Getting Ready

In the era of high tech everything, it's a welcome respite to work for 2 weeks in a place where no technology is needed to work with the dogs. Not much has changed over the years, other than better, warmer gear.

During the morning meeting, the teams are determined and a board is created. I love this! Magnets and stickers on an old cookie sheet (I believe it's an old cookie sheet). The names of the dogs and the Kennel Rangers can be rearranged as needed. It's weather resistant and not even an Arctic wind can blow the magnets off of the board.

The first teams of dogs have their harnesses put on before they are loaded up into the truck. The rest of the harnesses are hung on a hook in the back of the truck.

Once we have arrived at our trail head, the board is hung on the back of the truck. The dogs are unloaded one by one and hooked up to either their sled (if they are on the first team pulling) or their gang line. As long as I could keep track of the board, I knew which dog went on which team and in which position. Apparently, this isn't a simple task for me because sometimes the Kennel Rangers would change their minds but not the board… yea..I got confused a few times. We all took it in stride and by the time my two weeks was up, I was pretty confident about harnessing and hooking up the dogs.

Here, the dogs are in their boxes in the truck. Don't worry, they are buckled in. They don't spend a lot of time in the boxes … this is strictly for transportation purposes. The boxes are “baited” with a dab of peanut butter. Clever!

Harnessing the dogs can be challenging for a novice like me. I'm used to putting dogs on walking harnesses, not pulling harnesses so it took me a day or two to not fumble around. The dogs were patient with me as I learned and some of them even helped me by lifting their paws without being asked or dropping their heads so I could put their harness on.

It takes about 20 minutes to get the dogs out of their boxes and hooked to the sled or on their gang lines. As you can imagine, it's chaos and happiness all around. The dogs are so happy to be able to run!