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How Siberian Huskies Took Over My Life
By Ken Haggett
It all began six years ago when I made a visit to a local dog sled race and was intrigued with the skijoring event. I had one mix breed from the shelter and had convinced myself that she really looked like she had some Alaskan in her. Other people seemed to think she was a Shepard mix. Not deterred I signed up for a skijoring lesson and fitted her with a harness. She did alright as long as the instructor was skiing ahead of us holding out biscuits, but when I tried it at home on our own she was having nothing to do with it. We tried a few more times before I realized that I should just let her chase Frisbees which was her real passion in life. Plan "B" was to visit the shelter and look for a "real" sled dog. As luck would have it my partner stopped by the local shelter and there was Jake the Siberian husky. She thought he was gorgeous and he sure pulled on the leash when she took him for a walk. I stopped by to check him out and had to agree, he was a handsome devil and he really did pull on the leash. We brought him home the next day for a trial visit and he's still with us today.
Jake took to skijoring pretty well due to his basic Siberian pulling instinct which was an improvement over my other dog. We had a great winter with both of us learning how to skijor. It looked like so much fun that my partner was envious and we decided we really should get another dog so we could both skijor at the same time. There just happened to be a woman near by looking to place her entire dog team so we went to visit. No, we did not come home with the entire team. We exercised restraint and only brought home one, a pretty female named Misty. Now we each had a dog to skijor with and I got to go out with two a few times. That was a mistake because I found out how much fun it is to skijor with two. Now I thought since we were doing fine with two dogs (our first had passed away) how much more difficult could three be? The home were we got Misty still had four dogs looking for homes. We visited again and came home with Aiko. Of course the obvious next step is to get a fourth, then we could both skijor with two dogs each and we could even get a sled and try dogsledding with a team of four!
Once I started sledding I began to think about how much faster I would be able to go if I was running six dogs rather than four. This led to buying a pair of dogs from a gentleman out of state who had been breeding racing Siberians for around thirty years. Toots and Nemo gave me a taste of a whole new level of performance. I also bought them knowing there was a possibility to breed and we wanted to build on this line of dogs. The following spring we did our first breeding between Toots and Nemo and ended up with four beautiful pups. We were only planning on keeping two but we had issues with Toots not caring for the pups and we had to bottle feed all four of them. After that experience we just couldn't part with any. That bumped our dog yard from six to ten in one shot.
Misty has moved on to our friends home where she can enjoy semi retirement. Jake has taken a spot in on the couch and is much happier sleeping on our bed than being a "real" sled dog. We have purchased two other adults as a couple of our first dogs are nearing retirement age so we're holding at eleven now. I am giving tours now so I need to maintain a solid eight to ten dog team.
You can see the slippery slope you can start down when you pick up that first innocent little Siberian Husky! Some folks keep going and have dog yards with forty, fifty, or even one hundred dogs. I don't intend to go that far and feel like eleven or twelve (alright, maybe fifteen) is plenty to handle. That said, beware, they are contagious!
About the Author
Ken Haggett
Peace Pups Dogsledding
Lake Elmore, Vermont
http://www.peacepupsdogsledding.com
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/33969.html
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| Some other articles by Ken Haggett | Learning to Drive in Vermont
Learning to drive a six dog team is a big move up from a four dog team. With a four dog team there is less power meaning that the driver works more to ...
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