"Those People are Crazy." Part Three

Some mornings I wake up terrified of the future.

When I was a kid we lived in California for a minute. For whatever reason I liked to sleep in my bedroom closet. I'd hole up in the dark all day with a 13 inch TV/VCR and a sleeping bag...

Some mornings I just want to crawl back into that closet...

My first litter of pups was born on August 14th 2011.

Only five of seven survived.

Two were born with open chest cavities, organs exposed to the open air; wee little beating hearts, tiny pulsating intestines. The only thing that could be done for them was to let them slip away in a bucket of warm water.

The lessons dogs teach.

My vet said one in a litter wasn't entirely uncommon but two was "weird". I started doing some research and discovered that exposure to certain chemicals during the second trimester can inhibit the closure of the chest cavity. I racked my brain trying to suppose what Squirt could have gotten into.

Then it dawned on me.

Paint.

I'd painted dog houses while she was in her second trimester.

Initially all the dogs were put away but then my ex-husband opened the door and suddenly I had a stampede of dogs headed straight for me. Squirt stepped in some dripped paint as she sprinted by. Dog feet are very absorbent.

Four boys and one girl.

Tears fell from my eyeballs as each healthy puppy was born. I wasn't exactly sobbing, but there were tears nonetheless. One needed help clearing his airway. One was long and skinny, and I wasn't real sure what to think of him. The girl was a tiny thing and the other two boys were almost as big as my foot.

Puppies!

My vet came out when they were three days old to remove dew claws, and showed me a couple different ways to perform the procedure. (Removal of dew claws prevents potential injury of the fairly bloody and painful sort; even in house dogs. You never know what dew claws might get caught on.)

They'd been born in the house and stayed indoors until their eyes opened. Then mother and pups were whisked away to an outdoor kennel with a slightly oversized straw-stuffed dog house inside. Once they began to walk they were let out a few times a day for some exploration time in the yard and the trees just beyond.

When their adult teeth came in I began training them to pickets, chains on a rebar swivel set into a pipe in the ground. I'd put them all on the chains while I cleaned out their kennel. They hated it at first, they wanted to go back to their kennel, but as soon as they realized they had grown too much and had more room on the chains than they had in the kennel they decided they were done with it, and chains were OK. They were done sharing a dog house.

By the time they were 7 months old it was already spring. I barely had time to harness break everyone and I had no leader to help train.

We took a few chaotic puppy runs with the sled down the slough, entertaining the neighbors at the expense of my ego.

Much of the following winter went the same way. All of my training videos consisted mostly of blooper reel fodder. I don't know where I found the stubbornness to even keep trying.

Then, while watching mushers pass by on the 2012 Yukon Quest, I met a guy named Dan down on the Chena River. We chatted a bit, and he shared his cookies and tea with us. Lance Mackey stopped to chat with him on the river and I snapped a few photos of them.

"Tea and cookies? Don't mind if I do!"

Later I posted one of those photos to facebook, and before you know it, Dan's wife Cathy is asking me for a copy of that photo. We became friends and one day Dan asked me if I'd like one of his older leaders to help me train my pups.

"Heck yeah!"

I wouldn't be on the trail at all without that dog. (He taught me a lot about what he expected in a hookup routine too.)

Gause was a little shy but all it took was the flash of a harness to get him out of his shell. He and I started taking out pups in pairs. Then we'd combine those pairs so I'd run five at a time.

One of the first things we did was run over a neighbor and his dog.

Last winter I started running seven at a time.

"Seven.."

I know, it's not very many dogs in the whole scheme of things. A big Quest or Iditarod team is double that size and I've seen some pretty incredible footage of mind-blowing strings of 20-40 plus dogs hitched to trucks.  

But when I look back on all the times I ate snow, all the tangles, all our failures, I'm amazed...

I never really imagined I'd run any amount of dogs for any distance with any real success. I think back on those little puppies these dogs once were and I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around it; the orchestration of such organized chaos. How the hell did I manage this?

Something about running the dogs together like that focuses their attention and hones your relationship with them. I thought I was close to my dogs but the more we run together the more undivided their attention becomes. We are as one. I grunt and they know what I want. I snap my fingers and point and they follow.

I said earlier that I somewhat regret having bred Ossum. For all his awesomeness, it turns out he has his flaws too.

When he hit two years old he started exhibiting symptoms of hypothyroidism. Poor coat, skin allergies, poor cold tolerance, etc. I had him neutered and medicated, alleviating most of the symptoms. However, I can't bed him down on any kind of straw or grass without him breaking out in itchy rashes.

Ossum lives indoors full time now.

He still loves to run in harness but its hard to race a dog that's allergic to straw. It's the standard in checkpoint and dropped dog bedding. It probably won't stop me from using him in short races though.

As all of the pups hit two years old they too started exhibiting symptoms of hypothyroidism, though none of them have the straw allergy (thank goodness). I've neutered as many as I could afford and still have two males to neuter and a female to spay. All my neutered boys have beautiful coats and keep their weight well. One of the in-tact males has some periodic skin issues and the other in-tact male has a poor coat. But none of them are exhibiting as many or as severe symptoms as their father did. My in-tact female stopped exhibiting symptoms altogether, but I still want to spay her.

I don't want to perpetuate poor genes. Whatever breeding I do I want to be for the improvement of the dog. Plus, I can't really afford $50.00 on medication every 90 days for each dog. Especially not now...

This morning I woke up terrified of the future.

Terrified of losing my dogs, losing everything we worked together to accomplish so far. All that effort.

The family business, my one and only big 'sponsor', has closed its doors after over 30 years. We now have zero dependable income heading into winter.

Our lives have been ruined by the Utopian ideals of over educated, under experienced, failure-to-launch, basement dwellers who cried that life just wasn't "fair" enough; an entire generation who misunderstands the definition of "fairness" in its entirety.

I didn't vote for this.

Hooray for mob rule. Fairness at its finest.

Oh, how I just want to crawl into that nice dark isolated closet of my childhood...or into a cave, under a rock maybe...

 

"Ahhh, that's better."

As a result of the current crisis I'm looking for a job, a real job. Writing, photography, graphic design, all my work from home tactics aren't enough now...