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| Betty and Turbo in lead |
We took off somewhere around 8pm on a roughly 100 mile camping trip with the dogs. I have a 14 dog team, with Betty and Turbo in lead. We camped on the Susitna River around 2am, fed the dogs soaked kible and Eureka Power and then snacked them with lamb and tripe. As for the mushers, I dined on chili and Bob had tuna noodle casserole. Around 3:30, I was able to sleep for about two hours on the straw pile with wheel dogs, Kevin and Chef (who kept me company). We woke up at 5am and got back on the trail. It's dawn, so we have no headlamps now; we shut them off. The dogs are doing fantastic. We've been enjoying our snack bags that were prepared by Amy from Georgia – one of our sponsors – who sent us each a box full of snacks for the trail. We had some extras, so we're using them on our training runs. We shipped the rest of those snacks out in our drop bags and will enjoy them while on the Iditarod.
Drinking tea and enjoying a snack while waiting for the cooker to melt snow and bring the water to a boil. I put my food saver sealed meal pouch into the water to heat. Then I fish it out and enjoy! When the water is boiling I will pour it over the frozen meat that is in the cooler. I will then put the lid on it and let it thaw. Then I add the kibble and feed the dogs.
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| Kevin, Chef and Jan |
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| Bob's Team |
It's been snowing the whole time, and the dogs have been breaking trail and working hard. We have not seen one dog team, we've seen no snow machines, no dog teams... nobody. It's just Bob's team and my team.
Check out my website, www.jansteves.com, for more about the dog team, my sponsors and much more!
The information in this post was transcribed from a live phone call with Jan from the trail. Transcription and blog administration are courtesy of Kate MG and Andrew W.
Photos were added after Jan returned to the kennel.
Hey Jan -
ReplyDeleteHow are the dogs looking? Are some of them the same dogs that you ran with last year? I know you mentioned earlier you were having to develop new leaders, how is that going?
- Claudia
Dogs are doing well. I have not yet selected my Iditarod team yet...however, I only have 19 dogs to choose from, so most will go. I have 7 of my dogs from last year, plus 3 of my dogs who didn't make the team last year. I am running 5 of Bob's dogs who were on his team from last year. In addition to that I have been training 6 new dogs, 4 of them are leaders. Tok is retired and he was one of my leaders. I think that as a whole, my leaders were better last year and far more experienced. We will have to see how these guys and gals do.
ReplyDelete