Those who know me and were present at the pre-race meetings for Craftsbury, Stratford or Fort Kent in the winter of 2004 – 2005, will doubtless recall the glazed expression that drifted across my face once the discussion turned to the trail map and at what points there were going to be “interesting” moments, such as tunnels, road crossings or my personal favourite – the railroad crossing.

Map reading has never been a strong suit of mine – all hail GPS – however, I can follow coloured pie plates quite easily, unlike some I could mention, but won’t.

Accordingly, one of my (many) concerns about our move has been the delightful possibility of getting lost deep in the Alaskan wilderness, or as is just as likely, getting lost only a mile or two from home. So, during my quick visit last month, I tried to walk a little bit of the immediate local area – getting to know a couple of the loops closest to our place that we’ll doubtless run a lot during late August and September.

I also was delighted to finally be able to take my friend Leo up on his offer to come running with his team. Actually, I should point out that Leo’s full and proper name is – Leo, Gary’s handler. It’s a bit of a mouthful but apparently that’s the correct form of address.  Selfishly, I was using these runs to try and get an idea of where we were in relation to our place – I suspect I’m going to end up in Leo’s yard by mistake at least 3 or 4 times.

Anyway, Leo took me out with a team most days that I was there and I got to know some of the dogs a little.

As is the way, the dogs all live on swivel chains and have their own houses, most with their names displayed boldly. Craftily, to avoid over-confidence in aspiring handlers or helpers, some of those dogs don’t actually live in the houses with their names, but  are sneakily positioned elsewhere. I fell for that a couple of times, bringing over the wrong dog or wondering why there was just no way on God’s green earth, that harness was going to fit that dog.  I did quickly (for me) pick up some of the crew – a few favourites that spring to mind -

•  Thunder,  black dog – not to be confused with Thumper, white dog!
• Vlad – he of the head nestling trick.   
• Woody – not living in Woody’s house.
• and the Spice Girls – Pepper, Cajun and Spicey  – except Spicey is a boy, but that ruins the mental image.

Two other dogs made a fairly lasting impression, Rochester – crazy line banging lunatic who broke 2 tugs one morning before we got out and Fargo, who is just a monster dog.    H U G E

Thanks Leo, for your patience and the veggie burgers. 

 

I also took the opportunity to take a drive up to Cantwell, a 2 and a half hour drive from Willow to visit Mike and Caitlin Santos of  The Wolf’s Den Kennel.  I thoroughly enjoyed the drive, quite amazing backdrops and breathtaking mountains. I did take a few photographs but none of them even come close to portraying the majesty that is the Interior, well the little bit of it I could see from the Park’s Highway.

It’s not great, but it’s the best I could do under the circumstances. If you want better, try Google !   Or come back on here next year or the year after and see if I’ve improved.

Anyway, the point of the drive was to visit Mike and have a chat with him about his dogs, his kennel and of course his harnesses.  I hadn’t planned on a particularly long visit, but Mike had so much information and was so willing to share that I ended up staying the night – and scrounging a free dinner and copious quantities of coffee. However I did help scoop and water………   He also hooked up a team and took me out for a run up the mountainous trail out of his yard. The route home also took us back through the “suburbs” of Cantwell and it has to be said, the locals are obviously used to seeing a dog team pad along their roads, judging by the nonchalant waves issued our way.

As well as spending time with all his adults, I also got to be a puppy chew toy for a couple of the litters Mike has on the ground just now.  It seems puppies are the same the world over.

The impending move looms ever closer – flights are booked for us and cargo space has been reserved for the dogs. Crazily, we won’t actually know for sure that the dogs will get on their scheduled flight until a mere 2 weeks before take-off. Doubly frustrating was the news that even if the space is confirmed, the dogs, or some of them could end up being bumped off the plane if the cargo space placement changes.  We’ve been assured this is unlikely – won’t stop the worry until we get to see our guys being unloaded at Anchorage.

Late in June I took another trans-Atlantic flight for a visit to our building site, I mean, new house.  It was a wonderful feeling to be able to drive up our new driveaway and see the house and dogbarn in all their glory. Well, not quite glory as they’re both still very much works in progress but they did look good. Considering that the last time I was there,  it was all black spruce, it was fantastic to see the development. The pictures that our builders have been taking on a regular basis gave us an idea of the progress, but they failed to portray the full impact.

 

The house with barn

Our builders, Robert and Paula of CMM General Contractors and their crew of guys are doing a great job, not just with the actual work, but with ideas and amendments. Paula also dragged me around some suppliers to make decisons and colour choices. Try as I might, I couldn’t evade all responsibility, but I did manage to delay the majority of those decisions till we’re both over there. Paula and Robert also were kind enough to feed me several times – although Robert still shakes his head every time I ask him to just throw my moose steak back on the grill for another few minutes……………………………..

There was a conversation I saw/heard recently where the topic was “What do sled dogs do in the summer”.

Since then, Ive been patiently trying to film our guys doing what they like to do – which is chase next door’s whippet up and down the fenceline. Of course, as is the way of these things, said whippet hasn’t been seen since. However, it is fun to watch and a good little piece of exercise.

The other things they like to do are – hunt the moles and voles and play with the young birds. We have a large swallow family that returns to nest in our barns each year. Every summer, the adults teach the youngsters to fly the “gauntlet of death” – basically, the flock circles overhead of the dogyard and the game is to fly down between the dogs, do a lap of the field and then rejoin the other birds. I kid you not !  It is an amazing thing to watch.

However, at the moment the swallows are still at the nesting stage so that’s not filmable, as I said the whippet seems to be on his holidays, which leaves chasing and wrestling each other as the main source of fun.

Summer in Scotland is a difficult thing to predict.

Tradition would dictate July and August should be our sunniest/warmest/most summerlike months. Practice and experience have shown that is optimistic at best and a downright lie at worst. As a biker, I have often found that the most consistently “nice” month for good weather is May. Now, that comes a little early to be considered a proper summer month probably. However it has once again been shown to be the case this year. Temperatures hitting into the 80’s by 9.00 am – ridiculous.

Anyway, we’ve slid into June and things are back to normal and there are far fewer people wandering around looking like they’ve just spent the past hour sleeping under the grill.

I managed to take this photograph the other day, when our 3 “oldies” were snoozing in the morning sunshine. Sod’s law dictates that as soon as a camera is pointed in their general direction, heads belonging to previously comatose dogs suddenly come to life.

Bhu, Keetna and Ribhinn snoozing in the field

I keep telling them all they should make the most of bug free, sunny days.  I did get our builders to set up 3 Mosquito Magnets around our prospective new dog yard and they have reported that they do seem to be making things a bit less flying, biting insect filled. I suspect that’s a local’s perspective and us, sweet blooded Europeans will resort to bathing in Deet or other assorted sprays.

As you can imagine it’s a little bit crazy here just now. Time seems to have this strange expanding and contracting quality, where one day it feels like we have ages to get organised, the next, it is only moments away from our departure date and we’re still not even close to being ready. Of course, if we actually knew our intended leaving date, that might help – but the closest we can narrow it down to, is sometime at the end of July or early August at the latest. The biggest holdup is not knowing when the dogyard fencing will be done. As soon as that is up, and we can be sure the dogs have a place to go, then everything else will fall into place.

At the moment, we seem reduced to planning, drawing up lists and trying to sort out the myriad of things that need done.

A couple of those things involved me making a trip to our house in New Hampshire earlier this month. There are many requirements a dog team has, and a way of being transported around is just one of them.  Accordingly, I had organised the purchase of a shiny new truck and arranged to have a custom set of dogboxes built and fitted.

Ford F350 Lariat - shiny, clean and enormous

For a variety of reasons, the dogboxes were not ready, which was a major disappointment. However, the signs of progress and the part prepared pile of materials looked like it would all come together well. Our friend Mike Ellis has leapt to the rescue and will take over liaison with the box builder and help bring it all together. (hopefully before we actually land in Alaska ! )

I had a wonderful time, visiting friends,  playing with dogs and even getting to hold a sleeping baby. It was great to mingle again with some of the friends I made during my many trips to New Hampshire. As exciting as our new adventure will be, it is odd to consider that we are actually closer to our friends in NH whilst we are here in Scotland, than we will be once we are settled in Alaska.

Of course, the whole point of going all that way is to run a sled. Now, to do that, one needs dogs. And we need more dogs than we currently have – and we need to consider the ages of our dogs too. So, we would like to introduce our two newest recruits to Gealach Mor.

Fionnghall & Ciara

We have given them Gaelic names, partly because it fits in with kennel name and theme, and partly because even the thought of leaving Scotland has made us feel a little more patriotic. Fionnghall (Finn for every day use) is the little white male – it means white stranger. Ciara means “little dark one” .  They’re only 4 weeks old in this photo and have no idea of what lies ahead for them. We can only assure Gail that they will be loved, cared for and will always have a home with us.