SledDogBlog

puppy love

Lizaveta of Seppala has earned the nickname "Mary Puppins" this spring, as she befriended and played with The Nine, our two all-female litters born this January last, leading them round and around my large enclosed yard in a tireless chase. Little Lizzy Lineout, the puppies' friend and mentor -- all she needs is a magical flying umbrella to complete the image! Now The Nine have gone to the yearling yard to be staked out on their way to becoming sleddogs. But little Alana of Seppala gave birth four weeks ago to a lone grandchild of our Russian import Shakal iz Solovyev, his only grandson to date. Little Echo of Seppala is rather a lonely little chap without any littermates, so now he's able to venture forth into the outside world, Lizzy has decided to befriend him, too. Aware of his tiny fragility at only four weeks of age, she treats him like a Ming vase. This young leader, a bit short of three years old herself, has not yet had a litter, but her love and delicacy with young pups is incredible.

In the photo above, she reassures little Echo that the outside world is not really all that scarey. When she does have puppies of her own, I guess she's going to be quite a mother…

masonic handshake

Yesterday I finally got around to taking new Spanish import Cocú de Cal Segú out again on the mountain bike, this time with old reliable leader Tonya of Seppala. On his first bike trial Cocú had messed around a fair bit, peeing on the trailside and acting like he didn't really understand what we were doing; and, to be fair to him, I was rusty with the bike and had trouble getting it into low gear, so my own focus wasn't much better than his.

Today was a different matter entirely. I'm not sure exactly what happened. Perhaps experienced lead dogs have some kind of secret signal of recognition, a masonic handshake that allows them to tell one another, "I KNOW, and I know you know, too!" However it occurred, by the time the two of them had gone a couple hundred yards together, I suddenly had myself quite a little running machine, and the rest of the run was a matter of driving that bike like crazy to keep from upsetting on the horse-trail ruts. I took them through a route that I knew was relatively unfamiliar to Tonya, and they never missed a single turn command. My intention was to take them for about a twenty-minute ride, but we blitzed the trails at such a speed that we were back at the truck in twelve minutes!

This is great. A few runs like that with Tonya and this new leader should get accustomed to my driving style, voice, and commands with minimal stress. Both of them obviously enjoyed the run greatly. A double-lead trial of young leader LIZZY with Tonya's H-litter daughter HAPPY a few days ago showed that those two could work together quite amicably, with Hap boosting the speed while Liz handled the brainwork; the combination seemed to "click."

With any luck at all, then, I can run HAPPY and LIZZY at double lead for my first-string team this winter and probably use COCU with leader trainee LARA for the second string. Believe me, it's nice to have some confidence about the lead dog situation this far in advance of the season.

To finish with, here's a pretty nice portrait of Little Lizzy Lineout in her newly-mature glory just after a solo bike run. Suddenly, she's gorgeous.

transition time

OUR HOME-GROWN SUPER LEADER Tonya of Seppala is growing old; she will be ten years of age on the first of November 2005. It is transition time. New leaders must take over from old ones. We have lost a lot of our good leaders to old age in the past few years; the role of honour includes:
KIDRON OF SPIRIT WIND
XPACE OF SEPPALTA
ZIRCONIA OF SEPPALTA
SEPALLEO
SEPALLOP
SEPALLUNA
MARKOBOSCO.
All of them were good leaders. Three of them are still alive, but at age thirteen-plus they will lead no more. We counted heavily on the "performance outcross" H-litter to provide up-and-coming leaders for front-end continuity in our teams, and in the end, that litter let us down. Although it was out of our best leader bitch, TONYA herself, sired by one of the top producers of sprint-racing front-ends on the North American continent, we got only two leaders out of a litter of six. The male HOPPY died of seizures at age five. The female HAPPY is, at best, a competent co-leader only, not a main command leader. Then, to make matters worse, we lost a promising young command leader from Tonya's next litter to a health problem.

Luckily for us, the "L" litter out of Tonya's sister KOLYMA seems to have produced our next super-leader. LIZAVETA OF SEPPALA, whom we sometimes call "Little Lizzy Lineout" because she keeps the gangline so taut at hookup, seems to have come into her own this spring. At two and a half years old she has suddenly blossomed into mature glory, no longer a callow, timid youngster. Just this week Isa and I both tried her in solo bicycle runs, without Tonya to cover for her, and discovered that (despite the fact that little useful training got done the preceding winter) she has somehow managed to learn her commands impressively well for a youngster. What's more, she will demonstrate her leadership ability on the bike without another dog alongside her, something that dear old Tonya always refuses to do (she has to have someone to "race" or there is no point in running, I guess).

We do a lot of leader training using our mountain bicycles at a community trail complex about ten miles from the kennel, where there are rudimentary riding trails (one couldn't quite call them bridle paths). Running through a pine forest is a bewildering web of unmarked tracks with an abundance of trail intersections that offers unlimited possibilities for gee-haw leader work.

We decided to try our two recently-acquired Spanish import males out on the bicycles the other day. Results were gratifying. Cocú the older one was billed as a leader, and he obviously reacts as such. There's a language-and-voice problem at the moment, but time and familiarity will correct that; he listens up well, looks back at the driver for guidance, and wants to do the right thing. One can hardly ask more of a new dog making such a big transition. The younger guy, Ditko, also led out confidently on his first bike run with Isa. A pity that he's just the kind of dog we most prefer to have at wheel position; at the moment it's in doubt whether he'll be trained as a leader or kept next to the sled where he can do the most good.

Most gratifying, too, was the discovery that Lizzy's small sister LARA, who just finished whelping and rearing the "D" litter, now apparently wishes to become a leader, too! She has had two bike runs with Tonya, performing excellently in both, sticking close to the old, experienced leader and pulling strongly with no dogs ahead of her. As intelligent as she has proven herself to be, Lara should have little trouble learning directional commands.

The photo above shows Tonya (left) and Lara (right) just back from a run, Isa watering them as Ditko (behind Isa) and Cocú (right) watch.

spammers - a subhuman species

This blog has persistently been troubled by a peculiarly nasty form of spamming: people who post off-topic "comments" advertising "herbal breast enlargement," "penis enlargement," "propecia," "vioxx litigation," "texas hold'em," etc. etc. ad nauseam. Spammers are not just the lowest form of human life -- actually they are a subhuman species!

Who on earth is going to read the long-dead back pages of an obscure weblog, seeking a bigger shlong, a shyster lawyer, a new head of hair, or a poker game? I guess these parasites get paid per hundred links posted, no matter WHERE! I only hope that those who pay them check up on some of the links, because ON THIS WEBLOG they'll find that they didn't get what they paid for, or not for very long.

My blog software notifies me by e-mail whenever a comment or a "trackback ping" is posted on my blog. One day I got three hundred such e-mails and spent several hours going back through the blog deleting them and barring further comments and pings.

We all lose freedom and opportunities when bloggers are forced by these lice to close their blog pages to comments and links. Until the online community discovers an effective way of dealing with spammers of all shapes, forms and sizes, life on the Internet will be less enjoyable and fulfilling than it might otherwise be.

NOTICE TO SPAMMERS AND OTHER INTERNET LICE: GO SOMEWHERE ELSE -- YOU'RE WASTING YOUR TIME HERE. UNTIL YOU ALL F--- OFF AND DIE, THE POLICY IS "NO COMMENTS AND NO PINGS ALLOWED"!!! AND MAY YOUR HERBALLY ENLARGED BREASTS, PENISES, TOUPEES AND POKER HANDS CONTRACT NECROTISING FASCIITIS AND DROP OFF BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!

I'll keep the "comments" function on this page OPEN for a week or so, just for fun. (Spam-comments will be deleted daily, though.)

handsome european guys

Our two handsome European immigrant hunks are settling into life at Seppala Kennels -- leering at the local ladies, glaring truculently at the resident males, and leaving their marks on every available tree and sapling (which is a pretty big job in aspen parkland). Cocú the seven-year-old silver-grey leader is circumspect and debonair enough to stay out of trouble, but Ditko the brash three-year-old redhead got into a rumble with a local his own age yesterday and Isa and I had to peel them off one another. Inevitable, I suppose, with spring in the air and the reek of testosterone boiling off the male stakeouts.

Here, belatedly, is a Seppala Kennels web page specially dedicated to the two new arrivals about whom there has been so much curiosity expressed.