Mush, Baby

True confession: While I feel I have made up for my lack of grace with enthusiasm and effort, so far I haven’t been especially coordinated on the skis. I’m not the strongest skier in the world, and a lot of my time up until this point has been spent learning how to turn and how to not be afraid of going over the tiny bridge to Pike Island and to not fall down so much.

Maybe the Loppet infused me with a newfound confidence. Maybe I caught some kind of competence virus or osmosed some skills from the other skijorers. However it happened, the Mush Puppies and I were out earlier this week and I’m feeling a lot more comfortable on the skis. They’re starting to feel a lot less like twin balance beams of precarious doom and a lot more like inoffensive extensions of my body under my own control. And as I get more comfortable, I get more coordinated, smoother, less jerky, and feel myself working better with the dogs instead of being the person who just happens to be skiing and/or getting pulled behind them.

There’s a balance that I’ve struggled to find: If the dogs outpace me, they’re doing all the work; I just stand on those skis, get pulled, and enjoy the ride. If I outpace the dogs, it’s little more than a fancy walk. I admit that we’ve largely erred on the “dogs outpace me” side of that equation, but this week for the first time I felt like we really fell into a coordinated rhythm where we were matching each others’ paces and sharing the work evenly. Part of the difference was the dogs holding a nice steady pace. Part of it was a combination of more confidence in my skiing and actually getting better at skiing. But a large part of it was just…  letting go of the fear of things going wrong,  going too fast or falling or missing a turn or not being perfect.

It didn’t capture well on video, but hopefully at least a little of the difference between previous videos of me mostly riding and this one of me mostly skiing comes through in this short snippet:

It’s hard for me to describe the difference in how it feels, skijoring like this with everything balanced and coming together. It’s a bit like having superpowers; each stride feels like it is drawn out forever, supercharged by the dog power in front of you.  At the same time, it’s a bit like not moving at all. I know it won’t be like this every time, and that’s ok. Because knowing that kind of balance is out there and we’re capable of it gives us something to strive for, to enjoy on the days we achieve it and to remember on the days we don’t.

ps I found this picture of Squash coming in for some pre-race snuggles when I was sifting through my Loppet pictures again. Best boy.

I had a dream on Saturday night that we got 10 inches of snow. When I woke up, I was a bit melancholy because in the light of day, the reality of our weather lately has been a veritable temperature rollercoaster: January thaw followed by January freeze followed by January F-R-E-E-Z-E. Daily highs below zero. Windchills in the double digits below zero. And nothing left on the ground but occasional patches of hard crusty snow and sheets of ice as far as the eye could see.

Little did I know when we started getting freezing rain on Sunday morning that it would soon turn into the sort of large, fluffy snowflakes that make my heart pitter-patter. And that it would keep snowing for hours. And that, judging by what I had to brush of my car today, we would end up with a good 3-ish inches of accumulated snow by the time it was all said and done overnight.

And little did I know that when we went out skijoring this fine Monday morning that we would be the first people on the trail, that the trees would still be gorgeously frosted, that the weather was neither too warm nor too cold, that finding my shorter neckline would make a world of difference in making our starts smoother, that I would make every single turn without either falling or swinging wildly off the trail, that the dogs would be absolutely amazing, that they we would all settle into a nice easygoing pace trotting and skiing together, or that I would have absolutely no documentation of any of this because I forgot to charge the camera battery last night.

Drat.

Tomorrow is another day. The snow is still here. And we can’t be the first ones on the trail again, the trees won’t still be gorgeously frosted, and who knows about the rest. But it’s ok if it isn’t as amazing as today was. Today was full of enough amazing to last me for a good, long time.

I know that most people reading this are probably friends, family, acquaintances, and fellow dog lovers who are either humoring me, like to see pictures of my dogs, just waiting for a train-wreck video, or think I’m completely hilarious. Or possibly genuinely interested and curious about this journey from Alaskan husky acquisition to skijoring. But with a few exceptions most are probably not actually skijorers or other forms of mushers.

The reason I feel a need to acknowledge this right now is that whoever you may be, you are about to watch two short videos. (Unless you for some reason found your way to this blog post and then decided you weren’t actually interested in it.) Two videos that really should be one video because they show consecutive events, but I leaned forward and shut the camera off with my body in between them. Two videos that, because everything went right, are relatively boring. And so I feel a need to explain exactly why you should be impressed by them:

1. That beautiful whoa. That beautiful whoa when a dog is crossing our path ahead of us. Are you kidding me?

2. That beautiful haw, when the dog that just crossed our path is gee.

3. I did not fall on the turn haw.

In fact, I did not fall once today, either by accident or on purpose. Which makes #1 even more impressive, because in the absence of brakes (oh, scooter, how I miss your brakes), prior to today I had to enforce a large percentage of WHOAs by falling to the ground and becoming dead weight. Apparently that kind of practice was exactly what the Mush Puppies needed to re-learn that WHOA is a word they should really pay attention to whether they are in front of a scooter or a skier. (Who knew that flinging yourself to the ground was a valid training technique? Whatever works, I guess.)

And although this is not visible in these short videos, I have one other thing I am proud of today. Usually I try to go early in the morning before there are a lot of other people in the park. Simply because the fewer distractions there are, the easier things are on me, and I like things to be easy. But although I lingered in bed far too long this morning to beat the crowds I decided to go anyway.

Because at some point I have to put away the desire for things to be easy, and instead be fair to my dogs… we are signed up for some skijor fun runs this winter and I can’t expect them to practice in isolation all winter and then show up at an event like that and adjust on the spot. So we need to practice around more distractions, and I need to trust them and their training to be able to handle those distractions. And if the results of practicing the falling WHOA are any indication, I don’t have anything to worry about.

There is a time and place for good judgment. Then there is a time, and that time is after a fresh snowfall and with a dog who needs some exercise, for just doin’ stuff. Stuff like taking Squash skijoring even though I might technically have displayed better judgment by sticking with Maisy for awhile. But I’ve always learned best by doing, so I thought to myself, “if I’m going to just end up doing this someday anyway, why not now?” LOGIC.

It went fine and more than fine. After some initial hesitation, something about the combination of snow + harness has unlocked something inside of Squash and he goes absolutely bananas for pulling me on the skis. He’s never shown this level of enthusiasm with the scooter in the absence of an external motivator (that is, deer or turkeys).

Sadly, I neglected to charge my camera battery prior to this outing, so the only video I was able to take before it died was right at the trailhead when he was still a bit hesitant. But although it’s hard to see well, he does get out pulling even within this short time frame.

And look at his lovely line-out.

The biggest problem with him alone was (no surprises here) what his biggest problem has always been – getting sidetracked by all the things to smell and pee on. When the dogs are together, Maisy keeps that in check but when he’s alone and he sees something shiny… well, let’s just say it’s hard to enforce an ON BY from the skis. Let’s just also say that if there is a technique that exists to not fall when you are getting pulled sideways on your skis by your dog who just ran off into the woods at a ninety degree angle to the trail, I haven’t learned it yet… despite a lot of practice. A LOT. Of practice. Falling. So much falling to the side.

Then it actually occurred to me that, as unlikely as it might seem, this skijoring business might actually be easier with the both of them if it would prevent all this sideways falling. “Plus,” I thought, “if I’m going to just end up doing this someday anyway…”  and well, you know the rest.

And it went more than fine. As expected, Maisy kept her big little brother on the trail so all our energy was focused on forward rather than sideways motion. I only fell when I biffed a couple of turns; I am not yet the master of making turns at speed though I am learning. In fact, I didn’t fall on the final turn of the day… although I did go careening slightly off course, which is still an improvement in my mind.

Once again my lack of technical skills has resulted in an appalling shortage of video. I replaced my GorillaPod but I haven’t quite learned exactly the best arrangement for it yet. When I had the camera positioned correctly, I didn’t hit the button right. When I hit the button right, the camera was mostly pointing at the ground. And when I hit the button right and the camera was positioned correctly, I apparently leaned too far forward and shut the camera off. Anyway, here’s what I have for now, and I’ll keep fiddling with the camera position. These actually aren’t too bad, the first is quite early in our run today (you can see Maisy is still a bit uncomfortable with the foot-sticks at this point) and the second is right in the middle.

It breaks my heart that I did not capture a short stretch right at the end where they executed a PERFECT whoa, absolutely perfect, because I thought I had started recording but had not. Most because up until that point all of our whoas had consisted of me yelling WHOOOOOAAAAA, the dogs mostly ignoring me, and then me just flopping to the ground to enforce it with my dead weight. And finally, FINALLY they listened. *shakes fist*

Oh, well. I’m sure next time they’ll be absolutely perfect angels and I’ll capture like ten perfect whoas on video.

Aheh.

I’m saving the one where I’m yelling SQUASH WHOA SQUASH WHOA as we whip around a turn and I fall to the ground for the blooper reel, though.

In all seriousness, I’m very happy that we actually became skijorers, all three of us as the team we started this journey on, before 2012 came to a close. And from our hearts to yours, I wish you a very Happy New Year.