Riding the Sled
It looks like Mackey is going to take it, after all! He pulled ahead and has been increasing the gap between himself and Gerbhardt who is back in second, for the last twenty four hours. King and Buser ran into trouble, leaving the top spots, and Zack Steer has joined the pack at the front. Mackey has just left his last mandatory eight-hour layover in White Mountain, and will likely reach Nome in nine or ten hours. Jon Little reports that the Comeback Kennel dogs are looking incredible - strong and calm - showing no sign that many of them ran the Quest with Mackey less than a month ago.
On Sunday afternoon, I went down to the Limited North American Championships and watched the last two classes run. After thawing out in Musher's Hall and waiting for some of the teams competing in this coming weekend's Open Championship finish their practice runs (I saw one sled with twenty two dogs on the line. I wonder how many people it will take to hold that team back at the start on Friday?) we headed over to Melissa's truck and hooked up eight of her ten dogs. Mona and Fire ran lead. Fire is a beautiful rust-and-black, lanky and calm. Mona is a tiny little black and white ball of love who rolled over for me to rub her belly and tried to crawl into my lap while we waited for the other dogs to be clipped in. But she is The Lead Dog, and once we started running her confidence, intelligence and power were evident as she followed Melissa's quiet voice commands for turns, took the team expertly around stumps and trees and away from rough patches and authoritatively bumped the much larger Fire out of the way when she felt it was needed. I sat in the sled and held on tight as the screeching team lunged and howled. Melissa pulled the brake and called for her leaders to go, and I didn't hear another sound from them the whole seven-mile run. It was a wonderful afternoon, and I'm afraid I may be hooked. Unfortunatly, -92 boots didn't do the trick (they were on sale for a reason, I guess.) Next time, I'm bringing toe warmers.
On Sunday afternoon, I went down to the Limited North American Championships and watched the last two classes run. After thawing out in Musher's Hall and waiting for some of the teams competing in this coming weekend's Open Championship finish their practice runs (I saw one sled with twenty two dogs on the line. I wonder how many people it will take to hold that team back at the start on Friday?) we headed over to Melissa's truck and hooked up eight of her ten dogs. Mona and Fire ran lead. Fire is a beautiful rust-and-black, lanky and calm. Mona is a tiny little black and white ball of love who rolled over for me to rub her belly and tried to crawl into my lap while we waited for the other dogs to be clipped in. But she is The Lead Dog, and once we started running her confidence, intelligence and power were evident as she followed Melissa's quiet voice commands for turns, took the team expertly around stumps and trees and away from rough patches and authoritatively bumped the much larger Fire out of the way when she felt it was needed. I sat in the sled and held on tight as the screeching team lunged and howled. Melissa pulled the brake and called for her leaders to go, and I didn't hear another sound from them the whole seven-mile run. It was a wonderful afternoon, and I'm afraid I may be hooked. Unfortunatly, -92 boots didn't do the trick (they were on sale for a reason, I guess.) Next time, I'm bringing toe warmers.
posted by Pete & Mary @ 10:16 AM
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