Well Summer is here , the yard is dry and the outside waterline to the feed shack is thawed out.
no more carrying buckets from the house for the next few months- simple pleasures.
We have been running a few teams periodically but with the weather warm up it will be soon too warm to run, we can take advantage of spring run off on our training trail to help cool off the dogs. 
We have two females bred right now, I do believe they are starting to show, so they are due  June. 8th and 16th approximately.
 We bred Filbert to RIcky in January  but she did not take.  Lena  was in heat in early March so se wont be in untill later this fall. 
We still intend to breed both of them.
Lena has healed well with her broken leg, the plate is still in her leg, We are undecided weather or not to eventually get it out or leave it. She is turning 6 years old, and  it is a big factor if she could conceivably run on the main team or not. She has a high value to us for breeding , as she has thrown some high caliber pups. This may be her main use from now on.

Pictured is Gumbie, he was bred to Hena(ricky Xfilbert) 
Gumbie is a well built dog with tonnes of  tireless attitude, good coat, great feet he had a bad bite on his leg last fall that took forever to heal, we decided to leave him off the rest of the season, he'll be back for next season.

We have been asked a number of times why we are breeding two dogs that are not on our stud list.
Well our intent was to breed all our Filbert pup females to continue the "Peppy" line Gumbie was chosen as an outside male to bring in some varied genetics, the females from this litter will be bred back to a peppy son .. take your pick we have a number of extremely talented males.
Rafeal was chosen to breed to Hula because he is an older male, He will more than likely be for sale after this season,.
He is one of the toughest dogs that I have had the pleasure of working with. The dog eats great, and has very high attitude. While in Montana this winter, he had injured his back muscles, so he physically could not run with the team, we were at the time doing 70 mile runs in about 6.5 hours( this does not seem that fast , but to those that are familiar with the Race to the sky trail, it is the run from Lincoln to Seeley lake and return = 140 miles) He would be so stiff after a run to the camp that he walked around like a old man, but he would be barking and jumping to go as soon as the tugs lines were starting to get hooked up. That was impressive.
Hula is extremely well built, Rafeal is not the best built dog in the yard ( He was good enough to run on Doug's main team for a number of years)  but he has an awesome head, that really counts  in the Iditarod.
So both of the offspring from these litters will be bred back to either Frank, Dobie,  Earl or Blackdog. 
Lena will be bred to Blackdog and Filbert will be bred to Dobie.