Cera

The dog I love to hate and hate to love. This is Haydens dog. She is a border collie x northend Dawson (the father was a loose dog in the North end of dawson City). Hayden got her 2 weeks before I came along and had already named her sarah, so when i came along I just changed the spelling. She is super smart and driven like any other border collie. When I was doing obediance training she was my demo dog. She was so smart she knew at work was work, but when we are at home or any other place other than work, she is NOT my dog. At work she is great, listens and knows all the commands, but even after 9 years together, she prefers to kinda block out my "suggestions". Since she is nine and a half now, she is just starting to slow down. In the past 2 years I have discovered she has an amazing drive and talent to find moose that have been shot. If a moose goes into the bushes we sit and wait for the moose to lay down, keeps from having to pack them out further and keeps the lactic acid from making the meat bitter. The first time we took her out was a cold and dark night. Hayden had shot the moose and we let it lay down, we waited about half an hour. We could hear him in the bush so was not to worried about him getting too far. By the time we went in it was dark enough to take in falshlights. We took her in with us, only because there was a grizzly bear in the area waiting for gut piles from hunters. When we went in we were confused by LOTS of tracks everywhere, and I noticed she started tracking, so i took the leash from Hayden and started working her and incouraging her to "watch em", she led us right up to the moose who was laying down in the trees. What is great is she was never trained to track or find a moose. She found 2 more this year, one for a friend and then out moose this year. Although we knew where our moose was, it was another training session for her as we knew we could find it and there for she would find it with us. She was SO excited she pulled me through the tundra and onto my face (very unhappy at that moment). She does a great job keeping the ravens away from the tent and LOVES the toys and sticks she can find. A popular question is do I get confused by the dog and I havin ghte same name, NO. Everyone seems to have a different tone in their voice, when talking to Cera or Sarah.

I will try and do an intro to each dog here with updated info as training progresses.

caribou hunting

there are 2 hunting trips worth of pictures here. The first trip was in Aug. and the the last on was last saturday. The caribou from the first trip was used at our wedding and then the next trip is for us and to give some meat to friends who are in need of some meat for the winter. I love going up and seeing so many caribou. CAribou are deffently my favorite of the deer family. We were also luck to see and mom wolf and her 2 cute and fluffy pups out looking for a meal.

wedding

Here are some pics of our wedding. We were a hour late for our own wedding, It was really cold up there with the wind...brrr.
My maid of honor and I did most of the cooking and prep for the wedding and had to change in the campground cook shack up at tombstone campground, lol. Iwas a great day, the reception was amazing, but unfortunally we have no pics of it.
The picture of the beaded moose is the first time I have ever beaded an animal and certally the first time I have ever sewen any thing of this size. I have done some small flowers but that has been it till now. "Denyak Kezhe" is Haydens indian name "moose hunter".

quick update

Well lucky us! We did manage to get some salmon after all. Although we did not get to go out and get it ourselves :( Hayden got a call from DFO and they had a seized net from a fisher that decided not checking nets was ok. So we went down and got the fish out of the net and came home with 186 fish! Great start! Then after my blog was read, another musher emailed me with a cheap source for chicken SWEET! (a BIG THANK YOU > MP!) So that is going to be in the works soon as well, hopefully after a bit more meat we will be ok, for the winter.
We have snow but not enough to run on yet. When we moved out from Faro, we did not have room to bring the training wheels with us, so I am stuck waiting for snow to start training. Its ok though, we have been so busy, with clean up and preping for the house, and hunting. I am more than happy to be spending lots of time in the yard with the dogs, they are sure getting restless and doing alot of howling now! We have been going for some loose walks, but not too many.
Where we bought land, has moose everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE! And for the past however many years, they have had the trails to themselves pretty much of the time, so with big angry horney bulls and aggitated cows, walks are kept to a minimum. It is great to see so many moose though! Unfortually they are out in the evenings when the camerea wont work :(
We are still in the wall tent, it is pretty warm though, and I hope we have another 2 weeks of half warm left. It seems like we always have enough snow to run dogs/skidoos at haloween, so hopefully it will stay warm as it should continue to snow. I have no idea about when the house will come, hopefully soon.
We took a drive up the road to try for another caribou or two, to give to family and friends that need meat and to make dry meat with and it was a wonderful day. Only -6 meant it was warm and there was a good number of caribout running around. We saw only about 300 caribou but it was still amazing! We also saw a big black mom wolf and her 2 brown pups, very NICE! I have pictures but for some reason blogger will not let me up load here, I can up load to other sites/programs but not blogger. So I will be going into town where hopefully there is fast and good connections, and try later in the week to get some pics up.
hope every one is having a good fall and heading into winter well!
happy trails!

No salmon..?

Well it looks like there are no salmon to feed the dogs this winter. It is a record low for the salmon and they put a limit on how many are allowed to be caught.
This is a REALLY hard blow to us. Being that we have to build a place and everything else that is happening, I was really counting on the salmon. We even went and bought a boat to do salmon with...a boat that is no good this year, and would have caried us through the winter for dog food, if we didnt buy it.
We were going to share a fishwheel with another musher, but he vaery rudly informed us that we are not welcomed to use it now, since he has to catch as many as he can. . I will be calling around Whitehorse for the best deals on ANY kind of meats and fat. If any one has some good suggestions please let me know.
This is devestating, I almost feel like I might have to sell off some dogs and in my mind I cant, I have a great group of young dogs, and some older breeding dogs but thats it, no extras really, especially when thinking about having enough in 4 years to run the Yukon Quest.
So right now I have a head full of crap that is bouncing off the sides but not really prosessing very much. Not sure what is going to happen to the race plans. I know we will be in the Percy Dewolfe race , but other than that not sure what we will do.

whats all new

Well I cant load pictures where we are due to too slow of internet, and I dont have internet at home.
So just an update.
we got salmon,caribou and moose in the winter food storage. We are still cutting the moose up.
We got married, very beautiful day, up at tombstone mountains. Pretty fall colors and it was a bit chilly, brrrrr... but it went really well and was a great day.
We are cleaning up the property and cleaning up where we are going to be building a home. We are getting things on the go starting on Sunday for the winter home.
We are also starting salmon fishing for the dogs starting Monday, so we are building smoke sheds for the meat and we will hang the salmon to cure for the dogs. We figure we will need about 600 hundred or more of dog salmon for the winter.
Then fire wood has to be gotten...
We will be very busy here for the next while getting every thing done. When I can get some slow time I will track down fast internet and get lots of pictures up and a few good stories too.
Hope every one is having a good fall season, hope those who are out braving the cold, fill their freezers, and yards full of meat and fire wood. All the mushers out there some wishing you some great runs!
happy trails :)

salmon fishing

some pics of salmon fishing. We went for salmon so we could have salmon for the wedding!