four dogs and was looking for the two lost dogs. It ended up that they were on the trail to my kennel. Shortly afterwards, Susan showed up looking for their dogs. Happy to say that the puppies are all accounted for and safely back at their kennel I sure hope that I don't encounter them again on the trail.