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A
Rookies Journey
October 22, 2005
Rhythms
Before I start let me say that I do not believe that there is a
right way to train dogs. However I do believe that there are a lot
of wrong ways to train dogs. So this is just the way that I do things.
Even then there are a couple of caveats:
1.
- No matter who tells
you, never do anything with your dogs that make you uncomfortable.
You are responsible for your dogs. If you are not comfortable
don’t do it.
- Most of the things
mushers do are part of an integrated whole. Picking out just one
part may or may not work. Use common sense, examine why it is
being done, and if you think it will work for you try it. If you
don’t think it fits the rest of your training pattern don’t
do it. When George Attla was winning the 3 day Anchorage Fur Rendezvous
races some people would copy his every move, whether or not it
made sense. George swore that if, after the first days race he
gave his leader a cigarette, by the end of the second day half
of the dogs in the race would be smoking!
Given that let’s talk about the annual rhythm in my kennel.
We will begin in the summer. I feed once a day, in the morning,
and the dogs have continuous access to water. I used to feed twice
a day, but Marti’s big malamute, Kodi, was such an easy keeper
he only got 1 cup of kibble twice a day. The poor dog never had
a full belly and was firmly convinced that we were starving him.
Tim White posted a similar problem with a retired dog that only
got 1 cup of kibble per day and was never happy. Tim figured that
our dog’s wild cousins didn’t eat every day, so he tried
feeding his dogs every other day. He said that it took about a month
for the dogs to get into the cycle, but then they did fine and his
easy keeper now got a full belly every other day and actually was
a much happier dog. I looked at that and couldn’t justify
feeding my dogs every other day (see number 1 above), but could
justify feeding just once a day. Sure enough Kodi became a much
happier, although still very food motivated, dog.
Dog box with
everything loaded for a run.
This is where the dogs sleep when
I load the night before a run. |
Being a good American, I
thought that the dogs should eat their main meal in the evening just
like I did. Then I read a post by Fast Eddie Streeper where he fed
his dogs in the morning because he didn’t have to run home from
a party or dinner out to feed his dogs (he also was feeding once a
day). That made sense to me, and by golly it solved several problems
later in the year.
Somewhere between August 1st and 15th I start to run the dogs in preparation
for the coming season. I would like to run the dogs once or twice
a week all summer, but haven’t managed do actually do it yet.
The criteria I use to run in the fall is the temperature. I don’t
like to run over 50 degrees F, but will push it to 57 degrees if it
isn’t too humid, or if it is raining. If I didn’t push
the temperatures we wouldn’t start training until mid-September.
Watch carefully for heat exhaustion, it can permanently maim or even
kill a good dog. If either you or your dog gets heat exhaustion once,
you are more susceptible to it in the future. So in the early stages
I run at 5am so that I can have the second team finished before the
sun hits the trail. To keep the noise down at that hour I load the
dogs into their boxes at 8pm the night before. Then I get up at 4am,
dress, drive to the trails, drop the dogs (so they can pee –
they did spend the night in their boxes), harness and run the first
team.
Happy dogs eating
their meal after a run.
One of a distance mushers favorite sights. |
When the first team gets
back to the truck they immediately get all the cold water they want.
While they cool off I harness the second team and get the meal ready
for the first team. Once the first team has cooled off (about 25 minutes)
I feed them still in harness and connected to the lines. This is what
I will do at a checkpoint when we race, so by feeding them in harness
after every run we are practicing for the race. Also note that since
I’m feeding in the morning I haven’t changed their feeding
time. When I fed in the evening I would have to wait two hours after
feeding before I could box the dogs, and then either go to twice a
day feeding or just snack after the run. See how everything fits together?
As we progress into fall it gets cooler and the sun comes up later
in the morning, so I gradually sleep in a little longer and get to
the track a little later. Sometime in late September the lows drop
to under 50 degrees and the sun isn’t as important and we are
getting to the track at 7 am (note the dogs are now spending close
to 12 hours in their boxes because I can’t load after 10 pm
(noise ordinance quiet time 10pm to 7am) and I make the change and
start to load the dogs at 7:30 in the morning. It takes me 35 minutes
to load 20 dogs so we get to the track at 8:30 am. When we get there
it takes me 1 hour to get the first team out. They run for about 1
hour. Then it takes me about 1 hour to feed them and get the second
team out. They run for 1 hour. It takes me about 1 hour to feed the
second team and load everybody and another hour to drive home and
unload the dogs and the truck. We are done about 2PM.
The next change occurs in early October. They dogs are working hard
and the hard keepers are getting 6 cups of kibble in their meal. This
is not the best way to feed that much so we change to twice a day
feedings. The noise ordinance is still in effect so I feed at 7:30
am. I like the dogs to have an hour or two after they eat before I
load them. That means we are getting to the track about 10:30 am now.
And the runs have stretched to almost 2 hours each. Now I don’t
get done unloading the dogs until 6PM. This is starting to become
a long day. Here is where I bless Bonnie Foster and her 4-wheeler.
When Bonnie can join us we can run both teams at once and save about
3 hours out of that schedule. At the symposium the comment was made
that distance dogs need to learn to run on a full stomach. I’d
always heard that you couldn’t run and digest food at the same
time, but trained distance dogs are only running at about 30% to 40%
of maximum capacity in a race and can digest while they run. It is
the only way to get enough calories in the dogs to finish the race.
At this time I am still feeding dry kibble, and providing the dogs
24/7 access to fresh water. That will be the next change. When it
gets cold enough that I cannot keep fresh water out for the dogs (because
it freezes) I will need to water them with their feed. In the past
I would take the kibble in a dish to the dog, add a quart of warm
water and serve the meal. Before the snow falls I worry about the
dogs getting thirsty between waterings, but they seem to do fine.
After the snow falls they can eat snow if they are thirsty. However
I’m hearing that more and more distance mushers are feeding
the kibble dry and watering later. I’ve heard that the greatest
physiological need for water is 2 hours after eating and that the
kibble digests better dry than wet (better nutrient absorption). I’m
still trying to decide if I want incorporate this into my routine.
And how do I do it? (see number 2 above)
About this same time the runs will become more than two hours long
and that is when we start to snack the dogs during the run, just like
we will during a race. In the past I’ve snacked with frozen
fish or frozen meat and the water is in the frozen food. However during
Iditarod they have had problems with meat and fish thawing at the
checkpoints and spoiling (more a problem with meat than fish). There
is also a theory that the frozen meat and fish are causing some of
the ulcers we are seeing in the dog’s stomachs (think about
a chunk of frozen meat lying against the stomach wall). Some people
are snacking with dry kibble (no spoilage and warms up faster than
frozen meat in the stomach – for physicists it has a lower specific
heat). I really like this idea, but maintaining hydration in the dogs
is a major concern, so how do I handle the water? This is related
to the feeding issue above and something I will have to work out in
the next month or so.
The final change is when we start running back to back runs, that
is we run for 6 hours, rest for 6 hours, and then run for 6 more hours.
This is the fundamental building block that I (and many other mushers)
will use for their Iditarod race. We will start with 2 ½ hour
runs and 6 hour rests and as the dogs get into shape go to the 6 hour
on / 6 hour off schedule. For my first Iditarod I will rest longer
than 6 hours, but that is how we will train. When mushers talk about
their run/rest schedule this is what they are talking about. Here
is where the ground work that we have laid comes to play. After the
first run, as we make camp, I will fire up the cooker and melt snow
for water. Since I’m not feeding meat I don’t have to
thaw anything and can serve the meal as soon as the water is warm,
or before if I decide to feed the kibble dry and water later.
In past races, when I left the checkpoint, I just bootied the dogs
and left. I had Logan bread and Brownies that I could eat frozen as
we went down the trail for my breakfast, and the dogs were used to
getting fed twice a day, as they do on a 6 on / 6 off schedule, so
it all worked. However if we rest longer during Iditarod, like some
of the 10 hours rests in my current plan, I’ll need to feed
again before we leave. Remember that I said that during the symposium
I heard that distance dogs need to learn to run with a full stomach?
Here is where it comes in again. I’ve also thought that watering
the dogs before a run might help their performance. Hydration is very
important to an athlete. These are things to consider and test over
the next month.
After the season is over, as the weather warms up and I can leave
water out for the dogs again I go back to feeding dry kibble. And
as the dogs wind down and need to eat less and less to because they
are not working as hard I go back to once a day feeding in the morning.
It takes about 2 weeks before the dogs quit looking for that evening
meal, but then everyone is happy and we are back to the summer routine
where we started.
As I said last week, 2 hours seems to be a milestone in the dogs conditioning
and we have been dancing around that all week with runs from 10 to
16 miles and times from 1:45 to 2:20. I think we are ready to leave
the under 2 hour run behind and take the next step. From now on we
will gradually increase time and distance until we reach 6 hour runs
in early December in preparation for the Sheep Mountain 150 in mid-December
(http://www.sheepmountain.com/alaska-sled-dog-race.shtml
). Basically that is a 50 mile run, a 5 hour mandatory layover, a
50 mile run, a 5 hour mandatory layover, and a final 50 mile run.
That is exactly the type of run rest schedule for which we are training.
We did have some excitement training this week. On Friday I just couldn’t
seem to get into gear. Everything took longer than it should and when
I got to the track I had forgotten the harnesses drying in the basement.
I had planned to run 16 miles Friday in about 2 ½ hours. With
the late start the second team didn’t get out until just after
4 pm. I had Bass and Jewels in lead, Jewels had done fine Thursday
for Bonnie, but today he was just a little off and I swapped him for
Mocha about 45 minutes into the run. We were coming off Ft Richardson
back to the Beach Lake trails after 15 miles just after sunset. The
dogs had worked hard and I had sat on the 4-wheeler seat long enough
that my sit upon was telling me I should stand and walk for a while
when I saw a moose wonder onto the trail from the left about 150 feet
up. She stopped and looked hard at me and the dogs, who no longer
seemed very tired. Then she wondered down the trail, stopped to look
at me again, and wondered around a bend in the trail. I thought she
left the trail to the left but wasn’t real sure. The Moose was
between me and the parking lot with the truck to go home. I could
go around her, but it was a 3 mile detour on hilly trails and the
dogs and I had already put in a long day.
I waited about 3 minutes and was ready to slowly go down the trail
when a moose came out of the trees on the left side of the trail and
crossed to the right. It was about the same place as the first moose
I saw and I thought it might be the same animal in the dimming light.
After three more minutes I eased down the trail, and when I got there,
sure enough there was a huge cow moose browsing about 40 feet off
the trail to the right. I watched her, but she didn’t seem concerned
about the dogs and me. Then I heard a noise to my immediate left and
there was another moose just 10 feet away coming after us. She wasn’t
charging (yet!) but was moving my way faster then I could comfortably
walk and she looked like she really didn’t want us on her trail.
With nothing but some thin brush between us I mashed the throttle
to the wall and turned to check that the dogs caught the cue. Every
tug was tight and the dogs were running down the trail. I never looked
back to see what the second moose was doing, figuring if she was chasing
us was doing all I could to get out of her way and didn’t really
want to know! Thanks heavens Bonnie wasn’t following me and
had to pass this same moose after I did!
While this was the thrill of my training week (or month!), it’s
not all bad news. It’s nice to check the emergency response
system every now and then to see if it still works. The heart rate
went from concerned to full emergency in a fraction of a second. The
adrenalin system replaced the bloodstream in the same time. My breathing
immediately quickened to where I was sucking the needles off the spruce
trees in the area. The “flee quickly” response translated
to “mash the throttle” without thought. And the dogs picked
up the cue. Remember I had Bass (8 yr old veteran) and Mocha (14 month
old novice) in lead. Neither leader hesitated when I sped up, no tangles
or slack lines anywhere in the team. What a dog team! What could have
been a tragic experience turned out to be no more than a good story
for the grandkids (yes, we walked 10 miles to school, uphill both
ways ;-). Some day when the article isn’t so long I’ll
tell about night runs and my other moose encounters over the last
13 seasons sharing the trails with my dogs.
Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
© 2005 All rights reserved
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