SPK Dog Log

Last night the Quest Family came together in Fairbanks and celebrated the dogs, mushers and the race we all love. There was an repeating theme of the evening – that of family.

David Booher, the Youth Director of the First Presbyterian Church did the invocation and said that prayer can come down to three things: help, thanks and wow. He himself is a dog musher so he likened those three aspects to running dogs. The biggest laugh was ‘thanks – thanks when your swing dog finally learns to poop on the run.”

Fairbanks Mayro, Jim Matherly, welcomed everyone to the city and wished all the teams well. Jim unfortunately suffers from an allergy to dogs and a room full of people covered in dog hair played havoc with his senses.

The trail has always run through Fort Wainwright property and the Garrison Commander Col. Sean N Fisher sent teams off with some good ‘ole army “hooah”.

After dinner and meeting the vet and officials team, every musher came up to draw their starting number and thank their dogs, family, friends and sponsors.

Allen drew bib #23 and he and the Black Team will leave the starting chute at 12:06 local time. He received the tags the dogs will wear to help identify them with the vet team.

One more sleep to go!

This evening was Fairbanks’ turn to meet the Yukon Quest mushers.

With all the mushers in one room it was a great experience for young and old to meet everyone from multiple Quest champs to rookies. Everyone had their favourites and got their posters, race guides and T-shirts signed, took selfies and shook hands with them.

Thanks to Caleb for this fantastic note and picture! It always means so much when young fans get excited about the race, it strengthens the future of our sport and our race.

Thanks to La Quinta Inn and Fred Meyer for hosting the event this evening (the fruit platter was a treat!)

Check out the awesome merchandise on sale. See the online store for details on how you can get your hands on some! And watch this space as the prize for our next Dog Fan Club draw will be a fabulous Yukon Quest poster signed by Allen and Aliy.

We have decided to withdraw Aliy and the Red Team from the YQ300. While there are quite a few canine athletes (and one musher) who are spunky and ready for the event, we have determined that this particular dog team would need to compete at a slower pace than the last few years. This would be fine as far as race experience for the dogs, but it would cause a major scheduling dilemma: Aliy would not finish the YQ300 quick enough to jump in the dog truck and drive the 20+ hour journey to Dawson in order to set up Dawson Dog Camp and greet the Black Team. Since all of us at SP Kennel have been extremely excited to race an incredibly talented and competitive Black Team in the 1,000 Mile Yukon Quest for the last 347 days… if you include today, priorities are set. Aliy will stay in Two Rivers during the “American side” of the Yukon Quest and simulate the mileage of a YQ300 with the Red Team, but will be ready to jump in the truck when the SPK Crew returns from Circle.

Thank you to everyone who Geared Up The Dogs for the Yukon Quest 300.

Lisa Barricella, Marilyn Cozzens, Dorothy Filley, Suzanne and Brown Clodfelter, Dawn Beckwell, Nancy Diersen, Cindi Perdue, Cutter Toth, Molly Swenson, Waylon and Torch Cornforth.

We will be contacting each of you individually about what you would like done with your contribution. There are more races to support!

 

While our teams were preparing for and racing the Two Rivers 200 we had another deadline to meet. Yukon Quest drop bags were due on Saturday.

Drop bags can make or break a race. If you don’t have something you need at a checkpoint there is no way to get it without imposing a penalty. You have to pack for all contingencies and that takes a good deal of planning and organising beforehand.

There is a bunch of prep that goes into packing the bags. 100s of pounds of beef, poultry skins, chicken and fish have to be cut to snack sized chunks, three kinds of kibble must be bagged into 14-dog meal sized bags, vet packs put together, human meals and snacks made and bagged, booties fastened into sets of four then bagged into sets of 14. All winter we have been working on these tasks for the CB300, TR200, Yukon Quest and Iditarod bags.

Each year Allen will look over previous years’ bag lists, make adjustments as required then we start placing the contents into the sacks. We have paperwork to complete where we list contents of each bag and make a count of them to ensure they all get to their destination.

Thanks to all the volunteers at both the Fairbanks and Whitehorse depots who helped unload the bags, sort into checkpoints, label them and load them ready for transport to the checkpoints.

As always there are lots of people to thank for helping get the bags completed: Jeff, Shelia, Wendy, Padee  Lindsay, Mike and Rodney.

I sat down with Jeff and he told me about his Two Rivers 200 run.

We started off the race, hit the hills and everything was going very well until about 1.5 hours into it; that’s when Olivia was starting to slow down. She was not limping but she was struggling to punch through the deep snow. Once out of that we hit the harder trail and she picked up again. It was on and off like that until the first checkpoint.

I decided to rest four hours at the Lodge because it was difficult trail on the younger and older dogs. I was also thinking they might have a hard time on the next leg. A few of the team had not had such a hard 50 mile run so they did really well in the first leg. Decaf was ‘perky’ at the Lodge and everyone ate and rested awesome. Spirits were really high and everyone looked good.

Leaving for the second leg, everything was going great until we came across the turn away from the kennel. That really was mentally hard on all of the dogs and they got a little bummed. I stopped and rested for 45-60 mins and all the dogs got snacks and a quick lay down. As soon as I picked them up they were barking, jumping and ready to go. Decaf was the first up! His positive attitude got the rest of them going forward. At this stage Bronze and Gold were struggling a bit, but that positive energy behind them helped out tremendously. Daisy for the whole race was: “what do you want me to do and I’ll do it”. She really wanted to please me. It made life easier having a leader wanting to please me and work hard. We got going, got onto slough and it wasn’t too bad from there. They were definitely tired so I decided to stay four hours at the Store.

From the Store the team sounded great leaving. They were howling and barking and in good spirits, which was huge. They continued like this until we crossed the road and got further from the kennel. Bronze and Gold were mentally “off” so I decided to carry Bronze for a while. We stopped on the “shooting range trail” and rested an hour. This helped them out and we picked up again and they were doing well. I kept Bronze in the bag for another hour then after that she did well out to Angel Creek.

On the trail there are a lot of little rolling 2-3 feet high ‘hills’ and that was getting hard on some of them. McCaw was shining! I had the big boy one up from wheel and he helped us get up and over some of those. McCaw really stepped it up which was huge and awesome to see him pulling through when I needed him to.

Once we got to Angel Creek I could tell that Bronze and Gold were tired. They probably could have kept going keeping them in made no sense, especially with the long leg to come. It was an easy decision to leave them, and they were happy about that also. The got straight into car and slept all the way home.

Leaving Angel Creek was the fastest we’d been in the entire race. I thought for sure we would get up over the hills. We were going faster than the first leg. Everyone’s spirits were high and we stopped every hour to check booties, snack and pet the team for 10 mins. The first time we stopped I noticed Barista had a sore wrist so I bagged her.

Game time decision was nearing – do we go up the mountain? The pace was still awesome. We got to the turn off quicker than anticipated and we were all still in good spirits so we kept going for half hour away from kennel. Next time we stopped to snack I noticed Dancer was getting stiff and I realised Barista was not getting back in harness.

It was a now a really hard decision on what to do. Me as a person coming from military with a NO QUIT philosophy – I will keep going at all cost but it had to come to the decision on what was right for the dogs. Do I ask the rest of the team to carry Barista and maybe Dancer too? It didn’t seem best for the team to keep on pushing up those hills. As I sat and thought about the leg even more I realised I would have to ask them once again turn away from the kennel close to the end. Seeing the strides that dogs like Decaf and McCaw had made since the start of training to that point I would have hated to take a step backwards at this point. It made sense for the dogs to turn them back around and run them home. So, that’s what we did.

After some sleep, rest, food and time to think about it, I would have made the same decision today. I make the right decision and would make the same one again. If we were to run another race now I’m sure they would crush it.

Schmoe did amazing, I did not use him as leader all the way because Ginger was doing well in lead. Having her lead in some of the harder sections would benefit her future. Schmoe was a rockstar and one of the best in the team.

It was great to see the other dogs step up; they all stepped up whenever we needed them to. They had come so far from the start of the season. Early on in the season Decaf had struggled on 15 mile run and he was now motivating to other dogs!

Creamer had a few issues early in season but to see her do well in this race was great. She was very perky when we got back to the kennel.

Barista, even though she was sore, she never quit. Even when I loaded her into the bag she wanted to keep running; it was difficult containing her.

Daisy was positive and happy the whole time. She wanted to please me. It sure makes things easier to have that type of energy on the trail.

Dancer was sore but tough. She remained tight the whole time. I needed her through some of those spots going home and she helped get us out of those spots. Her toughness really showed on this race.

I wanted to keep Bronze and Gold in as long as possible. I ran the race to their capabilities. They did awesome. They did get a little bummed at the first turn away from the kennel but with Decaf and Daisy’s positive energy they soon turned around. There were awesome to Store. Their longest run up to then was 50 miles. They never quit, the just simply got tired. I had to carry Bronze but she kept positive with a no quit attitude. They are going to be amazing dogs

Olivia did really well. She was sore coming in to the Lodge. Having a dog with that knowledge and experience was fantastic. It was good to have her up in swing with Creamer which helped when we switched some leaders – she backed them up. Having a dog like that on your team is an honour in itself.

We trained M through some of those turns away from the kennel before the race. I never had to worry about her the whole race, she lined-out the whole time with tight tug. I could always count on her to pull. She was amazing, tough and had a great attitude.

Overall, we will take the positive with negative. Seeing the leaps in these dogs was rewarding. Although we didn’t achieve our main goal with all the dogs we did see how far some of them came so it was not a failure.

My MVD was Daisy. She would do everything. We came across a little overflow and they all stopped but once I got Daisy in she pulled everyone through. She was always happy, always wagging her tail. Without her that race would have been way more difficult than it was. decaf close second – without his motivation it would have been difficult. We was my Most Improved Dog.

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Special thanks to Jeri, Mark and Padee for handling for me.

 

Here is some mixed media for you to enjoy…

This video has a short pre-race interview and shows the team leaving the start chute then leaving Two Rivers Lodge checkpoint over the road crossing towards the Store.

 

I interviewed Aliy in the car on the way home from town today about her Two Rivers 200 race and her superstar team. It’s kinda long so grab a cup of your favourite beverage or download to your device and listen in the car. (It’s in two parts)

Check out Julien Schroder’s Facebook page for more great pics of our teams.