Hello all, The temperatures are finally above zero and are expected to stay that way! We are all excited here for the arrival of Spring. This was one of the coldest years on record for the North with weeks of minus 40 celcius. Global warming doesn't seem to be a big factor here, not this year at least. The majority of the snow has already melted off just over the weekend. Because of our location above 60 degrees we are much closer to the sun so when it is out it it quite warm. You can come in for lunch and come back out in 1/2 hour and you can see how much the snow has melted. The dog yard is now a muddy mess that the dogs sure seem to enjoy but it makes our days a bit grosser. Hopefully the sun will be out today and the last of the snow will melt and run off and the ground will warm up enough to soak up the remaining water. The process usually takes about a week or so to have a nice dry dogyard. The lakes are still frozen and people are still snowmobiling on them, we even see ATVs on there now as well as a go-cart the other evening. I ran my last team last week. The conditions are so icy because of the melting off during the day and then freezing of the meltoff at night that it is quite slick and the kind of conditions where it would be easy to injure a dog, or a human. I was planning to run one more team last Tuesday and I had my dogs loose running around as I got the lines and toboggan ready to go and then Wham! the next thing I new I slipped, was in the air, and came down hard on my bum and then whacked my head...and then literally got dogpiled by my team as I was seeing stars. I took this as a sign that maybe running that day wasn't really in my plans. My head hurt for two days. Ah well, all is good now. I would rather that I got hurt than one of my dogs. I have started free running the dogs regularly now in our various free run pens and they have been having a blast. We find that free running them creates an even more cohesive team when they are working. They sure have fun and I love watching all their interactions. All for now as today is the day to put away all of our big winter clothes and find all the spring/summer clothes that we put away many months ago. I hope that it is a beautiful spring day in your world! Cheers, Kate