SNOW!!! :o)

You looking at me?! Here's Chevy, waiting for scritches.

Alright!! I was so happy to wake up to fresh snow on the deck, with more of that lovely, white stuff coming down from the sky. We didn't get a whole lot, but at least an inch or three...hey, I'll take that! The weather report says snow on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, as well. Man, I really, REALLY hope the weatherman is right this time...we could sure use it. The dogs are about ready for 30s on the atv already, so it would be nice to be able to get on sleds, to start doing 40s-50s with them. They are having no trouble adding miles at this point, and Manny says that whether he goes out and does a 15 mile or a 25 mile run with the dogs, they come in looking good, pulling well. That's definitely good news and heartening to hear. Honestly, most years we feel that we push the dogs up in miles too early in the season. So, we really focused on many reps at lower miles, moving up the increments very slowly (almost painfully slow...it seemed like at times!), running 4-5 days a week. What that did was give us some well-muscled, well-conditioned dogs who seem to be able to handle hills, ice and fresh snow. Time will tell and we'll see how the dogs perform on the races this year, as compared to previous years.

Dusk and Just led the team down into the flats again today. Manny said that he left a little later, because it was snowing so hard, he wanted to let it lighten up a bit first. It didn't let up for quite a while and he went ahead and took the team out with it still coming down pretty good. He said that the dogs were breaking trail pretty much the whole way, playing through the new snow. What's nice is that they are keeping their speed up, while still being able to power up hills. Manny said that he kept stopping every few miles to check feet, as the fresh snow ould've caused iceballs. He's seeing lots of wildlife on runs, which is pretty cool. Today, he ran past a cow and calf down in the clearcuts, then even saw a great-horned owl in flight! Awesome! Well, take care and keep checking back as we continue training the dogs and preparing for our upcoming races.