This should not be news. But after last year’s winter that wasn’t, I’m very glad to see it – especially relatively early (but also relatively late) in the season. At the end of the day I think it was probably a good thing that we never got to skijor last year; we’re all more experienced now, we got more dryland training under our belts, and Squash is more mature. But in other ways I was sorely disappointed, and rolling into December I’ve been worried we’d have a repeat this winter.
So I can’t even articulate how excited I am. I’ll probably get to go skiing tomorrow morning. What began with getting an Alaskan husky puppy and continued with teaching commands and dryland training looks like it might actually end up with me actually on skis attached to my dog(s) this year, and me getting my ski legs back under me solo is part one of the second act of this tale.
…but hopefully act three, the act where I start adding dogs, doesn’t begin with a broken leg.
I try to mix it up, but there are really only so many ways we can scooter around our familiar stomping grounds. Sure I can park in different spots so we don’t always start from the same place, take different trails in different orders and/or combine different segments of trail on different runs, or sometimes loop via trails vs sometimes come around and double back on the same trail, but at the end of the day we pretty much know them all inside and out. In particular, there are only so many ways to get back to the car.
This can be good or bad. Bad, because I always want them to listen to what I tell them to do instead of what habit and muscle memory tell them to do. For the most part, they do well but every once in awhile they anticipate a bit too much. Good, because as we approach the end of a run sometimes I can let my mind wander a bit and just let them handle the final turns. They generally know the way.
But today for the first time as we got to the very last turn, my wandering mind suddenly returned and realized that the dogs had stopped and were looking back at me for direction. For the very first time ever, instead of just picking the way that was most familiar or seemed most interesting or whatever other criteria they use to make decisions, they were looking back at me. I could practically see their eyebrows raised as they asked “Gee or Haw?” with their eyes.
So that was a thing.
I’ve also signed up for our very first skijor events: The City of Lakes Loppet (just the wee 2.5K one) and the Barkie Birkie. Both are in February and hopefully we’ll have some snow by then because I haven’t actually been behind these dogs on skis, yet.
Last weekend, Squash got his first qualifying leg towards his RN title in Rally Obedience, which is kind of a big deal for me.
I freely admit I’m sort of a mediocre, “good enough” dog trainer so I’ve never really been the sort of person to enter trials and such. Pip and Maisy are happy to play scootering or dog park and then nap lazily on the couch for the rest of the day, but Squash is the kind of dog who in addition to a lot of physical exercise needs lots of mental exercise or he’ll think things up that you really, really don’t like. More so than any dog I’ve ever known. So I try to keep him busy with various brain games and activities besides mushing, and Rally is right up our alley. Honestly I think the training there helps on the trail, too, but anyway. Here is his qualifying leg. I completely messed up the first station but we still Q’d.
The second day we NQ’d, mostly due to inexperience on both our parts. But onward! Our next trial will be January 12th. He needs two more qualifying legs to get his title at this level.
I suppose I should also mention that Squash has also been playing lure coursing, and in October he got his first two qualifying legs towards his CA at the Coursing Ability Test (CAT). He needs one more qualifying leg to get his title at this level.
And last but not least, we have our first team logo and first piece of team gear.
HOWEVER, I have already tweaked the logo slightly to overlap the dogs and reordered some T-shirts, so I guess that will go into a “Selection of Seconds” post someday.
That wasn’t how my fall vacation started, but it was how my fall vacation began.
It started several weeks before my husband asked that question, when I made reservations to rent a cabin high, high up on Minnesota’s Gunflint Trail for the last week of October. It was meant to be a quiet getaway in the north woods largely spent hiking and hanging out with the dogs (and when he joined me later in the week, my husband), knitting, reading, and just being. A good old-fashioned recharging of the batteries. But then amid my packing and other preparations, the question was asked. And then amid my indecision and waffling the statement was made: “If you have room, you might as well. The worst that can happen is you don’t use it.” Genius.
I’d stayed at this particular resort before, and I’d done a lot of hiking on the trails around it and up and down the Trail. Most of the hiking trails weren’t really scooter-able. Still, there was room, and so into the car Scoot (the scooter) went, making the road trip in its customary place in the front seat with its handlebars folded down and pressed against my right shoulder (and reminding me that someday I will need a bigger vehicle if I continue down this mushing road).
And so my vacation began. My beautiful mushing vacation, that is. As it turns out, a nearby riding stable was closed for the season, meaning that miles and miles of absolutely perfect trails – wide, semi-groomed, dog feet-friendly grassy trails through beautiful, soul-recharging scenery – were not being used by anyone until Scoot, Squash, Maisy and I arrived on the scene to use them. And use them we did. We quickly fell into a daily routine: Get up early, eat breakfast. Go scootering. Come back to the cabin, in no particular order some combination of napping, reading, knitting, eating lunch, and/or watching a DVD. Then in mid-afternoon, go for a hike/canicross (I had also brought my skijor belt). Come back to the cabin and in no particular order again some combination of the above until bedtime, replacing “lunch” with “dinner.” Sometimes another hike after dinner, sometimes not. When my husband and Pip joined us later in the week, they fell right into the routine – although Pip and my husband generally stayed back at the cabin for scootering except one day that he graciously came along to take pictures.
It was never intended to be a mushing vacation, but that’s what it turned into. And it was so perfectly enjoyable that I’m planning on making it a yearly event until I’m too old to climb on a scooter and shout “Let’s Go!”
Now, here are some pictures that I am posting all over the internet. Or at least on the Mush Puppies Facebook page. And a few online dog sites. Anyway, you can see how gorgeous the trails and scenery are, here.
Here are some pictures my husband took on the day he came with us. I almost never get to see their faces, I love to see them looking so jolly.
Hiking/Canicross with bonus Pip:
And finally, the only video I shot, because the trails are so bouncy that I knew they would all end up like this. This was actually down a fairly steep hill, although it doesn’t show it well probably because I was crouched over ninja-style in an attempt to minimize my falling risk. I think they did quite well.
I generally hike with a bear bell up there and I just put it on the scooter; as it turns out, it was deer opening weekend so it was handy to tell the world we were nothing to shoot at as well as prevent surprising any large wildlife that doesn’t care for being surprised. But it also seemed to put a little bit of zip in their step, so I may just leave it on the scooter all the time even though it’s a bit annoying.
It’s a day for self reflection not only because we had an exceptionally good run today, but also encountered a lot of people at the park who made O.o faces at us as we went on by them. Lots of times when we are getting ready to head out, taking a break, or have just arrived back at the car, random people will stop and chat about what we are doing. While for the most part they are curious and seem pleased there is also often a general feeling of “better you than me, sister.” And when we are actually on a run, the looks I get from people as we go on by (when we successfully go on by, that is) usually seems to be something akin to WHY OH WHY WOULD YOU DO SUCH A THING?
So, why DO I do it? The elevator version of my answer is filled with fairly predictable answers: It’s good exercise, it’s fun, the dogs like it, I don’t have to fight against my dogs pulling me. Every once in awhile, though, I get a taste of something more.
On weekends the state park is much busier than it is on weekdays, which is both a blessing and a curse. More people, more dogs, wildlife more active because they are stirred up by the extra activity… and more opportunities to practice things like on by amid plenty of distractions. One of the local outdoor stores occasionally hosts “How to _____ (canoe, put up a tent, kayak, build a campfire, cook over a campfire)” workshops on the weekends, which means random small groups of people here and there. Now, my dogs are not “professionals,” I don’t rely on them to make a living, survive in a harsh environment, or get the serum to Nome on time. They are pets, companions, house dogs, or whatever other term you like (except not furkids or furbabies, please) who also happen to scooter recreationally. So the feelings of my social butterflies regarding the relative values of working/ignoring distractions vs. the potential that small groups of strangers hold for lots of petting and attention are… perhaps a bit more lax and a bit less serious than a dog who actually works for a living. And “on by” is a constant work in progress. Especially on a day like today full of workshops.
But it was also one of those wonderful, glorious days when everything came together. When the dogs went on by three separate workshops and two different people walking dogs with only a token effort to receive the adoration of strangers. When we had one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had while scootering: We spooked a group of deer who ended up running through the woods perfectly parallel to the path we were on and just a bit ahead of us. The dogs were running flat out, the deer were sproinging along, and everyone was just going straight. The dogs weren’t trying to get into the woods, the deer weren’t doing crazy unpredictable zig-zags across the path or deeper into the woods, and we all just… ran together for awhile while the power of my dogs and the beauty of the deer and the smell of leaves and crisp air and the joy and speed – oh god the speed – just awed me. And it went on for almost a minute until the path split and the deer followed the right fork and my dogs flawlessly followed my “haw” to take the left fork and then slowly eased up back into a nice comfortable trot.
And I felt in that transcendent moment, the real reason why. The reason deep inside my heart why I scooter instead of doing any of a million other things that would exercise these dogs. Because on this day where everything came together, part of what came together was us. Us: Maisy and Squash and Me, a team all understanding each other and accomplishing things together. I had a taste of how beautiful and satisfying the partnership that comes out of all that hard work and practice can be. Me trusting them to go haw instead of veering gee after those deer and to go on by those people learning to build a campfire, and them trusting me to just let them have their fun running with those deer for awhile after all their hard work and before expecting more hard work. I could not have been happier or more proud of these amazing dogs today. Of my team.
I think probably anyone who works hard with their dog(s) in their chosen sport or activity, whatever it is, has felt a moment like that. Or at least I sincerely hope so. Because when things stop being “you and you and me” and start being “us,” it means that next time, when things don’t come together quite so nicely and the $%@!# dogs do veer off the path to receive the adoration of strangers as if they have never heard the words ON BY before in their lives (and it will happen, I assure you), it’s not the end of the world. Just something we have to work on together, which is not so very bad at all.
I never thought it would happen, but Minnesota finally exited the heart of the sun and cooled off enough for something like autumn to happen and for us to go scootering regularly again. Some of the Mush Puppies’ verbal commands (coughONBYSQUASHcough) were a little rusty, so we’ve been doing a combination of scootering and canicrossing about 2-3 times a week for a few weeks now. Migrating geese as well as deer and squirrels preparing for winter have given us plenty of remedial practice.
There are only so many pictures of my dogs’ butts than can be posted on the internet, but I think this is my new favorite picture of them in harness.
And this was an adorable moment where Maisy struggled with inner conflict over whether to chase a squirrel or not, which she resolved by hopping straight up into the air and calling that a good effort.
Anyway, part of getting back into the swing of things is checking over the equipment, and I’m glad to say that almost everything is in good shape. The only thing that really needed to be replaced was my scooter noodle. The noodle is a short segment of some kind of stiff material that prevents the line from getting tangled in the front wheel if the line goes slack. When the line is out, the one I had looks something like this:
When slack, it looks more like this:
That strap that attaches to the handlebars helps keep the noodle elevated off the wheel because, although it works great for starts and stops, if the line unexpectedly goes slack while we are going fast enough the foam actually is soft and flexible enough to get sucked up by the tire. And that’s happened a time or two, so my poor noodle has taken a beating. I bought it pre-made, and that pipe insulation is supposed to be tucked neatly inside that blue nylon cover with the strap. The poor nylon cover is in tatters, though, and the foam itself is starting to split down the middle.
So I was pondering whether I wanted to replace it with the same thing or try to do something handy, when my eye fell upon some of my other dog-related supplies. We play a little Agility and Rally-O on the side, and so I have stuff like this lying around my backyard…
So I thought, hey, that PVC pipe shouldn’t be too hard to make into a noodle. I started by drilling a hole near one end. For the safety nerds, this photo is totally staged after the fact; I just wanted to illustrate that you really need to do this at an angle. I tried going straight down and the bit just kept rolling off to the side. I believe I used a 9/32″ bit if anyone cares.
Then I just clipped a clip through the hole, scavenged the strap off my old noodle, and used a keyring to attach the strap to the clip thusly:
Here’s what it ended up looking like, with the line taut and with the line slack:
Sadly, the keyring was not strong enough to withstand the sheer raw power of my Mush Puppies, and it pulled apart about halfway through our run today. But I got to thinking – since the PVC is so much stiffer than the foam, it doesn’t really need the strap to elevate it off the wheel – it’s not getting sucked into the wheel pretty much no matter what. So it just needs to be kept in place on the line close to the scooter. While I whipped up a new attachment, the puppies waited patiently:
Until I was done creating a double secret clip arrangement thusly:
Which worked wonderfully. No pesky strap, the PVC noodle stays in place on the line, and all is well. Which makes us all feel like this:
Now that we can actually scooter again, I should update more frequently. Until next time, LET’S GO, PUPPIES.
Well, it’s been awhile. Not because anyone is hurt, or I’ve suddenly had a change of heart and despise mushing and/or dogs, or because I’ve gotten bored with the blog or forgotten about it, but just because… there’s not much new under the sun. The blazing hot searing sweltering sun, that is. Until things cool down, scootering is on a bit of a hiatus. When I get up at unnaturally early hours of the day and it’s still 80F by 7 am, it’s just way too hot and humid for that much exertion.
Besides, there are only so many pictures of dog butts that can be posted. Having said that, I got a new camera and got some pictures I quite like on some of our early morning outings:
And this lovely video, which is not titled “fbomb.mov” for nothing. Turn off your sound if your ears will be offended.
But when I see this kind of stuff after a run, it makes me a bit concerned about the heat:
So, we find other things to do. I tried bikejoring with Squash, on the grounds that he doesn’t have to pull as hard with me biking as with me riding the scooter.
I have tried bikejoring with Maisy before and she made her feelings on the matter quite clear: She loathes it. She actually loathes the scooter, as well, but she loves scooterING enough to tolerate its presence. Not so with the bike. In front of the bike, she just stands with a mournful, feelings-broken-into-a-million-tiny-shards expression, peering mournfully back at the bike like it might come to life and bludgeon her to death at any moment, steadfastly refusing to move. If I start biking, she will wait until the bike almost reaches her before scurrying ahead and stopping until it almost reaches her again and then scurrying ahead and stopping until… well, you get the picture. So. I don’t bikejor with Maisy. We’ve had to mostly stick to leash walking since she’s too iffy with stranger danger dogs to go to any off leash areas. It’s kind of a boring bummer and doesn’t lend itself to taking many pictures, but it is what it is and it won’t be forever. But here’s a picture of her in the backyard that I like quite a bit:
Squash did ok with bikejoring. He was a bit bewildered at first but he did eventually kind of get the hang of it. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very good pictures since my camera was mounted at scooter height instead of bicycle height – hopefully I’ll get the hang of that, too.
Yes, we’re playing in the street. Until he got the hang of it, he just wanted to sniff and pee on the sidewalk, so keeping him in the street where there was nothing to sniff or pee was the only way for me to keep him on track. This was mid-morning on a quiet street, so… judge me if you feel you must but we were safe.
Unfortunately, after only two bikejor attempts I felt like the heat was a bit too much even for this level of exertion. So. We’ve mostly been going on walks, although I’ve started introducing Squash to the off leash dog park thusly:
He’s a fan, and it’s good exercise. We also went camping this week and did a lot of hiking:
So, a bit of this and a bit of that will hopefully get us through the summer. As I’m writing this, we’re experiencing a short break in the extended heat wave that is the summer of 2012, so maybe we’ll be able to sneak some scootering in this weekend. If not, hopefully you’ve gotten your fix of Maisy and Squash pictures for now.
Due to some minor tummy upset (nothing serious I promise), Maisy is taking a few days off from mushing. The silver lining to this is that for some time I have been itching to take Squash out alone and see how he does but have felt too guilty to leave her behind, and this development gave me a guilt-free, worry-free opportunity to do so today.
Whenever I want to try something with the mush puppies that’s new or a little more challenging than usual, it’s essential to either get my head in the right place or just skip it that day. Willingly embarking on what you know ahead of time may well be an extremely frustrating and fruitless activity with thinking, feeling creatures who succeed or fail based at least partially on how you interact with and react to their behavior takes a certain special Zen state of mind that I admit I can’t always achieve. Frankly, I can get snippy and irritable when I’m frustrated, and that’s no way to train dogs… especially when for us this is a 100% optional/recreational activity. If it’s not fun, there’s no point. So I screwed my “stays calm and becomes slightly amused by mistakes” and “keeps expectations reasonable” filters side by side into my brain and drove off to the park with my boy alone in the back seat.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from him. It’s amazing how much he has matured mentally over the course of this spring, but he still gets distracted fairly easily and can be silly and unfocused when he starts to get tired. With Maisy at his side these are pretty minor problems, but I really didn’t have a good sense for how he would handle himself without her.
I’m pleased to say that he did a pretty darn good job considering this is the first time I’ve seriously taken himself out by himself. He was a bit uncertain at times, especially when we first started, but he’s used to having a take-charge partner so that’s understandable. This is early in the run:
That monkey business where I’m twirling around laughing happened because he cut around behind the scooter when he started moving again after checking out a tree, and for some reason I thought it would be easier to turn the scooter around than just stop him and fix the line.
He does have a couple of bad habits, a minor one being that he wastes a lot of energy zig-zagging from left to right across the trail instead of just sticking to a straight path. If we were competitive in any way, this would be a more serious problem, but as things are I guess I don’t mind if he’s using extra energy when I’m… exercising him. But as a more serious corollary, he sometimes cuts abruptly right in front of the scooter when zigging or zagging. Maisy has a healthy respect for the scooter and always maintains a pretty big personal bubble around herself that it is not allowed within, but Squash appears to have both the total lack of body awareness of a toddler and the sense of invulnerability of a teenager around the scooter. If you’ve ever hit or nearly hit a deer that seemed to come out of nowhere and zig in front of your car, you have a pretty good idea of what he does. He was kind enough to demonstrate near the end of this video:
Because he was all by himself today, we went on a much shorter run than usual and I did a lot of kicking and walking/trotting beside the scooter instead of making him pull the whole time. He still got pretty tired towards the end and left to his own devices would have become less and less interested in pulling and more and more interested in peeing and sniffing. BUT, to his great credit it is pretty easy to build up his excitement and get him moving again by simply running next to/with the scooter and giving him an enthusiastic HIKEHIKEHIKE or GOGOGO… and although when he is tired the excitement may only last for a short period of time before I find myself stoking it up again, he never just flat out didn’t respond at all. Not once, and I find that very, very promising. Because I can understand being tired and we can build up his physical stamina, but I wouldn’t know how in the world to go about working with him if he didn’t have that mental willingness to work.
So all in all, it was a good day. And here are some pictures… he’s doing a pretty god job, I think. Plus he’s a muscular hunk of dog in great physical condition, if I do say so myself. The second picture is maybe my favorite in terms of showing the muscle definition in his thighs. (In my defense, to those who think I’m maybe juuuuust a little bit too obsessed with my dog’s thighs, happy muscular thighs and butt help make happy tight strong hips, so important for a big athletic dog playing at mushing.)
I probably didn’t have to post ALL of those, but I did anyway. And here’s some from our water/snack/rest break to round out this post:
I haven’t had that much to say lately, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For awhile, I felt like I spent a lot of my time saying shouting “ON BY! ON BY!” At least until Squash decided the words “on by” were just some bizarre alien gibberish that no longer held any meaning whatsoever. Then I felt like I spent a lot of my time shouting “LEAVE IT! LEAVE IT!” which so far has survived the Squash translator intact. But really, ideally, when we are all working together like a well-oiled machine nobody should be spending a lot of their time shouting much of anything.
We’ve fallen into a routine, the mush puppies and I, regularly scootering Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday with rest days or other activities in between. They’re getting leaner, stronger, hungrier… and well-oiled. Well, better-oiled, anyway. We rarely have a bad run, although we have bad stretches… although by “bad” I really just mean “sometimes the way Squash loses focus towards the end of a run is annoying” and it’s getting easier and easier to get him back into the game the more runs we get under our belts. During the bad stretches I may spend more time than I’d like shouting “SQUASH, GET BACK IN YOUR HEAD!” which either really, really works or just keeps me occupied and makes me feel important and in charge until he would have gotten back in his head anyway. I suspect it’s actually Maisy who is important and in charge and gets him back in his head, but as she can’t shout anything at all I guess I’ll never know for sure.
Anyway, the good stretches – the really good stretches – are getting longer and more frequent. It’s so rewarding and satisfying to see the dogs get better and better with practice, and one measure of how much better they are getting – mentally and physically – is the dwindling verbage. The better they are, the less I have to say. Also, to briefly toot my own horn, the quiet is also a measure of how much better I am getting, because I have a bad habit of talking too much to the dogs that I’ve been working really, really hard on. Sure it’s nice to want to be encouraging, but a steady stream of even good stuff like “good dogs, great job, you’re doing great, good, yes, good job dogs!” turns into so much “blah blah blah blah blah” white noise until they don’t pay much attention to me at all. The less I say, the more they pay attention when I DO say something – good or bad, praise or correction, gee or haw or whoa… pretty much everything but ON BY anymore, apparently.
So here’s a nice little run. I’ve trimmed it down, as the original video was several minutes long and while it makes a fine point about how quiet we’ve gotten, even I found it a little dull. Also, I had to replace my camera fairly recently and the new one picks up the sound of even my completely normal breathing like nobody’s business, so I trimmed the worst of the obscene phone call breathing out. Nobody needs to hear that shit.
Here’s a little later in the run, this has also been trimmed down to eliminate sniffling, breathing, and somnolence. I’ve been working up their distance a little bit and they are due to take a break soon, so they’re a bit tired. That’s why Squash is running with some slack in his tugline, and although I’m trying to work on braking to slow the scooter down to his speed when he gets tired to prevent the slack, I’m not real smooth at it yet.
Some geeky stuff… I think this is the new tuglines’ first appearance in the blog. Squash is running with a 55″ tug and Maisy runs with a 40″ tug, which puts her nicely right at his shoulder. I’ve been using one of the longer necklines while they get used to the new tugs, but I think I’ll switch back to the shorter one now that I’m certain Maisy can keep up with this setup. The longer one is too long and is just tangles and armpit-fodder waiting to happen. I’ve also started using the limited slip-collars, which has been generally keeping them a little more responsive to neckline pressure so they get jerked around less (thanks to Jessica of Blue Eyes and Spitfire for that great suggestion, by the way).
And lastly, I was going to save this for a blooper post, but I’m going to put it here. Juuuuust as I was getting ready to stop for a break (this is right after the second video above) a squirrel went across the trail. I’m a bit torn on whether to be a bit disappointed in myself that my first reaction was to slam on the brakes instead of giving a WHOA LEAVE IT, or proud of myself for realizing that my dogs might have been a little too overstimulated to count on responding to verbal commands. Either way, since there was no harm done (thanks to brand-spanking new brakes) I decided to just let them chase it anyway. Funny how my tired, slack-lined boy gets his second wind, huh?
Once again I don’t have a big ending, so I’m just going to leave you with a couple of nice, silent pictures. One picture-perfect line out (easy to see the new tugs here), and one goofy-face siesta. Oh god look at Maisy’s ears.
Now that the division of labor is more evenly divided, I’ve been gradually working on increasing the dogs’ conditioning. The weather has been cool enough and I’ve been dragging myself out of bed early enough to safely start adding some distance to our runs.
So far things have been going pretty well. Physically, I suspect they are probably capable of far more than I’m asking from them right now, but there’s really no reason to push it. Mentally, on the other hand… since being reassigned to a position that just barely merits being called “lead”, The Boy seems at times to get a little drunk with power. He tends to blast out of the gate at Warp Factor Squash (which admittedly is exciting and exhilarating) but poop out and lose interest further into the run (which is only exciting and exhilarating if you enjoy untangling tangles and practicing starts over and over).
See? There’s some nice focus, and as an added bonus Maisy appears to be levitating. This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but I also love how their shadows look here.
Oh lord, her ears. And now Squash appears to be levitating. And that’s all I have to say about this.
But then… oh, Squash. “Letting” Maisy do all the work isn’t the same as “giving her a turn”. You might take a lesson from her work ethic, though. The slack line tells your story.
Or perhaps you’d rather be distracted by that bird off in the distant distance:
Yes, that’s really what he was looking at. Incidentally, that bird also (indirectly) taught me that it’s probably time to get the brake pads replaced on the scooter, but that’s a story for another day. And look at Maisy still trying to go in the right direction even though she kinda wants to see what the fuss is about, too.
So what’s a mush baby and a pair of pooped mush puppies to do? I decided to take a cue from labor law (and other mushers) and offer, nay require, my mush puppies to take a break midway through the run. It starts out as a water break and inevitably (well, both times I’ve tried it so far anyway) turns into a grazing break:
As a slight aside, that little portable water bowl is called a Slurpabowl and Slurpabowls are really nifty. They are made of thin cardboard, fold down completely flat so they fit in your pocket, and someday if and when they reach the end of their slurpy days they are recyclable. So that’s that.
ANYWAY, so far Project Siesta has been a success. Granted, I’ve only tried it twice so far, but so far our water/grass breaks give me back dogs who are recharged, refocused, “on by” better, and aren’t as interested in veering off to eat the grass on the side of the trail as we’re running by, thusly:
Besides the fact that they are back to evenly divided labor, I love (above) how Squash is trotting along looking all casual while Maisy looks all intense and (below) how they’ve fallen into a nice, steady trot.
Ok, just one more, because we are approaching the parking lot and the end of the run and they are still working pretty hard (although still at that nice steady trot instead of warp speed), which has always been a challenge:
And when we get back to the car, they get another water break while I get the scooter loaded up into the car. They look so beautiful to me here.
So that’s my siesta story. I don’t really have a way to wrap this up, so here’s a funny picture of the mush puppies in the backyard after we got home:
Today was our second run with the new tug line arrangement. The dogs worked really hard; partly because they were both – yay! – pulling most of the way (occasionally Squashie fell back a bit and let his sister take over), partly because although it was cool the air was a bit humid, and partly because the ground was still soft from overnight rain which makes the scooter harder to pull. So they both earned themselves a second breakfast after we got home and rested a bit.
Anyway, here’s a video, which YouTube felt the need to inform me was shaky. I didn’t feel the need to inform YouTube in return that was because reality had actually been shaky, but did politely decline the offer to fix it. Right after the (second!) flawlessly executed “haw” is where they really open up. ENJOY.
Unfortunately they kind of shot their wad here and pooped out shortly after the end of this video due to the aforementioned trio of factors. When they are pooped out, they apparently become unable to resist the allure of the pheromones or mind spell or whatever it is given off by grass along the side of the path and our return trip to the car was punctuated numerous times by grazing and then getting untangled. In fact, eventually I think we spent more time grazing and untangling than running. Oh well, at least we got a lot of practice lining out and starting, and we’ll work on the conditioning and stamina.
Oh don’t forget to look for Mush Puppies on Facebook!
Mush, Baby 