Will the Real Sled Dog Please Stand Up?

Posted on July 1, 2013July 1, 2013 by Dusty Roads

After our “wild” ride on the 4-wheeled dog sled, we were invited into the musher’s camp to learn about the dogs, the equipment and the Iditarod.

I have to confess, I don’t remember the musher’s name but he said he had won the Iditarod and another big race several times. He told us great stories about his experiences. One that stands out is a story of crossing the sea ice on one race during a blizzard. He couldn’t see anything and thought they were going in the wrong direction. They went on for hours when suddenly the marker came into view through the blowing snow. The lead dogs had guided him and the team safely to the marker. The moral of the story… have good lead dogs and trust them!

His dogs and most of the dogs used for racing are not the purebred huskies and malamutes we see in the movies.

There are some but according to our speaker they don’t have the stamina for the endurance races.

He breeds all of his own dogs. They are chosen for size, strength and stamina, speed and endurance so most of his dogs are mongrels.

A few of the most common sled dogs that almost everyone has heard about and the ones most likely to have made it into the movies are the Alaskan Husky, Alaskan Malamute, and Siberian Husky.

The Alaskan Husky is actually a mongrel bred specifically for its performance as a sled dog. They weigh between 40 and 75 pounds and may have dense or sleek fur.

Alaska Malamutes are large, strong freight-type dogs. They weigh between 80 and 120 pounds and have round faces with soft features. These dogs are known for their broad chests, thick coats, and tough feet. Speed has little to no value for these dogs – instead, the emphasis is on pulling strength.

Siberian Huskies are smaller than the similar-appearing Malamute. The Siberian Husky pulls more, pound for pound, than a malamute, but cannot pull as long. They weigh between 40 and 60 pounds, and have been selectively bred for both appearance and pulling ability.

There are even more breeds that have been developed including one that was developed not in Alaska but in New Hampshire! I guess the bottom line is that a sled dog can be any dog regardless of heritage, that has the strength and spirit to pull a sled.

When asked why there were signs not to pet the adult dogs he said they are working dogs, not pets and in their excitement to get ready to run, they could accidently bite a stranger. No one wants anyone to get hurt. I guess these aren’t “dog whisperer” type dogs. 🙂

Puppies and Mush

Posted on June 30, 2013June 30, 2013 by Dusty Roads

We stepped off the bus to pandemonium! Barking, squirming dogs everywhere it seemed but they were actually under control…sort of. You see this wild eyed, happy, manic look on the face of the dog on this card…yup we were surrounded by dogs with the same expression. The handlers, excuse me , “Mushers” said the dogs just love to run. They get excited when they hear a car or bus come down the road because they know they will be hitched up and off to do their favorite thing.

While the mushers wrangled the adults into the harness we were led to another pen to see the “puppies”. Now I use the word puppies loosely because I was expecting little balls of fluff. Even when they said they were 11 weeks old I wasn’t prepared for how big they were. Before I knew what was happening or even got close enough for a look a 25 lb. bundle of energy was plopped into my arms. I heard someone say this little girl is Emma and then they were gone. What a cutie.

Sandy had another similar sized pup in her arms.

It took all of my concentration to be sure mine didn’t wiggle out of my arms and get away. I’m sure it happens sometimes with these energetic balls of fur but I didn’t want it to be on my watch! Eventually one of the employees asked me if I’d had my turn on the dog sled ride. When I said no, he told me to go get on but made no move to relieve me of Emma.

After I asked about 3 times what he wanted me to do with the puppy it seemed to get through to him. With an “Oh! Yeah.” He scooped Emma up and pointed me toward a really strange contraption.

This monster had a sturdy metal frame, rubber tires and 3 bench seats that had been rescued from some old junk cars. It even had a roof and a front windshield of scratched Plexiglas. It looked awful heavy for a bunch of dogs to pull.

I grabbed the front seat. In spite of the scratches I wanted to be up front where I could see what our dogs were doing. Our young lady Alaskan was our musher and hopped on the back just as if this were one of the light weight dog sleds. With just a word the dogs were off with us right behind. They got us going pretty fast too until one of the dogs decided he wanted a break for some snow from the snow bank. That brought the whole line to a halt while he broke formation for his little snack.

Lady Musher got down and untangled the traces and got them all lined back up. Before she had time to even get back on the rig our little trouble maker was rolling in the dirt and getting everyone tangled up again. Back to the mess our intrepid musher went and, in her words, had a little talk with him.

This time when he was straighten out he stayed in line and we were on our way again.

We went around one last corner and there was the camp where we started. It was a short ride but it was fun.

The dogs in the front are the lead dogs and he ones in the rear are the steering dogs. They are the strongest dogs on the team. They get you out of that snow bank if you get stuck. Even through the Plexiglas window it was easy to see they were having fun and so was I! 🙂

The Story of Romeo

Posted on June 8, 2013June 8, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Ok I promised to tell you about Romeo so here it is.

This is the story of Romeo, the Mendenhall Glacier Wolf. I first heard it from our guide, Phil, but since then I have seen many children’s’ books. This version is condensed from The Alaska Cruise Companion.

Romeo’s story began one day in April 2003, when a young black wolf was struck and killed by a car within 1/4 mile of Mendenhall Visitor Center. Sad as this event was, park officials made the best of it and retrieved the wolf so that at least it could be prepared for display in the visitor’s center. They determined it was a female black wolf, which is a sub species of the gray wolf, and they also determined it was a young female. Young females will generally only leave a family pack with a new mate to start a family of their own, so park officials expected to see the mate in the area. Over the summer there was no sign but during the long, cold winter nights of November that year, residents repeatedly heard howls of a lone wolf ringing across the wilderness of the lake.

The first sighting came shortly after the new year, in January 2004. A local naturalist and author, Nick Jans , was skiing across the Lake with his dog Dakota when he noticed a lone set of wolf tracks stretching across the lake. He took Dakota home and returned to the lake , and encountered the wolf for the first time. It was alone and it was a young male black wolf. A solitary wolf is unusual , especially in winter when wolves typically regroup with their family packs to ensure successful hunting, so when Jans reported the lone wolf sighting, wildlife officials presumed they had found the mate for the young female killed earlier in the year.

As the winter stretched on, the young wolf began to appear regularly , even accompanying Jans and Dakota on their routings across the lake. The wolf would play with Dakota , just like any other dog might, and even took to following the duo home. There he waited outside the house for the female lab to appear, leading to his nickname, Romeo. Unbelievably, this went on for many years. Romeo would disappear over the summer but return each winter once the visitors had left and the lake was frozen over.

The iconic appearance of a lone black wolf against the dramatic backdrop of the snow-white lake was enough to draw attention on it’s own , but Romeo was also sociable, and other visitors to the lake had the same experience as Jans and Dakota. Romeo would appear and play with the pets even fetching tennis balls. He didn’t become a pet. No one tried to feed him or pet him but he quickly became a living legend in the region.

In 2009, the story took a sad turn. Romeo failed to reappear that fall and in fact was not seen or heard of again. Eventually a wolf pelt surfaced that was identified as Romeo’s, and in May 2010, two hunters were charged with illegally shooting the protected wolf.

Although Romeo is gone now he dispelled many misconceptions about wolves and in so doing has become a legend.

For more details Nick Jans has written a new book, Glacier Wolf, about his encounters with Romeo.

A trip of a Lifetime

Posted on May 25, 2013May 25, 2013 by Dusty Roads

How does one start to tell a tale of a trip of a lifetime? Maybe I should just say that this was the 2nd trip of a lifetime for me. The first was The Big Island of Hawaii.

Now I can add a cruise tour to Alaska as my 2nd “Trip of a lifetime”.

This didn’t just happen overnight. This trip was in the planning and discussion and saving stages for over 2 years. We finally said lets just do it before the glacier’s melt!

A big part of it was the saving part.

This was, without a doubt, the most expensive venture I/we have undertaken yet but Alaska is so big the task of putting together a vacation there seemed overwhelming. So after my sister and I hammered out the basics of what we wanted to do and see I turned the problem over to the professionals at AAA.

The trip I am about to describe to you is the result.

The first decision was do we cruise to Alaska or fly in and vacation like we usually do on our own. Since this was my sister’s Dream Vacation I let her choose. She had only 2 requests; to see the glaciers and to spend 3 days in Denali National Park. A cruise tour would accomplish both goals.

We settled on a “shoulder season” because it’s less expensive and money was certainly a factor. In May the animals are just coming down out of their wintering grounds and having babies. In September they have the northern lights (aurora borealis). We chose to go for the animals. We also chose to go south to north to give the northern locations a chance to warm up a bit more. In Alaska a couple of days can make all the difference. As it turned out spring was about 2 weeks late this year so we had a lot more snow and cold weather than is usual for this time of the year.

I think by far the hardest decision was which cruise line to use. They all cruise to Alaska these days, even Disney, and they all offer some combination of land and sea. I was leaning toward Royal Caribbean but Sandy liked Holland America. In the end we went with the travel agent’s recommendation of Princess Cruise Lines.

I drove from my home in Massachusetts to my sister’s in New York on Saturday May 11. I left my 3 cats in the capable hands of my long time pet sitter, still this is the longest I have ever been away before. My fingers were crossed that there’d be no complications for Diane to deal with.

That Saturday night we took our mother out for Mother’s Day dinner and then headed back to my sisters for an early night. We had an early cross-country flight from Albany Airport into Vancouver in the morning. By arriving a day early we sacrificed the airport transfer but got a day in Vancouver before we had to board the ship on Monday.

Our flight was uneventful and we spotted a rainbow as we flew into a misty, wet Vancouver. Our hotel , The Best Western Sands, was a block from the waterfront and very nice.

I had been to Vancouver once before many years ago and I remember the residents being very friendly, warm and helpful. That hasn’t changed at all. I still think it is one of the most friendly cities I have ever been in. What I do think has changed is the fabric of the city. We saw a great melting pot of people of many different nationalities and ethnicities. This only serves to make an already lovely city more cosmopolitan. Vancouver has really come into its own.

A Sunny Day

Posted on May 6, 2013May 6, 2013 by Dusty Roads

The weather remains cool (50’s) but sunny. The local weatherman says we need rain and that we are running about 10 degrees below average in temperature. The Right Whales are feeding off Cape Cod and it seems every weekend there’s another benefit walk for something.

The cats continue to drive me crazy. Last night after I went to bed I was awakened by loud growls. As I ran to the living room to break up the fight, Smokey at my heels, Rocky bolted to a cardboard box and Buddy flopped onto his side next to it. They both looked at me like they were the most innocent creatures in the world. Clearly it was a “mock battle”.

Not so this morning at 6am when Buddy decided he wanted Smokey’s window seat. (Sigh) That was a real fight, if one-sided. Poor Smokey! I wish I knew who removed his claws! We could pull off a few fingernails and see how they like it.

What will happen when I’m away on vacation and not around to play referee?

But back to yesterday. Since it was a nice sunny day I headed out to take some pictures. I’ve been neglecting some of my favorite spots and it was time to see what was going on for spring.

Lake Rico was busy with families picnicking and kids fishing. Since I didn’t want to intrude I moved on to the Herring Run. I’d seen some great pictures from some of my friends but when I got there the only wildlife was a few grackles.