Springtime Sunshine

Sunshine and warm temperatures have taken over in Two Rivers, Alaska. The dogs are rather mellow and quiet during the day (unless someone gets giddy for 30 seconds to chase their tail… Peach!) But the entire yard of huskys are a playful bunch once the temperatures cool in the evening or early morning.

One of the most common questions that we are asked is: “What do your husky sled dogs do during the summer?”. The simple answer is that they are normal dogs during the summer months. Many kennels will send their dogs away to ‘summer camp’ on a glacier or tourist excursion area to continue to run and work in harness. We have never taken that route. We generally give our working dogs (and working mushers) the entire summer “Off.” This is not to say that the dogs or the mushers do nothing – but they certainly are on vacation compared to Fall Training or Winter Racing.

However, dogs will be dogs and they like to have fun and generally just, yup… be dogs. So, in the summertime this means digging, running around, chewing on bones, Kongs and each other. And they absolutely love playing. They play a lot with their neighbors. The yard is set up so that “BFFs” are situated right next to each other. You often look out and see Perky and Barista tearing it up, or Decaf and Daisy, or Bill and Wu. Yes – siblings are often best buddies throughout their lives. But it’s not always family members who wind up Best Buds. For instance, Cayenne and Scooby are amazing friends and their playful antics get rather crazy. Usually one dog is upside down and squirming until the other one tucks tail and gets the “zoomies”.

Right now several dogs are living in pens. We will soon start the Summer Play Pen rotation schedule. We have three large pens at SPK that are literally made for playtime. These pens are larger and allow room for running around. They are generally full of holes and chew toys. We put two dogs in the pens together for a day or half a day depending on the schedule. Some dogs like Driver and Iron simply run and chase each other until they get hot and then lay in the shade. But other dogs like Ginger and Spark will chew on each other and play all day long and go home exhausted at night. Either way the dogs have a good time and burn off some summertime steam. If you do the math… 2 dogs per one pen at one rotation a day = means 6 dogs per day or 42 dogs per week. But when we do two rotations a day = means 12 dogs per day or 84 dogs per week. Fun fun fun. Add in the Summer Dog Walks (more info HERE and HERE) these guys are gonna have a fantastic summer.