While heading up to the trailhead today I wasn't sure what was going to be our focus. We have no races in mind the rest of the season, so I thought we'd work on some sort of leader training.
Once there I quickly determined wed be working on "on by". Four sets of trail users with dogs went by in a 5 minute span.
I started with Paluk and Tensaw in lead but quickly switched Paluk out for Flier. Paluk in her old age doesn't have the speed to keep a line tight in front of Tank and Flier.
We ended up having 7 passes with "free running" dogs and all were fairly successful with a least one on my leaders "on by-ing" the dog in each instance. They've improved a lot this season on many things, including this one. Good puppas!
We ran about 6.5 miles and had a good time, beautiful day, switching between lightly snowing and blinding sunshine.
You may be wondering why we're down to a four dog team right now. On Tuesday we had Isis and Okie spayed. The two are doing great and I suspect Isis will be back running in the team by next weekend. She's been hard to keep calm to heal. But both are doing great.
Also yesterday was a fun run. Nicki and I combined our teams (after loaning a dog each to another pair of mushers, Sonya and Colette) and tandemed our sleds for a run. We started with Flier and Tank in lead, and they did well at first, not balking at the fact that they were leading 8 dogs, but after a little while the stress of leading a large team started to show so we switched Nicki's experienced dogs Otter and Montana into lead. Otter and Montana area new to leading her team this year and they did great! Here are a few pics from Saturday:
Tensaw in wheel (right), Flier and Tank in swing.
Nicki
Great team! (Tank and Flier in swing), Tensaw in wheel (left)
Tony skiing!
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