A new addition to the cabin...

A ceiling fan! Whoopeeee!!! Yeah, things are slow around here...

We're hoping this will help circulate the hot air that immediately gets sucked up into the loft. At -40C, the downstairs is pretty chilly and I noticed during the last cold snap my walls were frosting up in certain spots low to the ground! Brrr!!! We've had a few mild days here, but they're expecting it to get down to the mid-20's again. We can handle that though!

Took the whole crew out yesterday on our 7-mile loop. I decided to start out with an easy run after their xmas break. I *thought* I had everything together and ready to go - lines set up, made sure they were all there, all the carabiners, and bungee section, new snubline, etc,etc. I've been adding and removing lines so much with the skijoring thing, that I always have to make sure everything is there. I checked and double-checked... it's always best to be super safe.... rather than see a 10-dog team take off because they weren't hooked up to the sled properly or something. So as I bring the last set of dogs to the stakeout line, I realize I'm missing half of the chain! Arghhhh! After all my careful double checking, I missed something. It wasn't a disaster though, the dogs just ran around for a bit while I grabbed a new chain. This is how they wait patiently while I fumble around at last minute things:


I used ol' reliables Kate & Rupert in lead and we were off in the fresh new few inches of snow with underlayer of ice. My neighbor was going to come out skijoring behind with his 2 dogs, but I didn't see him so assumed he opted out. The run went great, and these guys are really improving on hills!! They charge right up them and rarely look back at me as if to question why there is a hill in front of them!!

I really have to start switching leaders though. The other guys need a chance and the experience. But... since there isn't really enough snow to set a hook, it can get sketchy. However! If I head to the river, the beauty of that is you can chop a hole in the ice and set a hook in it. That works brilliantly. We might head out on the 16-mile river loop tomorrow.

Anyways, near the end of the 7-mile run my neighbor finally showed up skijoring - a little late, but he showed up regardless. Apparently he didn't hear the chaos of our hookup. Man, his cabin must be really well insulated because he's not that far away! I was so relieved to get going and hear nothing but the silence. I panicked near the end of the run later, when I saw someone ahead (thinking it was my other insane neighbor with his usual 18-dog team on snowmobile), but realized it was only Tyson skijoring with his 2 dogs. Whew! That was great though because we had a chance to practice passing. The whole team went crazy when they saw them and Tyson pulled over his dogs just off the trail. Well, Rupert headed straight for them, but good old Kate drug him by without even looking over herself. When it really counts, she is a super leader. It could have been chaos if we had wound up my 11 dogs with those 2!! Rupert is sometimes good at passing, sometimes not. Hopefully he learned (or... RE-learned) something that run. Even better if the rest of the dogs learned from that pass too!