One important item of early-winter business for the dog driver is the harness-breaking of young stock. In this particular case, last December brought two litters of pups who now will soon be yearlings. It's high time for them to be learning their trade.
Harness-breaking is no big deal at Seppala Kennels. If the pups involved are fairly young, we sometimes start them one by one, harnessing the puppy and letting it pull a short length of snowmobile track down the trail, controlled by a twenty-foot line. Or if they are older and it's already snow time, we quite often just hook a special team for the purpose. Such a team will be led by steady, experienced leaders -- including, if possible, the puppies' dam. If we are pretty sure of the pups, we may hook four pups with two experienced female leaders in front. If a puppy is a strong leader prospect, we might hook two strong wheel dogs, and put the pup double lead beside its dam or another bitch it knows well. If we think certain pups might haul back on the neckline or be otherwise uncertain, then we hook experienced leaders, experienced wheelers, and just two pups in the middle.
We don't use our regular trail, which is a little too challenging for beginners. Instead, we get out the snowmobile and lay a special, easy looped trail to a nearby field, total distance about a mile and a half. If a puppy seems really apprehensive or negative, then that pup gets individual harness-training with the line and drag (as described above) before it ever gets hooked in a team.
This year, we had one litter we felt very confident about, whose sire and dam were both good leaders. We just hooked those four as a team, with main leader Tonya and her sister Kolyma (the pups' dam) at lead. We took everything slow and easy, spending a lot of time harnessing and hooking up, talking to the pups and encouraging them. Then off to a slow start with my foot holding down the drag brake until the young ones realised what was happening and that all movement had to be in a forward direction. Before we had gone half a mile, all four were pulling strongly. At first they all tried to run on the right side of the gangline, but quite quickly the left-side pups realised it was easier to run on their own side. We swooped around the small turnaround loop, and the trip home was twice as enthusiastic as the trip out. Back in the parking lot, all four little tails wagged gaily as they enjoyed their dishes of warm baited water after the run. The whole thing was a positive experience.
The other litter, five in number, we broke into two groups, using the same general procedure, with a very similar result. A couple of rather nervous pups quickly decided there was nothing to be nervous about here, that this was quite a lot of fun, actually.
It isn't very spectacular. There's not a lot of chaos. There's no yelling and screaming from us. Things never get out of hand, because it's always just three to six dogs, never more; if any of them are particularly large or rambunctious, they will be the ones in the three or four-dog teams. We can control the whole situation physically, if need be, all the more so as the snow is deep on our puppy trail.
The idea is to make success for the green pup as easy as possible, and to nip any problems in the bud before they escalate into chaos or discomfort, let alone pain or fear. Then, on future training runs, we repeat the successful runs on the puppy trail, building further success on early success, building confidence -- until the green-broke pups are ready to tackle longer runs on the main trail, two by two in six-dog teams with four experienced dogs. Easy success brings further success, and success builds on success, resulting in sleddogs who know they can do this thing because they have never experienced a situation they could not handle.
Now, I just finished reading another musher's narrative of his attempt to introduce green dogs to teamwork, using a powered 4-wheel ATV and a twelve-dog hookup. It amazes me that people do things like this. In that particular instance, his run quickly turned into a nightmare that went on and on as the chaos escalated and the driver completely lost all control of the situation. It started with a sliced neckline and escalated from there until the driver lost the entire team not once, but twice, with one green dog being dragged and seriously frightened. Some drivers just laugh off experiences of this sort. Okay for them. I assure you that the dogs involved do not laugh it all off so easily. In chaotic, out-of-control training sessions using large numbers of dogs, the green dogs learn things like, "I hate being hooked up to run -- I get so frightened I freeze and get dragged, and it hurts -- I hate it" or "I can create an uproar anytime I want to, just by slicing the gangline with my nice sharp teeth." OK -- if that's what you want your green dogs to learn.
People who operate that way go through a lot of dogs. And people who buy their castoffs soon find out they have been burned! Or else the gentle, kindly musher just shoots the poor, confused green dog whose mind has been all messed up by the driver's stupidity and laziness. It isn't supposed to matter -- because this kind of person will have moved on from sleddogs to dirt bike racing or something of the sort, in less than five years.
It's one reason I am not keen on selling dogs, especially to racing drivers, who always seem convinced that they don't have the time to train their dogs in small teams, even when breaking young stock to harness. Nope, it's always a 12 to 16-dog hookup on a damned ATV, pitting green pups against hard, conditioned, fast mature adults running free in front of a powered rig. I hate like hell to see dogs of mine get into this kind of situation. I think too much of my dogs as individuals.
Two years ago I pissed The Great One off mightily by refusing to hook my dogs in with his high-speed 16-dog ATV team. He stormed, "Why the hell did you bother bringing your dogs here if we can't see them run and find out what they are made of?" This guy has wrecked other people's dogs for them, time and again, with this little number. He was really angry when I refused to fall for it. I guess it all comes down to whether you consider a dog as an individual, a sentient being with feelings -- or just as an interchangeable "power unit" for a racing team. My dogs are my good friends. You don't let somebody drag your friends around a dirt track by the neck at 20 mph.
Thanks for the great post! I too am about to start harness breaking my two pups, although I'm sure it will not be anything like your experiances go; you have just great dogs like; Tonya and Kolyma, and many more!
Only if everybody saw their dogs as individuals and not power-units, more than likely the world would be more full of excellent sled dogs and drivers, not drivers lost and more interested on wins.
Good Luck with those pups and in the New Year!