Button Box Campout -- Rain, rain, go away!

Poured on Thursday, rained Friday, beautiful Sat., cloudy Sunday. Really, really poured on Thursday -- hard, no respite, just getting hooked up got you soaked. Everyone decided to run the dogs over to Button Box campground directly, rather than trying to go to Kendall Camp on Thursday and then back to Button Box on Friday. So we did...and still got soaked.

When we got to the campground, all the big teams park at the meadow by the boat ramp. Problem was, with all the rain, the bottom of the meadow was a pond, at it's deepest about 3-4 feet. So I had to force Coast and Rope to go thru, since the exit trail is on the other side of the pond. Not a very popular idea, but they did it. Put Crimp in lead for pond, to take it easy on his foot. Lots of sore feet throughout the team, which is typical for this stage of training, and is something the dogs have to learn to work through. Achoo took a chunk out of Tie's side when he tried to take her dinner. A few harness rubs from all the wet harnesses and sand, so had to do some switching of harnesses/sizes to provide different pressure points.

All in all, a soaking wet weekend, but typical in terms of mid-fall training. With Andrew running some of the dogs, everybody got to participate which was great experience. We put on nearly 100 miles over the weekend, everybody ate and everybody ran -- all in all, a terrific weekend!

Andrew and the pups go to Boot Camp

Andrew Gehrig came over from Australia to learn how to run dogs at the Oregon Mushing Boot Camp in May, and borrowed some of mine since he couldn't bring his due to quarantine restrictions. He had such a great time that he arranged to come back to Togo this fall and again attend Boot Camp, as well as the other fall training events which Jamie has. This fall he got a larger team...my 3 yearling pups (Dane, Gjetost and Shout), plus Hasp and 2 leaders Reebok and Utah. Put those guys together with a beat up old cart with questionable brakes and you have a recipe for exciting training runs. Andrew did a great job and really enjoyed Boot Camp and trying new combinations of dogs and new leaders. The dogs got to work with someone different, new experiences and it was a win-win for everyone.