What do you do with your sled dogs in the summer or when there is no snow? I get this question on a weekly basis from visitors to my dog yard. For me summer training doesn't exist. This is the time my athletes get a little down time and the opportunity to catch a sun tan. We had an excercise pen set up (five foot high fencing stretched around the abundance of towering birch on our ranch) but we live on such a treacherous hill side that it can sometimes be a death defying act to wrestle a really excited sled dog down a steep hill and convince them to go through the narrow gate into a pen that they just run circles - sled dogs don't really care to run circles - it's very boring.
After five years of working at this form of summer and fall excercise I finally gave up. My back has had the best summer ever! I took the fencing down to remove dead trees from the yard and decided to not put it back up, but give it to my husband for the start of his miniature cow operation.
Usually letting the dogs run in the pen all fall I would then go to sled training. This worked very well for me until recently. We did all our serious training on a sled because snow was always on the ground in good quantity by mid October. But each year our snow fall seems to be getting later and later. In 2003 my first trip on the sled was October 12, in 2004 October 20 and in 2005 it was November 20. I have no idea what it will be this year, but as of this writing we might have an inch or two of snow on the ground. Not near enough to run a sled over.
We've owned a four wheeler for a few years. We use it to plow our road and driveways, haul a trailer around to clean out the horse and mule pen or haul wood. I've seen other dog mushers use four wheelers to run huge strings of sled dogs and I wasn't sure I wanted to attempt this. But with my fence being gone and snow getting later and later each year arriving, I knew this year would be the year I would have to start training with the four wheeler if I want the dogs to be in some sort of physical shape by race season.
Sled dogs always amaze me with what they are willing to put up with so they can run. Once again our hill is too steep to run a huge string of dogs out in front of the "wheeler". I put a four dog hook up on the front and left it in gear - so I could help them out at all times. Since we live in a pretty built up area there are no trails around the ranch, just dirt roads. I hooked up four of my leaders, two in lead and two in wheel. They were excited, as usual. I started up the engine and while it gave them a moment of pause they resumed their barking and jerking at the lines forthwith.
Since I have never run my dogs from the ranch, but only out of the winter dog yard several miles away, they had absolutely no idea where they were going. This was the perfect opportunity to work with them on their "Gee - Haw" directional skills. I had scouted out a 1 1/2 mile loop down country roads to a little circle turn around between two roads. There are many forks in the road and intersections along the way were the dogs have many choices of where to go. They followed my verbal commands almost perfectly. Pretty good for having a whole summer off! Rollin, rollin, rollin, keep them doggies rollin!
