Oh man where to start...what an adventurous weekend!!! It started out Thursday night when I went to Chatham. Well, ok that wasn;t very adventurous but then Friday, we helped John feed all the dogs then we got the 8 dogs we were taking along (Oceano, Ronan, Lacey, Ruby, Nash, Chevy, Fargo, and Merry) into the dog box, and headed off to Barrie. We got to the motel and...well...let's just say there are deffinately nicer places out there. With two finctioning outlets, a mini bar fridge, two lamps with one light bulb to share between them, and a shower I wouldn't walk into with a full body suit, we figured it'd suit our needs since we were only in there to sleep anyways.
Saturday morning we woke up at 5:30am to walk the dogs, feed and water them, and spend a bit of time with each one. We got to the race late due to getting stuck numerous times (turns out Cheri's 4-wheel drive decided to quit on us). None the less we were able to get in regardless of missing the driver's meeting and were told we had 20mins till our start time!
By the time Daryl was jogging my lead dogs (Ronan and Lacey) to the start line the timer was already counting down my time til he started the stopwatch! When he got to 5 seconds I told Daryl to let go of the dogs and I urged them on. I think we crossed the startline a couple seconds into our time already. I found out later Cheri started a whole minute after her time started!
What a gorgeous trail though! Me and the dogs thoroughly enjoyed running it! At one point 10ft to my left was a frozen pond and 4ft to my right was a steep hill that at the bottom had a small semi-frozen crick running along. I prayed the dogs wouldn't decide to veer off the track! They didn't thankfully. Our time for that day was approximately 22minutes which though it was not a competitive time what so ever (since we were racing against Alaskan Husky teams whose average time was about 14minutes) I was thoroughly pleased with it because we beat my time from Kortright last year and it was a long trail! Kortright is 4 miles and Copeland is 4.4 miles.
As we were leaving we got stuck going up a snowy hill but this time there was trouble! Our dog box hadn't made it across the train tracks completely and the trains were running that day!!!!! I was so scared I was nearly in tears! We couldn't move the dog box anywhere or it'd get even more on the tracks and we couldn't pull it around the truck due to the snow. We were going to start pulling dogs out when Leigh got on his bike (heavy duty snow machine) and towed the truck up the hill then towed the truck up the hill. We had spent 20mins figuring everything out and getting everyone to safety. 10minutes later, the train sped by. I lost it and broke down in tears.
That evening we had supper at Cheri's sister's place and while we were there a tremendous snowstorm hit which cause white outs. It was very tricky driving back to the motel but we made it. When pulling into the parking lot we noticed a huge grey van parked next to the dog box. Apparently one of the people staying in a room a couple doors down from us whom we had talked to earlier that day noticed the snowstorm and remembered the dogs in the dog box so she parked her van on the side the wind was coming from to block the snow. Inside the dog box lay 8 very content sleeping pups with no snow on them at all! I could've kissed her for her generosity! Mind you, the dog boxes dont let in much snow anyways but the wind can make it colder.
Sunday me and Cheri were determined to make it a good day! We were up at 5:30am again but ended up falling back to sleep until 6:45am! Woops! I rushed out to some rather disgruntled pups who really had to go pee! LOL We got to the race in plenty of time but instead of pulling into the parking lot again, this very nice dude named Marcel pulled our dog box down for us in his HUGE truck! We were incredibly grateful to him! I've actually decided I'm going to have his children (he helped me out a lot the day before too and gave me some awesome tips to try out).
2minutes to my start time I hooked up the last dog on my team (Ruby, who ran beside Oceano) and I looked around for a dog handler but there was no one available except for this one guy who I didn;t get a good impression from at all. He basically treated me like dirt the whole weekend either because I was running a team of Siberians (and slow ones at that compared to Alaskans) r because I was a kid. or maybe it was both. Anyways I very politely asked him to take my leaders up and he side "Urgh! Fine! But if your **** dogs start fighting I'm letting them go!" Uhhhh my dogs dont fight eachother but OK whatever. When I undid the snubline Oceano and Ruby shot out passing Lacey and Ronan before I could get on the brakes which aren;t a good system anyways so did crap to slow them down. He got all pissed off at me and said I shouldn't be running until I get decent equipment. I again asked him to just get my leaders to the start line. I didn't care if he left then I just needed him to take me there.
At one point I had a very mild tangle that could've easily been fixed by the dogs themselves had he just urged them forward a little but instead he stops and yells at me "Fix your dogs!" and I said "Forget it, they're fine!" and again he yells "Hook down and fix your **** dogs!" to which I yell, "Don't worry about it they'll be fine!" So what does he do? He yells "Train your f****** dogs better before coming to a race again!" and he proceeds to pick up poor little Lacey (all 40Lbs of her - she's a tiny girl) and threw her to the side so hard she ended up on her side!!!!!! I could've killed him! I swear to gawd I could've killed him right then and there! But this was not the place to start a scrap. I would've ended up with a lost team, DQed from the race, and probably banned from Copeland. So he then grabs my leaders' neckline jerks them foreward then at the starting chute leaves. I was so happy he left!
I began focusing on my dogs watching for signs from Lacey that getting thrown had set her off course when Leigh start nitpicking me about everything and degrading my whole set-up! "Your snow hook's line is wrong, your snow hooks is backwards, you have an illegal carabeener, your dogs are too fat (you can see the ribs on his dogs), get a new brake, wear your gloves, get a coat on..." and so on. Finally he said that if he saw me in the starting chute with the technical errors I had at that time (snowhook, carabeener, and brake) he would make sure I got pulled from the race! Just another person who's face I wanted to tear off. I mean there's letting a person know of possible improvements they could make, or general tips, and then there's just being rude and a general @$$hole.
My timers released me and it was all I could do to unclench my teeth and yell out a cheerful "Hike!" to the dogs without screaming nasty things to Leigh. Anybody feel like taking up an assassination job? Two actually. No one touches my team like that! And no one degrades my team! You can say and do anything you want to me, just not to my dogs!
1/2 way down the trail Cheri caught up to me and passed me with the Taliban Team but then we caught up and passed them and then they passed us again! It was instense! I was scared at one point though because Chevy and Ronan kept bumping shoulders while passing eachother and those are the two most likely to get into a fight but they never did! I was so proud of both! My time was approximately 21minutes so I was happy to shave off 1 minute from my time! Still ended up in last but I didnt care.
Back in the parking lot I stayed with the dogs most of the time. I just couldn't deal with the guy who threw Lacey, and Leigh. They all comforted me and enjoyed the massages. Marcel checked on me a few times but he understood why I wanted to stay away from everyone so he let me be. I didn;t tell Cheri what happened because I wasn't sure how she'd react.
When I was visiting with Nash at the back of the dog box I suddenly heard a HUGE commotion from the left side of the dog box. I run over to see Fargo and Chevy going at it and blood socked snow. I grabbed Fargo's chain, pulled back ashard as I could, then grabbed both dogs' collars and screamed at them to stop. They did. The blood was from a cut on the end of Chevy's nose. Nothing major luckily. After we doctored Chevy the two boys had absolutely no problems and acted like nothing ever happened!
We got home late Sunday night and I passed out on the floor using Oceano as a pillow. So setting all the mishaps aside, Copeland was TONS of fun and the actal runs themselves that I had were amazing!!! I was really happy with my time. I've got pictures I'll post on a bit...sorry for the novel, wanted to get everything in!
Saturday morning we woke up at 5:30am to walk the dogs, feed and water them, and spend a bit of time with each one. We got to the race late due to getting stuck numerous times (turns out Cheri's 4-wheel drive decided to quit on us). None the less we were able to get in regardless of missing the driver's meeting and were told we had 20mins till our start time!
By the time Daryl was jogging my lead dogs (Ronan and Lacey) to the start line the timer was already counting down my time til he started the stopwatch! When he got to 5 seconds I told Daryl to let go of the dogs and I urged them on. I think we crossed the startline a couple seconds into our time already. I found out later Cheri started a whole minute after her time started!
What a gorgeous trail though! Me and the dogs thoroughly enjoyed running it! At one point 10ft to my left was a frozen pond and 4ft to my right was a steep hill that at the bottom had a small semi-frozen crick running along. I prayed the dogs wouldn't decide to veer off the track! They didn't thankfully. Our time for that day was approximately 22minutes which though it was not a competitive time what so ever (since we were racing against Alaskan Husky teams whose average time was about 14minutes) I was thoroughly pleased with it because we beat my time from Kortright last year and it was a long trail! Kortright is 4 miles and Copeland is 4.4 miles.
As we were leaving we got stuck going up a snowy hill but this time there was trouble! Our dog box hadn't made it across the train tracks completely and the trains were running that day!!!!! I was so scared I was nearly in tears! We couldn't move the dog box anywhere or it'd get even more on the tracks and we couldn't pull it around the truck due to the snow. We were going to start pulling dogs out when Leigh got on his bike (heavy duty snow machine) and towed the truck up the hill then towed the truck up the hill. We had spent 20mins figuring everything out and getting everyone to safety. 10minutes later, the train sped by. I lost it and broke down in tears.
That evening we had supper at Cheri's sister's place and while we were there a tremendous snowstorm hit which cause white outs. It was very tricky driving back to the motel but we made it. When pulling into the parking lot we noticed a huge grey van parked next to the dog box. Apparently one of the people staying in a room a couple doors down from us whom we had talked to earlier that day noticed the snowstorm and remembered the dogs in the dog box so she parked her van on the side the wind was coming from to block the snow. Inside the dog box lay 8 very content sleeping pups with no snow on them at all! I could've kissed her for her generosity! Mind you, the dog boxes dont let in much snow anyways but the wind can make it colder.
Sunday me and Cheri were determined to make it a good day! We were up at 5:30am again but ended up falling back to sleep until 6:45am! Woops! I rushed out to some rather disgruntled pups who really had to go pee! LOL We got to the race in plenty of time but instead of pulling into the parking lot again, this very nice dude named Marcel pulled our dog box down for us in his HUGE truck! We were incredibly grateful to him! I've actually decided I'm going to have his children (he helped me out a lot the day before too and gave me some awesome tips to try out).
2minutes to my start time I hooked up the last dog on my team (Ruby, who ran beside Oceano) and I looked around for a dog handler but there was no one available except for this one guy who I didn;t get a good impression from at all. He basically treated me like dirt the whole weekend either because I was running a team of Siberians (and slow ones at that compared to Alaskans) r because I was a kid. or maybe it was both. Anyways I very politely asked him to take my leaders up and he side "Urgh! Fine! But if your **** dogs start fighting I'm letting them go!" Uhhhh my dogs dont fight eachother but OK whatever. When I undid the snubline Oceano and Ruby shot out passing Lacey and Ronan before I could get on the brakes which aren;t a good system anyways so did crap to slow them down. He got all pissed off at me and said I shouldn't be running until I get decent equipment. I again asked him to just get my leaders to the start line. I didn't care if he left then I just needed him to take me there.
At one point I had a very mild tangle that could've easily been fixed by the dogs themselves had he just urged them forward a little but instead he stops and yells at me "Fix your dogs!" and I said "Forget it, they're fine!" and again he yells "Hook down and fix your **** dogs!" to which I yell, "Don't worry about it they'll be fine!" So what does he do? He yells "Train your f****** dogs better before coming to a race again!" and he proceeds to pick up poor little Lacey (all 40Lbs of her - she's a tiny girl) and threw her to the side so hard she ended up on her side!!!!!! I could've killed him! I swear to gawd I could've killed him right then and there! But this was not the place to start a scrap. I would've ended up with a lost team, DQed from the race, and probably banned from Copeland. So he then grabs my leaders' neckline jerks them foreward then at the starting chute leaves. I was so happy he left!
I began focusing on my dogs watching for signs from Lacey that getting thrown had set her off course when Leigh start nitpicking me about everything and degrading my whole set-up! "Your snow hook's line is wrong, your snow hooks is backwards, you have an illegal carabeener, your dogs are too fat (you can see the ribs on his dogs), get a new brake, wear your gloves, get a coat on..." and so on. Finally he said that if he saw me in the starting chute with the technical errors I had at that time (snowhook, carabeener, and brake) he would make sure I got pulled from the race! Just another person who's face I wanted to tear off. I mean there's letting a person know of possible improvements they could make, or general tips, and then there's just being rude and a general @$$hole.
My timers released me and it was all I could do to unclench my teeth and yell out a cheerful "Hike!" to the dogs without screaming nasty things to Leigh. Anybody feel like taking up an assassination job? Two actually. No one touches my team like that! And no one degrades my team! You can say and do anything you want to me, just not to my dogs!
1/2 way down the trail Cheri caught up to me and passed me with the Taliban Team but then we caught up and passed them and then they passed us again! It was instense! I was scared at one point though because Chevy and Ronan kept bumping shoulders while passing eachother and those are the two most likely to get into a fight but they never did! I was so proud of both! My time was approximately 21minutes so I was happy to shave off 1 minute from my time! Still ended up in last but I didnt care.
Back in the parking lot I stayed with the dogs most of the time. I just couldn't deal with the guy who threw Lacey, and Leigh. They all comforted me and enjoyed the massages. Marcel checked on me a few times but he understood why I wanted to stay away from everyone so he let me be. I didn;t tell Cheri what happened because I wasn't sure how she'd react.
When I was visiting with Nash at the back of the dog box I suddenly heard a HUGE commotion from the left side of the dog box. I run over to see Fargo and Chevy going at it and blood socked snow. I grabbed Fargo's chain, pulled back ashard as I could, then grabbed both dogs' collars and screamed at them to stop. They did. The blood was from a cut on the end of Chevy's nose. Nothing major luckily. After we doctored Chevy the two boys had absolutely no problems and acted like nothing ever happened!
We got home late Sunday night and I passed out on the floor using Oceano as a pillow. So setting all the mishaps aside, Copeland was TONS of fun and the actal runs themselves that I had were amazing!!! I was really happy with my time. I've got pictures I'll post on a bit...sorry for the novel, wanted to get everything in!
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