Thursday, March 31, 2011

Dogsledding

While we were off in Colorado for Spring Break, we also decided to go dogsledding.  We tried it out last year and the kids loved it so much, we had to make it part of this vacation, too.

The way it works is that you go meet your guide and your team.  The guide introduces you to the dogs and tells you a little about them and how they got to be there.  For instance, one of our lead dogs, Lily, was a little less than a year old and had been trained to run the Iditarod for this year!  Unfortunately, her team's funding fell through, so she "retired" to this place to take tourists dogsledding.  Sort of sad that her "talent" is kind of wasted here, but she's an extremely friendly puppy and she LOVES to run!

After meeting the team, you get to move the dogs one by one, hook them up to the sled, and get ready to go.  The kids got to ride in the dogsled and the husband and I took turns "mushing" the dogs - We each took turns standing on the back of the sled and when the guide said to stop, we put the brake down and jumped on it.  It takes quite a bit to stop a team of 8 dogs!.  The guide rides a snowmobile up ahead of the dogsled and has a sleigh that holds anyone not currently on the dogsled.  About half-way through, you switch people on the dogsled.


This is Buffy.  She's super-nice, we just got a funny picture of her!
Fellan took a liking to Willow.
Marxo was the Dog Whisperer.  Lily loved her and so did Buffy.
Surrounded by friendly dogs!
Dogsledding family

1 comment:

deedee said...

That looks fun. There are a couple of places we can do that here. Maybe next winter