Coming home, between the 250/ 100 split and where we hit the 30 mile trail, we had come out of the valley that drains into the Allagash, and were up on a height of land before crossing into yet another valley. After being in deep woods for 30 miles, the trees thinned out and the dogs moved through open landscape. Wocket glanced over the the right, I followed his glance and saw the moon lighting up the clouds, I said to him ‘yes, it is pretty out isn’t it,’ and turned off my headlamp and ran in the dark for awhile, enjoying everything there is to enjoy about running a dog team through the moun ..read more

The cold showed up on a Wednesday. In the darkness of 4:30 a.m., I got out of the truck and the cold hit me. It seeped immediately into my arms and back, sliced through my hat, and crushed my fingers when I got careless with my gloves. The metal, of my sled, of the snaps, of my truck, of the dog's collars, burned my skin. For the first time in years, I wasn’t sure I had enough clothing. The dogs came out of the boxes and their paws went up in the air, the shock of the cold ground. If they didn’t eat their food quickly enough, it would freeze to the bowl. But with this kind of cold, I nev ..read more

Gemma and Jax on fire at the start, you can spot Cobalt in point, and Wocket in wheel. Photo by Pete Freeman. On the run back to Fort Kent, to the finish, traveling through rolling hills I took a minute to realize where we were. The golden afternoon light lit up the mountains around us, dry leaves rattled in a few trees but otherwise the sound of winter silence was all around. The 9 dogs on the team moved seamlessly and powerfully, needing nothing from me for the moment. At that point, we were still in third place, I felt we had put enough distance ahead of the musher behind us that I felt s ..read more

The brothers Speck! and Wocket, taken by friend Heather Richards. Looking at the dogyard, I do headcounts sometimes: how many intact females, how many neutered males, how many dogs from the last racing team in 2020, how many leaders. But the most critical numbers: there are 24 dogs in the yard right now, 18 of them were either born here or raised from pups, and 10 of them are two year olds. What this means is it’s a very cohesive dogyard, a dogyard that I stay in tune with, but also a dogyard full of energy and unknowns. Like most of the previous summers, I took the dogs for lots of hikes, i ..read more

Laying on my couch, staring at the ceiling it came to me, I said the words aloud to register them: ‘I don’t want to get COVID-19.’ At this point, the major races I had been planning to sign up for had canceled: first the UP200, then Can Am, and then even the local Brownville 20/20 race. Left standing was the midwest races, the Beargrease for which I was already on the waitlist, and the Copper Dog 140 which would open signups the next day. I scraped myself off the couch, ate lunch, and ran a 10 dog team of the developing A-listers, led by Aurora and Willie and including the yearlings Marian an ..read more

Hoss on Mt Success, mid August. It’s the first week of September, and the months of the summer seem both impossibly long and also seemed to have passed impossibly fast. The suspended animation of the pandemic spring, and the groundhog-day feeling of the pandemic summer. I’m writing now not to comment on the social/ political/ actual trends of the pandemic, but recognize that, for the first time in a decade, I was home every day with the dogs. Every. Day. I loved it. I’ve grown closer to the dogs than I ever have. My current day job, and the day job I had before it, involves long days and trav ..read more

Puppies in the front: Riptide, Bruce Springsteen, and Wocket, with Loki in the middle and then Jumbo photo bombing. Photo by Joe Klementovich. ‘Making room for puppies’ is a phrase I have heard, often, from mushers when asked why they are placing dogs. That statement shows up in ‘dogs for sale’ postings, most often, a comment that distinguishes a dog for sale from other things, like ‘kennel sell-out’ or ‘downsizing.’ Every year, from the start of the team, I have placed dogs that have either not quite fit in or have aged into a phase of life where racing just isn’t where or how they can shine ..read more

‘We aren’t there yet,’ I kept saying to myself and the dogs, as the darkness settled, the cold drew closer, and the headlamp behind us diminishing and then disappearing. I didn’t let myself accept our lead, our first place spot, until we crossed the last driveway, less than half a mile from the finish and that short cruise down the ski hill, when I burst into tears. We had won, won our first big race, won a Can Am race, the Can Am 100. Start line. Pete Freeman photo. Aurora and Gemma’s faces are fierce, but look at little Spiller right behind them, and Flora’s oversized confidence. Tracing th ..read more

It’s the first week of October. There have been multiple cool mornings, and as I write this now the mercury hovers around freezing. Hard frosts have killed plants, although I still see yellow jackets stumbling around drunkenly. Somewhere, somehow, the foliage has exploded into the firestorm of peak colors, amplified by dry clear cold air. In short: it’s deep into fall.    And…..the dogs haven’t run yet.    The dogs seem more or less ok, as dogs don’t have the ability to regret what isn’t happening. They do radiate back my own frustration that we haven’t run yet, and paired ..read more

Image by Erin Clark This time of year I wonder: what does it mean to train a dog team? What is the feeling to put a dog in harness, attach them to a line, and then connect that line to a sled and we travel the wilderness together? The five months of summer, of the non-training season, pass all too quickly, a rapid rhythm of cutting firewood, growing flowers (I love growing flowers), getting all my doctor’s appointments in, and completing exactly one large project. Placing dogs and raising puppies. And, of course, the rotation of taking dogs for hikes most evenings. I wrote the below wrap-up ..read more