Follow our quest for a more simple lifestyle living off grid in the remote north woods of Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, working with traditional sled dogs.
Alright, I'll give you a little grin but I won't smile.
Phoenix has a mini Sweet Pea on his head!
I'm pretty cute, you know.
Blurry but smiling! Of course, he doesn't know there is a camera pointed at him.
I am way to modest for all this attention.
C'mon, no more cameras.
I am not impressed.
Ari's BIG blurry smile when he doesn't know the camera is pointed at him.
I have no explanation for this one - the tongue and leg combination?
Rebecca's Assignment: Birthday photos. Conditions: Bad light. Constantly moving and uncooperative dogs. Results: Some really funny pictures.
These two are the goofiest pair. They are extremely expressive and both so sensitive with Ari being painfully sensitive; very kind and honest dogs.
Phoenix came to us as a baby from Alaska and after taking some time to get to know us, as Hedlund Huskies often do, he quickly blossomed into one of our best leaders so far and will turn on a dime in open country. In addition to being a knock-out sled dog, he's a great couch cuddler.
Ari came to us within the past few months. He is still taking his time to get to know us and is opening up little by little each day. He's still testing boundaries but has become accepting of his new life and routine and will come when called 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time he will look at us and run the other way but if we stand our ground and are consistent in our expectations, he eventually does come. This dog has an awesome work ethic and puts 110% into his job. He loves to pull!
Topa, now 17 months old, only having begun her leader training, is a natural "gee over" dog. This means that her natural tendency is to pull to the right side of the trail. One less training challenge! Oken, although an excellent leader with a lot of open country experience, tends to pull to the left. Today, we placed Topa on his left side, knowing her right pull tendencies, hoping that she would then be able to push Oken to the right. Use one dog to help train another has always been a good training tool for us. And it worked!
Topa has an extremely quick "fix" response to verbal corrections and consistently holds the line very tight.
White Feather (AKA Woof, Woofer, Woofie), now also 17 months old, is proving to be an intense and driven leader. This photos captures her intense glare down the trail. She, too, is a natural "gee over" dog and keeps her line tight. During this run, not one correction was needed.
Ilo and Sweet Pea are content at wheel position. Although Sweet Pea takes commands from any position and does lead during our women's adventures, she would rather not. It seems to be too stressful a place for her in front of a bigger team. Ilo will continue to get little moments in lead for his first year with us but we would prefer he settled into our routine before we ask too much more of him. Rebecca, in the background, experiences cart running in the snow.
After over 2 1/2 years of getting to know each other and traveling back and forth from the UK to the USA, Neil proposed and we all accepted! After we wade through the immigration red tape, we are making plans for a Winter 2011-2012 wedding and, of course, the sled dogs will be involved!
Neil jumped right into my lifestyle involving the sled dogs, northwoods adventures, beeswax candles, MN Honey Producer's State Fair booth and hectic real estate appraisal schedule with both feet, right from the start. He has greeted every single challenging moment in those various adventures with a smile. We make a great team and he has become a good friend, not to mention that the dogs and I love him dearly. We feel very lucky.
Neil can't be with us on his birthday but will join us again soon when he and his mother arrive for the holidays in December. We are looking forward to their arrival!
As usual, our projects are never ending when Neil is here and we'll be kept busy with holiday activities, developing a new slide show presentation for our winter events, training the dogs, preparing the curriculum for our winter adventures and cutting dog sledding trails up on our northwoods parcel. Another fun addition to the winter is our plans to visit our dog family and good friends in New Hampshire and pick up our new additions to the kennel. Lidia and Richard from Uktousa Kennel is home to our Tuloon/Bazil puppy, Cookqiz and our Tuloon/McKenzie puppies, Hana and Tumac. Tumac and Daisy, Journey's sister, were bred and puppies are due the day after Thanksgiving! We will make plans to fly to New Hampshire the end of January.
In addition, the Boundary Waters awaits! The Points Unknown sled dogs haven't made a proper BWCA trip since before our time providing the dog mushing adventures for Gunflint Lodge on the Gunflint Trail north of Grand Marais, MN which was three winters ago. Neil hasn't been into the BWCA and we are looking forward to giving him a tour.
So Happy Birthday to Neil! We hope you have a wonderful birthday and we all miss you and can't wait to see you next month.
Dogs were staked out on the lawn of a Country Kitchen restaurant.
After their camping adventures of the past few days, this was just another boring dog drop for them and they showed no signs of stress.
White foam drowns out the fire in the engine
Can't say thank you enough to the Proctor fire department for their quick response time.
Loading up truck filled with dogs and gear.
Traveling to the repair shop over Lake Superior.
Engine FIRE! This is not the type of adventure we had hoped for when making our return trip from our northwoods camp-out. Although the end of the story is a happy one, it made us really think about how close we came to a complete and horrific disaster and prompted us to begin making some very important contingency plans that were only loosely in place before the recent incident.
There is a steep hill when approaching Duluth from the South and also when leaving Duluth from the North. We happened to be on the southbound road, making the steep ascent to our refueling stop at the top of the hill. Rebecca and I traveled with the little dogs on the way home in the Tacoma and Neil was following close behind us in the dog truck which is a 24' dually, 1 ton cube van. He pulled into the pumps right behind me. The moment I stopped I could smell something burning and immediately thought there was something wrong with my vehicle. Out of truck I jumped to zip back and fill Neil in on this concern when I saw white smoke oozing out of the hood of the cube van. "You're smoking!", I yelled. Neil directed me to drive away from the pump. He restarted the dog truck and followed, then passed and parked a ways down the hill from the gas station and on the edge of a Country Kitchen restaurant parking lot. Neil got to the hood of the cube van first. He calmly, yet firmly shouted that we needed to get the dogs out of the truck, NOW. There were flames in the engine! Rebecca and Neil kicked it in to high gear, taking the dogs' stake out lines off the truck and swiftly attaching them to anything that appeared to be secure enough to hold them while I called 911. Shortly after the 911 call, most of the dogs were now off the truck thanks to many passers-by who stopped to help. Neil had used the fire extinguisher we keep in the cube van and it did give us a few precious minutes but not much longer.
The fire department arrived within a short time and began to douse the engine with white foam. This went on for the next 15-20 minutes.
During the somewhat organized chaos and after everyone was deemed safe, I walked through the line of dogs, taking yet another head count and noticed that Topa, one of our "in season" females was placed within reach of Ilo, an intact male who was about to take advantage of the situation. Just in time! That's just what we need.
The batteries to the vehicle were then disconnected so that it would be safe to transport, loaded with dogs, to the repair shop. The fire fighters continued to look at each other, shaking their heads at where the fire started and pondering how it began. They had no idea. It wasn't a toxic smell and it wasn't black smoke. It was white smoke. For the moment we discussed the possibility of a fire that didn't do any damage at all and that we would be back on the road in no time at all once it was fully checked over. This was our mantra for the next two hours as we waited for the mechanic to give it a good inspection. After, I might add, a scary sight of the dog truck, filled with dogs and gear, being winched on to the back of a flat bed tow truck and trucked across the Lake Superior bridge to Superior, Wisconsin. The dog truck had a noticeable tilt to the right and my stomach knotted up as I watched it move down the road.
And do you know what the mechanic said? "I have no idea". ! What?! "I can see some leaves up in the area you saw flames but I see no damage at all." After a round of conversions about what is could have been, we concluded that one of our friendly neighborhood chipmunks built himself a cozy nest on the area right behind the engine where the exhaust leads out. This area can get very hot and a mass of organic material could ignite if it got hot enough. Which it apparently did. Dennis, our hero, then attempted to start up the truck after connecting the batteries. It took several attempts and he commented that the glow plugs sounded as though they were burnt out and he asked if it was a hard starter. "Not at all", we said, so we just assumed it was the flood of white foam in the engine earlier that caused the delay because it did soon start and continued to start each time we shut it off for another test. We gave Dennis a gift certificate to a Points Unknown adventure and thanked him profusely as we headed out of the repair shop parking lot, hoping to never encounter another adventure of this type in the future.
Rebecca certainly got an initiation on this trip and we were so impressed with how quickly and calmly she reacted when the dogs' safety was compromised. We can't thank her enough. We are so thankful that all of our people and dogs got out safely. I wish we knew who those people were who helped remove the dogs from the truck and those individuals who helped to put out the fire. We feel grateful they were there and were willing to help. Thank you!
We and some of the dogs wore bright orange as deer hunting season was in full swing. There are few deer in this area this time of year so needless to say, we ran into no hunters along the way.
Where a spring runs over the forest road.
I saved this huge puddle just for Tuloon. Being the princess that she is, she doesn't like getting her feet wet. Well, this is required at times and this was the perfect spot to reinforce this point. She gently tip toed around every other puddle until we got to this one. No way around it! So we sat in it for 15 minutes until she stopped fidgeting and let go of her concerns about getting damp.
Woofer leans into the harness even while at rest.
Sweet Pea takes a moment to enjoy the scenery.
Beautiful!
The Points Unknown sled dogs have worked their way up to 8 mile training runs. With the start-and- stop early on in the fall season due to warm weather, it has taken us longer than hoped to move our way up in distance. Either way, we're in this for the dogs, the scenery, the adventure and for just spending our time in the company of our dogs and the miles don't necessarily matter. As long as they are fit enough to lead us into the wilderness on any of the adventures we hope to do throughout the season, that's all we need to be concerned about. And we are on track.
Our newly found northwoods training trails are a welcome change to the fall training trails our home base location in Watertown provides us. An old railroad bed trail with the adjacent horse trail that weaves in and out of the main trail is excellent for easy early season training and for "gee/haw" training. In years past, we've had to wait for the snow to fly to give the dogs a better work out on our winter northwoods trails. These trails are rolling and windy narrow bush trails with many steep ascends and corresponding descents, not at all suitable for fall training due to the great numbers of boulders and swamps along the way. These winter trails are challenging in another way. The lakes, either in Watertown or up north, once frozen and covered with a deep enough layer of snow to provide safe stops and hook downs, provide yet another bit of variety in training. Now, with our new discovery, we'll be able to experience some early season variety.
Are you done yet?
Alright, I'll give you a little grin but I won't smile.
Phoenix has a mini Sweet Pea on his head!
I'm pretty cute, you know.
Blurry but smiling! Of course, he doesn't know there is a camera pointed at him.
I am way to modest for all this attention.
C'mon, no more cameras.
I am not impressed.
Ari's BIG blurry smile when he doesn't know the camera is pointed at him.
I have no explanation for this one - the tongue and leg combination?
