As you recently heard Dr. Mike Davis say, there’s been a lot of scientific research on how much energy sled dogs burn during the Iditarod, and the numbers are consistently in the 10,000-12,000 calories per day range. That is a huge number of calories, and it helps explain the massive … Read More
Yesterday I gave you a “detailed” view of some of what goes into an Iditarod Checkpoint Drop Bag. Today I want to give you a bit of a “bigger picture” view. After several days cutting about 900 pounds of meat — fish, beef, horse, turkey skins, lamb, beaver, etc. — … Read More
The Iditarod Sled Dog Race is such a huge event in the annual cycle here at SP Kennel that it cannot be over-emphasized how much effort goes into preparing for it. As I recently mentioned, there are two basic “sides” to Iditarod preparation — “Training” and “Logistics” — and both … Read More
It was an especially fast-paced week here at SP Kennel, and practically every minute was jam-packed with Iditarod preparation. In the process, I shot and downloaded so much media so fast that I created quite a mess on my Mac. So, the boss gave me the day off from Kennel … Read More
In this episode of “Aliy Talks About…” you will hear physical descriptions of SP Kennel in Two Rivers. It occurred to me that a couple of photos might help, so here they are: A view of the house from the dog yard and a view of the dog yard from … Read More
As the clock continues to count down, preparations for Iditarod are accelerating here at SP Kennel. The most obvious aspect of this preparation, of course, is the pace of training dogs. Because fielding two Iditarod teams requires 32 fully trained dogs — and you never know which dogs might have … Read More
A few days ago, Aliy recorded an audio description of dog commands. Although she did her typically great job of describing things, there’s always a big difference between hearing something described and seeing it in action. Well, my friend Ron went on a “ride along” with Aliy and a team … Read More
Many thanks to all of you who “voted” in the Media & Connection polls. The results are in, and here they are: As you can see, the vast majority of you are able to play both the video and audio media on this site. Almost all the rest of you … Read More
You know that comfy feeling you get when you’ve just put fresh linens on your bed? How about when there’s a knock on your hotel room door and the cheerful voice says “Housekeeping!” and you know your bedding is about to be freshened? Well, it’s like that for the dogs … Read More
It’s such a delight to have the sun showing up earlier in the day, going higher in the sky and setting later in the afternoon. Today, the sun treated us to our first “Sun Dog” of the year. From Wikipedia: “A sun dog or sundog (scientific name parhelion, plural parhelia, … Read More
