A Rookies Journey
September 15, 2005

The moose was HUGE! I’m driving a 12 dog string in full bore coming around a blind corner and there was MOOSE right beside the trail half way through the turn. The front 6 dogs were stacked like pancakes almost under the moose’s nose. I slam on the brakes on the 4-wheeler trying to decide if this is a major problem (carnivorous moose!?!) and what to do next. The moose turns and moves off into the woods. Whew! Bonnie and I start to breathe again.

I’m running on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday getting the first team out before sunrise (about 7am) and Bonnie Foster is helping me and bringing her 4 dogs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This was Tuesday, so Bonnie was with me and we were running two 12 dog teams.

1. Never stick your hand in there. I’ve had my finger opened to the bone unintentionally by one dog going for the other dog when my hand got in the way.
2. Never try to break up a fight between two dogs with a third dog in your other hand. Most dogs seem to like a good row now and then and will eagerly join in. You don’t need to pour gasoline on the fire.
3. Grabbing the tail and pulling a dog out of the fight works well, but if they are in harness tied to the lines you can’t pull them far enough to make any difference.

I tried to insert my foot between Bass and Dijon with no luck so I put Lycos on the drop line on the trailer, grabbed a large plastic tide bottle on a stick I use to scoop poop and waded into the fight myself. As soon as the dogs realized I was there and I was pissed they backed off and settled down. There was one small bite wound on each dog – almost just a scratch. But I’ll keep them separated for the next couple of runs and let this fade from memory. These are nice dogs and very seldom carry a grudge.

So this is the long way of telling you why I had Lycos in lead with Dijon for Dijon’s first time leading out of the staging area last Tuesday. Lycos is a very good leader, but his is only two and teaching a new dog the ropes can be stressful. Normally I would use Bass for this, however…
At this point in our training we are running 5 miles and had hoped to be running on Fort Richardson. It’s open to us if you have a permit (I do) and they are not using the area (they are). So I’m running 3 times around our two mile trail (about 5 miles) for flat training, and using the alternate side with the deep puddles and ruts for the hilly training. The two mile trail is marked in green and the alternate 5 mile trail in magenta. As the inbound and outbound sides of the two mile trail parallel each other just out from the hookup area there is a cut across trail that connects them so you don’t have to go back to the parking lot (staging area) to go back out and run the two mile again (that would be mentally hard on the dogs).

Tuesday morning with Bonnie riding shotgun on the 4-wheeler, we had gone around the two mile trail once and the dogs were running like Martin Buser’s fine swiss watch. It was a beautiful morning. We took the crossover to go around the two mile trail the second time (of three) and just as we rolled back onto the main trail was when we saw the moose. The whole tableau probably took 2 seconds from first sighting until the moose was out of sight. It was a large cow and we are still trying to decide if the moose had crossed the trail in front of the leaders or jumped over the leaders. We know it wasn’t there the first time we went past, but it sure was the second. The whole effect was like coming around a corner and seeing a bad wreck – that initial image is frozen in your mind and now you are trying to figure out how in the world everyone got that way.

I’ve had several close encounters with moose and was stomped once my second year driving dogs, but that is another story I’ll post later (nobody was injured).

Bass after the run where we encountered the Moose. Is he pleased with himself or what?