Day ‘I Hit A Wall’…

WARNING: CRY BABY ALERT !

I hurt. I’m sore. My right shoulder and neck.  My forearms in all kinds of ways.  My wrists and elbow joints.  My hands, both muscles and bones.  And the skin on the palms of my hands is rubbed raw and pink, despite wearing gloves.  I have scratches on my face,  stomach,  back and arms and random bruising.   My skin is dry and sunbaked despite slathering sunscreen and chap stick because a la Napoleon Dynamite, “My lips hurt real bad” ! and I’m tired,  even after sleeping 10 hours last night after my first trip to Mount Bachelor with the crew.  That it.  Thats all my whining.  When I mentioned to Jerry how sore I was, his face lit up,  “Oh thats GREAT”,   he said with pure enthusiasm,  eyes crinkling into a big smile,  “That means your growing”!…………..can’t argue with that.

The positive stuff is… my back feels strong and I’m slowly losing the suburban softness on my limbs. (Or at least I like to think so) .  I am starting to recognize and remember the dogs names and see their personalities come out.  I graduated from scooping (which with hindsight I see it  now for the ‘easy’ task it is) and watering to slopping food AS WELL!  As you can imagine, a most exciting time of day!  The yard goes completely bonkers in fact.

We feed from 5 gallon buckets full of unprocessed chicken bits and water. The meat arrives in huge frozen sacks and is chopped into 3rd’s with an axe,  put in buckets,  covered with water and left to thaw overnight. They are then pulled out in the mornings and hand mixed with a big claw into a delicious and nutritious chicken stew.  Da dah!

Its hard work, digging deep into the thick, rich mix and pulling up heavy scoopfuls, complete with feet and the occasional eyeball looking at you with mild suprise from the watery pink.

“I’m growing. I’m growing.”, I mutter under my breath as I stagger over the ups and down on the yard, laden with buckets of bird.  And then there’s  the  feeding of the pups which is a little more involved,  with some basic training in manners.

 

Oh and did I mention the 2 week olds? Maybe plus a few days. They have just opened their eyes, and yes look like little puppy piglets. They sort of wriggle slowly over and try to suckle on the skin of my calf, making little grunting  and mewing noises. Not formed barks yet, but determined little sounds non the less.  I pick them up and turn them on their backs, and hold them gently till they stop protesting,  breathe gently in their faces and rub their little paws. This all part of getting them used to being handled and socialized.  Its a tough job, but someones got to do it.

No words to describe how sweet these little creatures are at this age.  Please excuse quality, I took these with my phone in low light.

Sleeping is what they do best right now.

 

And Mama Hazel does the best she can. She’s pretty young herself and started out a bit reluctant I am told, but her pups are plump and happy so she’s doing something right. 

Hazel catching some Z’s in between nursing her eight hungry babes!

 

The mountain.  Yes. The mountain.  I’ve been so engrossed with the work in the yard and the day to day experience, that I had forgotten how beautiful it is,  Mount Bachelor.  It was a good first day of doing rides,  hot but not unbearably so, with a breeze.  Loading and unloading the dogs is an skill in itself,  and one I am still slightly in awe of.  Slightly is an understatement.  Watching Rachel’s every move as she confidently slides an arm under the neck, the other under the belly and lifts a whole dog ( yes a whole one!) up and over her head and rolls her shoulder forward depositing said dog in the upper cubicle on the dog truck. “Just turn your face to one side as they often use it as a launching pad in” she says casually.  Blimey. Apparently its all about technique. Im not entirely convinced, but I will keep you in the loop on that one.  It was fun grabbing  a couple of pups (the 11 week olds) to bring with for shameless marketing. And boy does it work, people just turn into puddles of coo (not poo) over puppies. Grown men included.  Children looking up at their parents with beseechingly, eyes overflowing with tenderness, “Its a PUPPY”  they whisper, almost in awe of how it makes them feel.

Whats cool is how they are left unattended, collarless and untied all day and they stick around for the most part, which is all part of their training. The puppies that is,  not the children. They all start like this, wandering free as …well……a sled dog puppy on a mountain, getting used to the sites and sounds of what will be their daily working lives, building good social skills and the habit of sticking close to the pack.

I learnt how to harness (and unharness) , to water the dirt often under the dogs shade shelters which drops the temperature under there by 10 degrees and keeps them cool, to hook up the dogs on the lines for the ride, no easy feat when they are jumping and twisting, barking with sheer joy that they get to run…in fact its definately going to take some practice and determination….my first attempt was painful and made me gun shy. Turns out Allen is only 8 months old which you wouldn’t know by looking at him , because  he’s a BIG dog already, and was super excitable and unruly. Its no wonder I’m sore. Anyways, enough of that complaining again.      People were sweet, curious and grateful.  Moved by how friendly and loving these dogs are, by how much they LOVE what they do, and the experience of the ride. The rides are shorter in the Summer. 10 minutes on the cart which carries up 4-5 adults. At only $10 a butt, a great deal!

And so we made the one hour trek home.  Me.. hungry, sore (there I go again) , sweaty,  covered in dust,  slobber and too tired to even talk. Jerry… cracking jokes and singing along to the radio, Rachel happily reading a novel in the back, wedged in between her sons car seat and two sleeping pups.  Another bizarrely perfect and challenging day in my new life as a rookie sled dog handler.

Thank you for following my adventure. It makes it all the more worthwhile!  x