Event Journal

Karen & Mark Ramstead leased us NorthWapiti's Kluane for a summer litter.  Kluane missed the 'summer' part, as she still has not come into heat, so looks like she will be having a fall litter at the earliest.  We had a hard decision between using Skor or Linc with her, but we decided on Skor.  We were just afraid her and Linc would have a bunch of  "Jolly Green Giants", LOL!

We decided to spay Holly this summer.  She is getting older and we have no breeding plans for her, so we figured it was healthier to get her spayed.  Plus one less dog coming into heat is always nice ;)  We also decided to have Tracker neutered - this was a VERY VERY hard decision as he is turning into an incredible, very responsible leader.  He is also very nicely built and moves awesome.  The reason we are neutering him is he has a food intolerance to any dog food with corn/wheat in it.  While we have moved our kennel over to a corn/wheat free kibble for him, we decided that this trait was not something we wanted to pass onto future racing Siberians.  It was a very expensive and heart breaking time when he was sick (he would vomit during/after exercise and had a extremely tender tummy) and we decided we didn't want to take the chance of this being genetic as we wouldn't want us or other mushers to have to go through this in the future.

All 4 of the pups are growing up great, but we are particularly taken with Myst  and Stryder.  We are SO glad we didn't let Stryder go at 6 months of age.  He went from a sleek, awesome looking 8 wk old, to a fuzzy, short 5 month old, and is now back to a slender, leggy boy, resembling a coyote, LOL!  We can't wait to get all 4 of these guys in harness!  Only one more month to go...

This year we are again focusing on 30 mile races.  We have a full 14 dog team to train (well 13 if Klu has pups), but Holly will probably retire from racing.  She will be 8 this year and won't have the speed to race, but she will train up all fall on the slower ATV speeds. We will have two teams to race - one team will be made up of 6 strong, mature adults that we will 'race' - the other team will be more of a puppy team that will get race experience, but we will not push them as hard as the adult team.  Keeping the younger team happy and getting experience on them will be main goal for them.

One of our best friends, Karen Ramstead of NorthWapiti kennels will be coming down to speak at the Northern New England Trade Fair and Seminar Sat Sept 30th and Sun Oct 1st.  We are VERY excited about her visit!  It's nice Karen will also get to see many of her 'kids' in the area as well.