And the number one most asked question is...

"Do they all have names?" is probably one of the most frequently asked questions of us when people who are new to the whole yard-full-of-dogs thing find out we have a yard full of dogs. Not only do they have names, but we spend days and days, sometimes weeks and weeks, deciding on names for our puppies just as some do with their children. We made the mistake of allowing our three-year old to name our puppies, however, and are now stuck with two dogs named Baby and Triangle. Some mushers we know give their dogs names based on a theme. For instance, Risk is from a litter that was named from board games; Ruby is the last in our kennel from a batch of dogs we had named from rocks and minerals. We also had Slate, Copper, Coal, Amber and Crystal. We had planned on naming Blitzi's litter after the first initial of the parent and sex of the puppies: all the males would be named with a 'J' for Jack, the father and the females with a 'B'. Since we had all females and Hunter insisted on naming one of them 'Dora' we had to change out plans a bit.

I had wanted to name Baby and Triangle "Nip" and "Tuck" but Jenn wouldn't let me. Instead, she let Hunter choose. I wonder if she is sorry now?

This is a quote, taken from Dogsled_Stacie and is her response to the question:

"Do they all have names?This is the weirdest question I get!! [...] Of course they have names!! How else would I refer to them? "Hey, black furry dog, come here!? No - not you, you're the black, furry dog with white patch on it's chest....what are you, stupid??!!" Nah, they all have names and very distinct personalities."

As is evident, it is a question that both puzzles and irks us mushers. You are now forewarned: do not ask a musher if all their dogs have names. Better to ask if the lead dog is boss of the yard and if he (because it is never a she) will turn around in harness to 'discipline' a slacking team member. No, don't. That is a whole other can of worms altogether.

On the sidebar to the right are all of our dogs. Click on a name to see the dog and read a bit about them. I will add more pictures from time to time so check back every now and then.

Hudson

This is the old guy. He's been with me now since 1995 and he is still going strong. Okay, he can't jump into the back of my truck anymore, but I suspect that is more a "won't jump" rather than a "can't jump" issue. Like I mentioned on the sidebar, Hudson and his brother Benjamin were the pair that got me dogsledding in the first place.

Hudson has always made a better friend than sled dog, although he is quite strong when he wants to be. It is partly that stubborness that has always made life with him interesting. There are many stories about Hudson that I could relate, like the time I was ice-fishing and couldn't figure out where all my catch had gone until I saw him, one hundred yards away, with a frozen pike between his paws, eating it. Or the way he instigates a full-on yard howl after he has eaten. Or the way he waits until he thinks we are asleep before crawling onto the couch. He's always off of it before I make it out of the bedroom but I know he was there; the cushions are still warm. I think, though, one of the more interesting stories about Hudson is how he would not leave Jenn alone one day during the late stages of her pregnancy. We came home to the cabin that evening and brought Hudson inside; he followed Jenn around this tiny cabin relentlessly. She'd go to the sink, he'd follow. She'd go sit on the couch, he'd follow and lay down beside her, she'd get up to go outside, he'd whine at the door until she came back in. Normally, he's pretty aloof: he does his rounds of the cabin and then goes to his spot and lays down, so this behaviour was strange. We went to bed and still, Hudson was beside Jenn. Four hours later her water broke and eight hours later, Jenn delivered Hunter.

Hudson has run through the hillsides of the eastern part of the Shenandoah Valley, watched the Northern Lights in Whitehorse, Yukon, enjoyed a shady spot in a park just west of Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and camped in Killarney Provincial park. He is tolerant of our puppies and gentle with Hunter. He has even managed to make a few friends in our yard. He really is a good boy.

Although not Hudson, I have to include this photo. This dog here (below) is Leo. Jenn and I were walking in Whitehorse around the time of the Yukon Quest and down a sidestreet was a team of Malamutes. Standing outside the truck was Hudson. Well, I thought it was him. The resemblance was unbelievable. Look:

Triangle and Baby

This is what happens when you allow your three year old to name the new puppies. Originally, Baby was supposed to be called Megan, but since he is a boy, Jenn said, let's not call him that. I have decided to not separate the puppies into their own seperate entries because they are pretty much inseparable right now anyway. Triangle relies a lot on Baby who is a bit bigger and a little more adventurous when they are out of the puppy pen. The two of them rip around the yard and chase each other unless we are going on a walk and then they tear up ahead of us and come running back when they think they have gone far enough. Only to do it again and again and again. They likely travel three miles to our one.

We hadn't planned on having a litter, especially from these two particular parents. Dart is the father and Lacey is the mother, both of which are great dogs in their own right but not really breeding stock. I came home one day to find Lacey loose in the dog yard. Just over two months later, she had her puppies. Baby and Triangle are one half of the litter; we sold the other two puppies to people who were interested in starting a dog team and a family with three young boys.

Both puppies are growing up rather quickly and Baby is now as large, if not larger, than some of our adult dogs with Triangle not too far behind. Baby is the black and white one and Triangle is the tri-coloured one.

Valley

Her name comes from a contest we had two years ago. We didn't know that Ruby was pregnant with Valley until she started to slow down on the runs and lose focus. She also started getting fatter. Due to the running we did with Ruby, she only had one puppy and that was Valley. Jenn and I had a sort of name-the-puppy contest on our blog where we asked people to submit names for the puppy and the winning name would be hers. Since she was born on Valentines day, we had "Valley" suggested and when we put the names in a hat to draw out the winner this is what we pulled.

She is still very much a puppy. She is also quite big. Valley is the second largest dog in our yard (Hudson excluded); she is at least ten pounds heavier than all our dogs. Ordinarily, Valley is a great dog but she has a hard time keeping up with the faster dogs and she likes to think she is the boss of the dog yard which we don't allow. She is, however, great around people and a really good dog for people that come out to the house for a ride. Vally's difficulty in keeping up with the other dogs is that she hasn't yet learned the concept of energy conservation and works too hard off the start and saves none of her energy for later. She has very fast reflexes, though, because she managed to catch a robin mid-flight.

Jinx

Jinx is another of Blitzi the super dog's puppies. She is not as focused as Dora, but she has a lot of determination. Jinx has retained much of her puppy-ness and seems to be reluctant to let it go. Part of it, most likely, is due to her constant wrestling with Valley. The two of them play non-stop during the day, and even though they are tied, they will chase one another doing laps and trying to meet at the ends of their chains.

I have been using Jinx in lead off and on, but I don't think she is ready yet. She likes to work hard, but she is easily distracted still. Maybe next year.

Jinx is also a harness chewer. She isn't as adept at it as is Taiga, but she has still sent me mending at the start of a run. One day, Jinx chewed through a harness as I was hooking up some dogs for a run and I didn't have another harness for her, so I took the chewed one off her and left her behind; it seems like that went a long way to driving home the point that we don't chew harnesses around here.

Dart

Dart. What is there to say about Dart? He is a freak. He has two settings: Off and Hyperdrive and I have yet to see him in 'off' mode. Dart runs non-stop around his post. He has a foot-deep groove worn in the ground and he was only there for a month before the ground froze. He runs so much at his post that I haven't yet had to cut his nails and I can't tire him out. I went for a run that ended up being 51 km (31.8 miles) and all the other dogs acted like they had just been on a 31 mile run; not Dart. He looked as fresh as when we started. It is precisely this reason that Dart found his way to us in the first place.

I had gone away to a fishing/hunting weekend with friends from work and left Jenn in charge of the dogs. When I came home, there was an extra dog in the yard. "I got him for $50!" Jenn said proudly. "What do you think?" I looked at him and wondered if he'd even be worth $10. We knew a few mushers around the area and apparently, they knew of us, too. We were still fairly new to the area, but Jenn got a phone call while I was away and the lady on the other end somehow convinced Jenn that we needed this dog. Dart has certainly shown he is worth more than the $50 that Jenn spent.

Horton

Horton is outnumbered. He is one of two males in a team of females. To his credit, though, it doesn't seem to bother him. He is a pretty focused and very docile dog. In fact, I was shown how docile he is a few weeks ago. I had him beside another male in my team and we had a tangle. The tangle was with Horton and his partner, Dart, the other male. The gangline had wrapped around Dart's leg and his neckline was caught on the back of Hortons harness which had pulled up on Horton so that he and Dart were nose to nose. The majority of my experience with un-neutered male dogs comes from Hudson and his brother, who would fight in a situation like this. I was trying to get the two dogs untangled as fast as I could because I was sure that they were going to fight: they were nose to nose, tangled and directly behind a female in heat. To make matters worse, the six dogs in front of them were lunging in their harnesses trying to get the sled moving. Each time they lunged, the gangline around Darts leg would tighten and he would growl. Horton just kept turning away until I had finally sorted them out. Good boy!

To say that Horton is docile may imply that he isn't a hard worker, but more often than not it is Horton that pulls us to the top of a hill. He's a pretty solid dog and although he, too, is shy, he is coming out of it. He is definitely part of the first string.

Bug

Our oldest sled dog, Bug is 13 years old. She was my part-time leader last winter but this winter she is more the keep-the-puppies-in-line dog when we go for walks. I think that she has had a harness on her twice this winter and both times it was pretty clear that she is enjoying her retirement.

Jenn tried to make a house pet of her this summer, but it didn't really work. Bug is a very friendly and obedient dog; she stays around the yard when she is off her chain and comes when she is called and for the most part stays out of trouble. We thought that maybe Hudson would like a buddy, so we put the two of them together, under some trees with a house each and tie-outs close enough to interact with each other. Hudson was indifferent to Bug unless she was in heat and throughout the course of the summer, Bug began to withdraw and become more afraid of things that never bothered her before. She missed the security of the dog yard, I think. We put her back in the yard with the rest of the dogs and within a week, she was Bug again.

We got Bug when we bought our dogs from Brian McDougall. It is a shame that she is as old as she is because I think she was a stellar lead dog in her day. I would have liked to have her in my yard then! I expect that this summer, Jenn will again try to make a pet of Bug but she knows that Bug will have to sleep with the other dogs and only accompany us on our travels or walks. She is still super healthy and can keep up with the puppies on walks so we will still have her around for a while I hope.

Dora

Here is another dog that is going to make a great leader. I have run her with Risk almost as many times as Olive this winter. Dora is very much like her mother, Blitzi, because she has the strong desire to please and she gives everything she has every time she is out. She is certainly the most confident and assertive of her litter (Taiga, Jinx and Chili) and she can be a bit bossy already with the other dogs.

When Dora was very small - I think she was only four weeks old, maybe five - she escaped her puppy run and followed Blitzi down the driveway and off the property. Blitzi was trying to wean the puppies and had no way to get away from them, a poorly designed puppy run on my part, and so she took to climbing an eight foot wildlife fence. I'm not sure how Dora got out, but she did, and away she went, following her mom. It was a miserable night with a hard rain for most of it and we were late coming home. We pulled in the driveway and there was Blitzi with an absolutely heartbreaking look to her, laying beside the puppy run, presumably where Dora had escaped. I don't know if Blitzi knew Dora was following her, but she sure knew she was missing a puppy when she came back. We looked and looked for Dora, but Blitzi refused to leave the puppy run anymore that night. When it became evident that Dora wasn't lost on our property, Jenn put up signs for a lost dog and we heard nothing for a week. We did eventually get Dora back; a very kind neighbour had taken her in when she and another stray dog showed up at his place one night. He said that the stray had led Dora to his house and then taken off, leaving Dora behind. He had bought a big bag of food for her, a new collar and some toys and we felt pretty bad taking her back. We paid him the reward we had offered, but still... Anyway, we are very glad to have Dora back, she is turning into a very good sled dog and if we have learned anything from all of this it would be 'don't give your dog too adventurous a name.'

Olive

Olive is another crowd favourite. She's the only yellow dog we have in our kennel and Hunter refers to her as such: "I like Yellow Dog" she'll say. Last winter, Olive was one of the dogs I was training with Risk for the lead dog position. This winter, she has been my main leader with Risk. Olive is doing really well in many areas of lead, but she really needs some work when it comes to holding the gangline out and when we run up hills. Olive is such a lovey kind of dog that she doesn't want to leave my side when I hook her up; she'll follow me to the next dog's house. And then the next. And the next. In fact, Olive sticks so close to people she would often trip Jenn when they were out on walks together even though she was off-leash and able to run the entire property.

I think that Olive's problem on hills is that we slow down. Olive will run all day in harness but when it comes to a hill, whether it is 40 yards into the run or 40 miles, the team slows down a bit and Olive 'yo-yo's' her way to the top. She lunges at the tug line and then lets it slack off and then lunges again. When I talked to Brian McDougall about this, he said her whole litter does this: "it's like they forgot how to pull" he says.

Olive was the other dog involved in the vet bill incident this past summer (see: Risk). She is okay now, and just like Risk you wouldn't even know that anything had happened at all. Luckily, both she and Risk have strong personalities and didn't let the incident affect them. Olive has a pretty good sense of humour: here she is enjoying a joke.

Chili

This is our new, up-and-coming superstar leader. Or so Jenn tells me; I'm not allowed to run her. Born last, Chili was smaller than the rest of her littermates and took a lot of abuse from them. She is a bit timid around the other dogs still, and she is nervous at hook-up time but once she gets running she settles into a mindset of pure focus and all that matters is the trail. So I'm told. Chili is our fastest leader, faster even than Olive I'm led to believe. I'm not allowed to run Chili because she is still a bit nervous. She is great with people but Jenn wants to keep her running on small teams until her confidence around the other dogs builds a bit more. I mostly take out teams of 6 or 8 and Jenn thinks that teams that size may only increase Chili's unease.

Jenn has decided that Chili will be an excellent leader because for the first few runs this year, it didn't seem like Chili even wanted to go. Then Jenn took just Chili and another dog out and was amazed at the change in attitude; she never stopped working and it was nearly impossible to get her out of a fast lope. Chili feels most comfortable without any dogs in front of her and because she is another dog like Blitzi - eager to please - she is very responsive to Jenn's training.

Chili is the sister of Dora, Taiga and Jinx. Her mother is Blitzi and her father is Jack, a lead dog from Gerry Willomitzers kennel in Shallow Bay, Yukon.

Ruby

When I wrote about Blitzi I said that I had never met a happier, more eager to please dog. Ruby comes a close second. Ruby is a special dog, partly because she is the first sled dog puppy we had. She is, it seems, constantly smiling. Jenn did a lot of work with Ruby when she was young and consequently she became a good leader for us. Unless you want to turn. Or go fast. But, if you want to see the scenery, on dog time, Ruby is your dog.

For a long time Ruby and her sister Amber were the best dogs we had in our kennel. Now, however, Ruby has a hard time keeping up with our racing team so she is more of a substitute or touring dog. She has endless stamina and the willingness to be run by anybody. Lately we have had several people out to run our dogs and Ruby has been perfect each time. She is definitely the favourite of visitors.

Unfortunately for ol' Rubyroo, she will not come when called and therefore doesn't get free run like the rest of our dogs. She needs a leash. If Ruby were to get off her chain, and she has, she'll do 40 acres of running before you so much as catch a glimpse of her. You can call, offer treats, whatever, but Ruby won't come until she is ready. When she was eight months old, Ruby broke her right front leg by twisting it in a pallette on the ground while playing. We took her to the vet and he was reluctant to put a cast on it, since the one bone was acting as a splint for the broken one. He gave us a splint to help out and a roll of Vet-wrap and told us to keep her quiet for two weeks. All I can remember of this time period is Ruby running full out through a ploughed field dragging her splinted and wrapped leg behind her. Keep her quiet. Right.

Ruby is the mother of Valley

Blitzi

The amazing invisible dog. That is Blitzi. She doesn't miss any runs with me, mostly because I can't bear to see the look on her face when I leave without her. We have had Blitzi for three years now and she has always run in swing position, on the right. Always. When I run the dogs, my eyes go up the gangline and down the gangline, much like people check their mirrors in their vehicle, to assess how the run is going. Tired dogs? Dogs not working? Tangles? Happy dogs? I never have to look at Blitzi. She's invisible. I have never met a more consistent, happy and eager to please dog.

I love all my dogs. A lot. But there are some that I have a closer bond with and Blitzi tops out that list. She will, I know but have never asked, do anything for me. We bought Blitzi from Gerry Willomitzer, who is, among other things, a Yukon Quest musher, and a good one at that. He bought Blitzi from William Kleedhan, who is also an accomplished Quest musher. To say that Blitzi is a better sled dog than I am a musher is not stretching the truth.

Blitzi is the mother of Dora, Jinx, Chili and Taiga. Their father is Jack, one of Gerry's Quest leaders.

Moxy

Painfully shy. That is one way to describe Moxy. At least, she is shy with me and most strangers. She will fall all over herself to get Jenn to play with her, though. Moxy may be shy but she knows what a harness looks like and she know what it means when they come out, so she will let me put one on her because there is nothing she would rather do than run with the team. It would be fair to say that Moxy is not the most tolerant dog in the yard when it comes to poor behaviour on the gangline. If we have a dog that is misbehaving or acting up when we are hooking up the dogs for a run, we put them beside Moxy who isn't afraid to set the offending dog straight.

In many ways, Moxy is like that person at work who shows up, does their work and goes home. No chatting around the drink cooler, no beer after work with friends, she probably brings a brown bag lunch and eats it at her desk. When we are on the trail and we have to stop for some reason, Moxy waits. She will quietly eat snow or lay down but she is ready at a moments notice. And her shyness doesn't extend to getting a snack on the trail, either. She will nearly take off fingers if I am not careful and toss it to her.

Moxy comes from Brian McDougall and is the sister of Mouse.

Risk

What is there to say about Risk other than she is my main leader and a near flawless one at that. I rely on her more than I should which is to say that she is seldom in any position other than lead. She not only gets me to where I want to go, but she is helping to train the new batch of leaders. Risk is very confident in her abilities to lead a team and I have seen her pull a dog off it's feet when it didn't listen to a directional command and she did. Although not as fast as our other leaders, Risk is steady. Where one of our leaders tends to slack off going up hills, Risk works hard to keep her line tight.

This past summer I came home late from work one night and it was dark when I was feeding the dogs. When I got to the dog run, I noticed that Risk was loose. She followed me as I fed each dog in turn and it wasn't until I fed Olive that I noticed something was really wrong. Olives face was severly damaged and when I looked at Risk, her face was laid open to the bone in several places, her ear was torn and her face was covered in caked on blood. My heart sank. Not only had she and Olive, two dogs that I would have said never fight, fought, but they were my two main leaders and I highly doubted that they would run together again. Plus, there was some serious damage. Jenn and I brought them in the house and tried our best to tend to their wounds but they were truly awful and severe. Olive's muscle and skin on her lower jaw had been separated from the jaw bone so that she looked like a pelican. We couldn't do anything for them, so it was a $1,600 vet visit to get them stitched up. Risk got over 70 stitches in her face. And that is where the mystery started; why would such a severe fight only have produced injuries to the face? Jenn and I thought about it and the more we thought about it, the more it seemed like the pair of dogs had fought with something through the fence. I suspect a bear, most likely a cub, because there had been a cub around all summer and although their injuries were bad, I expect an adult bear would have done even worse. This explains Risk's sneer because the stitches kind of pulled her one lip back a bit.

Risk comes from Whitehorse musher Kiara Adams

Taiga

Taiga is experiencing her first full winter of running with a team. She will be two in August. She is one of Blitzi's puppies, along with Jinx, Dora and Chili. Taiga is very friendly and has a lot of energy which makes spending time with her hard because that energy gets translated into squirmy-ness much of the time. I may be wrong, but I don't think that Taiga will be a leader anytime soon. She can be easily distracted and she still needs to learn about pacing herself, also, because she will work extra hard at the beginning of a run but will slack off towards the end because she is getting tired.

Taiga is a good dog most of the time. She has escaped from the drop lines twice this winter but has always come back when called. Taiga's biggest fault right now is that she is a terrible harness chewer. She can shred a harness in the time it takes to get dog, hook it to the gangline and turn around. She is the one responsible for this:

Although she can be free walked, last winter Jenn and I had her, her sister Dora and two other dogs out on a walk in early spring. Before either of us could react, Taiga had run down our river-access trail and was out on the river ice which was none too safe; she had to jump open water to get to where she was. Taiga was running full tilt towards town, down the river, with open water on both sides of her. I thought for sure she was going to either fall through the ice or run loose in town. As it happend, she did neither and she managed to come back the way she had gone when we called her (or, rather, when she decided to hear us).

Lacey

Super light on her feet and fast, Lacey is an important part of our team. She is quiet, not excitable and happy to please. Although we were running her in lead last winter, I think that Lacey is better suited to a position like swing or team: for now, at least. Lacey has a very fast trot, but when she decides to lope, it is more of a leaping action.

Lacey is the sister to Horton and mother of Triangle and Baby and Dart is their father. She does not make an extremely attentive mother since she was leaving her puppies for long periods of time on the second day. It is also Lacey who killed both of Jenn's goats. It doesn't look like she has it in her, does it? It may be because it was her first litter, but Lacey was not at all interested in her puppies and quit feeding them around week 4 or so, prefering instead to confound Jenn in her numerous escapes from the barn she was in.

Lacey comes from Brian McDougall and was also a shy dog when we got her. She will now run to see both Jenn and I and she is very gentle around Hunter. Lacey is a dog that we can let off the chain and expect her to remain fairly close to us when we go for walks in the off season. She is also a whiz with a snap. She has figured out how to undo both the regular brass/bronze snaps and the Swedish snaps so she now has two Swedish snaps that oppose each other.

Mouse

A small, shy dog, Mouse is nevertheless eager to run and eager to please while out on the trail. She will run in any position however she is currently in training to be a leader. She is a funny-gaited dog in that she will pace more readily than the other dogs and it is funny to see her running like a camel when all the other dogs are trotting. This doesn't seem to slow her down, though, and although she likes to go fast, she will also work hard on the uphills or long runs.

Mouse's quiet personality lends a calmness to her; she doesn't get crazy during hook ups and when we are out on the trail, she will wait on the line patiently if I need to stop for any reason. She is also a quick learner. This winter she has already managed to pick up on the commands "line-out" and her directional commands ("gee", "haw", "on-by" and "straight ahead") but she doesn't yet have the confidence to hold another lead dog in place if they decide to wander.

Mouse comes to our kennel from Brian McDougall of Whitehorse, Yukon. She is the sister of Moxy. When we got Mouse, she would not have anything to do with me. Jenn could approach her but when I went near her, she would run to the opposite side of her tie-out. We were like magnets with like poles facing each other. Slowly, she has come around and now I can interact with her without her getting spooked. In fact, she will jump up on me when I have food or harnesses.