The bike training goes on, rotating through young stock and older dogs that never got much of a chance to run at lead, most of the work centred around my #1 and #2 leaders Tonya and her daughter Happy. Two of Tonya's two-year-old sons are now identified as first-class leader trainees, so I'm set for the winter already. Happy and new leader Mokka yesterday gave me a bike ride that was almost frighteningly fast. Obviously Tonya reigns supreme; this winter's leaders will be Tonya and her progeny. This, I must recognise, is how sleddog kennels so easily get bred into a corner. It usually seems to happen that one mating or one sire or dam-line turns out to be so superior to the rest that it inevitably upsets any effort at having a balanced breeding programme over time.
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While Isa and I do our bike training, some people are headed for Seeley Lake, Montana. If they don't get burnt to a crisp in western Montana's current spate of forest fires, they will hold The Second Annual Seppala Siberian Sleddog Seminar there. Dr. John Cole of LSU will discourse on "The Genetics of Breeding" and Dr. Doug Willett of the University of Utah will hold forth on "History and Definition of the Seppala." The founder of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed won't be there. Being physically assaulted by Dr. Willett at the first Seeley Lake seminar was really the kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience that one ought not to attempt to repeat, for fear the repetition might spoil the bloom and perfection of that precious memory. Nightly beer busts are a distinct probability (based on past performance). And there is a more or less tacit assumption, among those of us who have decided not to attend, that a rabbit of some kind will be produced from The Great One's hat; some sort of dramatic announcement that will deal definitively with . . . or finally dispose of . . . or put paid to . . . well, something or somebody. Tremble. Shiver.
Posted by jjeffrey at August 22, 2003 10:44 PM