Back to the training. Welcome to winter of 2011/2012

Well Rachel was hard at it all summer long. Rachel and the dogs ran together all summer. Did not hook up dogs in harness. Rather Rachel ran the dogs in our kennel loose. The dogs all follow her on the four wheeler. This means that Rachel can take them for a six mile run if she wants too. That is what she did. Ran them up to six miles. Rachel ran them lots. Too bad we never kept a journal on the miles that the dogs accumulated during their summer runs.
In all my time around dogs and dog training I never have scene dogs in such great shape. We free ran before. I have scene dogs in as good shape at the beginning of the season but never like this. We fed meat all year as well. Rachel also ran them lots of 4 and 6 mile runs. These dogs look better now than they did at the end of last season.
My philosophy with free running is exercise the same muscle you would use for sprint/speed mushing. There is only one way to do this Okay maybe two ways. One is to swim them in water. the other way is to let them run. But only free as you cannot be hooking up the dogs to a four wheeler and have them pull hard in the heat of summer. Sure way to teach dogs to slow down. That is all it does is make them work hard enough to get hot.
When you look at the dogs they look right. the form is right, the muscle development looks right. They run nice at the end of summer and after they get put back into harness. Rachel did her second run on her sled. When she went on that run I told her to let the dogs run just easy. Then find out how fast she is going. This is to find the basic pace of the team. You need to know this to be able to help train the team. The basic pace was right around 19 mph. That is what her teams basic pace was. Normally this speed would be 16.5-18 mph. I could not believe it. This is great news but we need to keep this speed up in the team. I am very happy to have learned this.
We are now getting ready to leave again to go to Alaska. We will race as many races as we can and Leanne will also race Rachel's dog team to keep it sharp while there is opportunity to do so.

I am not home at the moment so I keep in touch via email or text. Rachel trained today but was not sure about the trail. It was snowing and blowing. She went out and ran two teams in this kind of condition and did well. Thanks for your help Matt.

We need to also thank all the sponsors that came on board again.

Thanks to Ernie and Kim Doble. They are the owners of Supreme Diesel in Sexsmith alberta. They are really great people and enjoy visiting when I can.
Also thanks to Nigel stubbins at Paint en place. Nigel has to be the longest participating sponsor we have ever had. He has been with us for years to help us get to races Thanks again to Nigel for another year of sponsoring.
We hope to get Arctic backhoe. and a few more businesses in town.

We are excited to be back on the road . The dog truck is just about on the truck. IT won' t be long and it will be ready to go again for another year. So exciting to get the dogs on the road again. Rachel will be training primarily for the Arctic Winter games.
I will try and keep up to what is going on this season. Last year I had website and blog problems. Until next time
DK