It has been crazy lately!

So, where to begin... I've pretty much been mushing non-stop since the snows started to fall. I have around thirty little puppies that I am responsible for running and training to be real dogs so that one day Mitch Seavey might take them and win the Iditarod with them! It gets really frustrating sometimes because they are just goofy puppies who only want to run so it can be difficult to calm them down enough so that you can leave the chute!! I also ran my first race a couple days ago. Just a small little race but I felt that I and especially my little pups did the best that we could have done. The best thing was that I got to go run dogs with Dallas (one of Mitch's sons) in his mini Iditarod training run! Before the Iditarod the Seavey's do what they call their mini Iditarod where they run 300 to 400 miles. They do this because they have found out that after 400 miles the dogs are actually truly warmed up and will perform their best. They do this before the race so that when they leave the starting chute at Willow their dogs are already warmed up and ready to bust tail to Nome!! The trip was awesome! The farthest I had ever gone on a dog sled previous to it was about 20 miles. Going from 20 miles to a couple hundred miles is NUTS!!!! I never knew it could be so much fun! We left the dog lot and ran Dallas's dogs for 5 hours 30 minutes straight!! These dogs are incredible athletes to be able to run like this and the thing is, they were barely even tired! By the time we got camp set up and the dogs all taken care of it was dark. I pulled all my gear out of my sled bag and put down my Caribou hide and slipped into my sleeping bag. I was amazed at how well I could sleep outside with it being well below zero. I woke up about an hour later and got up to get my dogs ready to go out again. Now at this point the dogs had been resting for 4 hours, me for only 1. We got the dogs all ready and headed off again, this time at 2:30 AM so it was cold and dark. Watching these dogs was amazing. After about another 6 hours we made it back to Dallas's house and unhooked the dogs, fed them and went inside the house to sleep for about 2 hours. I got up and helped Dallas harness up his team. He was going out on this run alone. His wife, Jen, wanted me to help with her team so I went on a twenty mile run with her. By this point I was pretty well exhausted but it was still so much fun, and I started to wonder... Why is this so much fun? I should be miserable right now. Running on only a couple hours of sleep and doing all this work? No sane person would think this is fun!!!! But alas I thought it was amazing fun! Later on, Dallas came back and we drove a couple miles away to run on some different trails. Once again we started at about 3 in the morning and the trail was nice and icy making it really fun going around some of the corners!! You would come flying around and smash right into the trees!! As we were running, I remember looking up at the sky and it seemed every time I would look up I would see a couple shooting stars . I kept watching and I kept seeing them. There were a lot of stars that night. I kept looking up and I thought that the clouds looked really goofy and funny but the more I looked the more clear they became. I was watching the northern lights dance around the sky. It was a beautiful night with the shooting stars and the northern lights. Morning came soon and washed all those pictures from the sky like a giant Etch-a-Sketch. We camped out in the trailer for a few hours and then headed back out. This time the sun was out and the sky was blue. It was beautiful. We saw so many moose that run too. There was one part of the trail where we stopped and Dallas pointed to the trees by me and right in front of my team, a moose stuck his head out of the trees, looked up and down the trail and then disappeared back into the trees. The training run was very cool but unfortunately it had to end, and I am now back at the main front to take care of my unruly puppies and train them to go 40 miles!! Well, I will talk later. Gotta go scoop the lot!!