Another Season Come and Gone

It seems that I only post here once a year now. Life has gotten to be very busy. When the boys were younger I thought that wouldn't be possible but now that they're starting middle school, free time does not exist. Not only has that lead to less blog posts but we've sadly been training and racing quite a bit less too. It hasn't helped either than the trail we trained on from our house for the last 11 years was closed off permanently. I haven't found a good safe alternative in the mean time.

On one of our trainings run before our only safe
trail to train on from the house was gated permanently.

Vaxie (right) hanging out with her old pal, Flier, in a cabin at Lubrecht Experimental Forest
before racing in the Western Montana Dirt Derby. She ran canicross for her first race ever.

We managed to get in one dryland race in the fall: The Western Montana Dirt Derby (hosted by our local club) and one snow race: the Flathead Classic Sled Dog Race in Olney, MT. It sure was fun to race and to be welcomed with open arms by the mushing community who had noticed my absence and missed us.

The team did surprisingly well at both races given their age (a brand new racer and 3 aging dogs) and their fitness (not as well conditioned as they usually are). At the dryland race we took first in the 2 dog scooter (Buck and Whip) and canicross (Vaxie). At the Flathead Classic the 4-dog team finished in 6th of 15 teams. We were in 12th of 16 teams for the 1-dog skijor after day 1. But unfortunately, a stomach bug made an appearance in our family that night. We decided to run the 4-dog while they recovered at the hotel but I had to leave before the 1-dog race to pick them up before checkout. It was hard to not race because I was looking forward to the 1-dog ski the most. It was my first time racing skijor and I had some things I wanted to improve on for day 2.

Buzz resting after day one of his 1-dog skijor race
at the Flathead Classic Sled Dog Race, Feb 26 & 27th.
We had to scratch on day 2 due to family illness leading to an early departure.

This season has been all about introducing the puppy to sled/team training and racing. She took to it really quickly and by the end of the season, lead the team for a run. It was like she had done it for years.

Vaxie's first run in lead. Jig did a great job training her!

Rohn trained a lot with me with season. That was enjoyable to teach him things and have his company out on the trail.

Rohn with the team on a training run at Lost Trail.

We also did more skijoring this season than years past. It's an incredibly enjoyable way to run dogs because I get my exercise too!

Vaxie ready to skijor at Lubrecht Experimental Forest, Greenough, MT on Feb 21st.

The plan for the rest of the season (late winter to spring) is to do one more snow race: the Barkerbiener in Spokane. It is purely a skijor race which we've been really getting into. So I'm excited to get more experience at it. I'd also like to compete in one more dryland race and am eyeing one at the end of April or early May in Washington. I'll leave you with some training pictures from the season.