Welcome to the new blog for Northern Star Kennels. We are a family run sled dog racing kennel located in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Leading our pack is musher Warren Palfrey. He is supported by wife and fellow musher, Kate, and our three boys, Sam,14, Peter,9, and Jesse,7. We all work towards the pursuit of excellence at the kennel. We aim for the best, the best for our dogs, the best food, we feed FirstMate, the best training, and the best results. We invite you to join us in our life and learn what it takes to run an Iditarod team. We will introduce you to our dogs, share some of our training strategies, our planning for Iditarod, our racing plans and results and all the rest that falls among our life with the dogs.

Warren completed his first Iditarod in 2006. The first running was approached by us as a learning tool - for musher and dogs alike. Warren finished with 12 of his original 16 dogs in good form and we were very proud of that. This year we are aiming for a much more competitive run. The dogs and musher are both experienced and know the trail - a huge asset in a race of the magnitude of the Iditarod. See www.iditarod.com for more info if you are not yet familiar with "the last great race" on earth.

We have already started our fall training. We are running short miles right now. We run right out of our dog yard. Until the lakes freeze over( usually mid November) we will be running through the streets of our neighborhood for about a mile until we reach a training road used by all the local mushers. We focus our early training on having the dogs pull hard. We are building back up their endurance. Our dogs stay in good shape year round. While it is too hot to run them in harness during the summer months, they are free run in the cooler hours of the morning and evening and those that like the water go swimming in the lake in front of our house. We find this keeps them in good shape and helps with the team building for fall and winter. Dogs that play hard together work hard together!

All for now as it is time to go out in the dog yard! Where it is a mixture of rain and snow today!!!!

Have a great day! Kate