Hello there everyone! I have been very awol from the blog for awhile here. Life this fall has been even busier than usual. I took a part time job out at the airport which was fun, great for some travel benefits and a good learning time for me but as will not surprise many of you, the demands of the kennel and family life have won out and tomorrow will be my last day on the job. Bittersweet departure as I do enjoy working with the public and have good co-workers but I am also very relieved at the same point to be able to focus all my energies back on the dogs and the race schedule. 

Plans for the races are going well. The garage is beginning to turn into drop bag central. We have finished inventory of all the necessary supplies and things we need are on order. When we return from Seeley Lake we will do the Yukon Quest drop bags and we will finish the Iditarod drop bags in Alaska. The dog truck and trailer will be getting a good clean up for our preparations for Seeley Lake. We will be heading down to Seeley next week for the 200. We are taking the kids with us and everyone is very excited about the trip. The kids saw Montana in the summer and are very keen to check it ot in the winter. We are excited to share our love of the place and the great people with them.

The main dogs have a few days off here as they just finished back to back 70's on Saturday and Sunday. The cold weather continues here. You know it has been too cold for too long when we look at the thermometer and say oh, it is only minus 33, not too bad. Yep, winter does tend to make people go abit strange. The weather is predicted to remain cold until we leave for Seeley. At least it will be nice for Annie and the yearlings while we are gone. The yearlings are running 35 miles now and I must say I am really impressed with this group. Quite a few natural leaders and all that are willing to try and will I am sure be good soon. THey have the day off as well today as we all play catch up on other parts of the busy training life. 

I hope everyone had a great holidays and wish you all the best for 2009! Safe celebrations of the new year to you all!
Cheers,
Kate

Wow the time flies by !
It has been cold here it seems forever  when the temperature rises to -30 it is a warm spell. 
The dogs have all adapted to the cold spell, growing their coats a little thicker.
We just have to dress warmer.. allot warmer!

Our schedule has become 70- 100 mile runs , having run over 350 miles in the last week, through the cold weather. I am glad to have a our camp to warm up a have a cup of hot chocolate there before another 3 hour run home.

6 to 9 hour runs are now the norm. We will maintain this until heading to Montana for the Seeley lake races  starting January 9th 2009

I will presume at this point that our dogs are in better shape than last season at this point in the year, For a comparison, while racing the Seeley race last year it took about 9.5 hours to get to Lincoln from Seeley 1 way, after a  couple of weeks training in Montana I was doing the equivalent in about 8.5 hrs

It will be nice to see all our friends down there however brief the trip will be..

I am on day 5 of running at least 70 miles, not much time for anything else here, So greatfull to have the help of Annie our handler and all the family being supportive! Sam took 1 of the teams yesterday to insure dome mulitday runs stay in our scedulae.  A big help to say the least. He in in bed today with the flu A much as we can figure, stuff coming out everywhere..

Annie has also been busy getting food drop stuff together

I and everyone else will probably get it too  just in time for christmas ! yeah

Warren