We spend many, many hours training dogs, and during these hours, I find myself thinking about everything from life plans to my next snack. Sometimes I concentrate on what the dogs are doing in front of me, watching their gait, their tugs, and their demeanor with each other. Sometimes if I really “space out” or look away, especially if it’s a longer run, a dog will choose that exact moment to stop and use the bathroom, as if they know that finally mom’s not looking. Suddenly, the team bunches up the second I look away and I must slam on the break to avoid a tangle.
A few times recently—maybe it’s my increasing age, I’m not sure—I have found myself so lost in thought that when I look ahead at the team it takes me a full minute to remember where we are. Of course I know I am mushing, but where? It’s as if the world around me has spun away and I have to spin it back together until I can remember where we are, what run this is, and why we are mushing here. Maybe I’ve just put in so many miles that the trails have all run together.
I have often thought that mushing is one thing that usually keeps me in the moment. Sometimes I don’t like the moment. I’m cold or hungry or wet or tired. I am getting dragged behind a sled, breaking up a dog fight, or maybe just wishing the miles would go by a little faster. But regardless of whether the miles are all pleasure or misery, they are lived. The miles and hours are not time on a screen. Forget texting and mushing. I’ve tried on occasion in desperate circumstances, and besides the cold fingers, it is not easy to type on a bumpy sled while hanging on. It is often a struggle for me just to pull out my phone or camera to take a photo.
Recently on one of our last ATV runs, I took out a 16-dog team by myself and as I hit Trout Lake Road, something didn’t seem right with Ginger. I stopped the ATV and went to see what was wrong and then it became apparent that the gangline had snapped. Our gangline is made of airline cable covered in polyethylene rope, and the cable itself had just gone caput. Ginger was actually being pulled from her neckline and tug in opposite directions, a very unsafe and dire problem. Somehow the dog next to her had broken his neckline, so he was okay. Not knowing what else to do, I unclipped her tug, which also unleashed the front half of the team. Eight dogs took off, all hooked together running free.
I ran back to the ATV and sprinted forward, trying to catch that half of the team. I caught them once and they surged ahead again. Luckily within another mile, I was able to catch them—they stopped and I reattached them to the back half with extra gangline. Everyone was okay.
If you’re a dog, being present in the moment simply means taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, and often that means eating food that is readily available. I had to give our girl JuJu a ride in the ATV during a recent run because 30 miles into a 35-mile run she started limping. She made a great companion in the side-by-side. At the end of the run, I left her in the passenger seat while I attended to lining out the team in the dog yard post run. When I went back to the ATV, JuJu had her head in the snack bag, snarfing down fish as fast as she could swallow. “I guess your foot must not hurt too bad, huh girl?” I said.
One day this fall, Matt and I set out to do some trail work together. It was just after a large rain event. Several inches of rain fell mid-November. If only it had been snow, I thought, but it wasn’t, so we pushed on with our plans to trim brush on a newer to us trail. There were suddenly large puddles to plow through where there weren’t before, and creeks were swollen and existent where they hadn’t been previously. One in particular had turned into a small river. We went in, full steam ahead, and suddenly found ourselves stuck, tires spinning on the gravel going both forward and back.
I won’t sugarcoat the situation. The next half hour could have been an exercise in conflict resolution. We worked through various ideas and failures that included an attempt at a Z-drag, levers, and pushing. One of us got quite soaked. There was cussing. I thought perhaps it would be best if I just hiked on out of there for a second ATV and tools (probably 5-7 miles to home). But finally, along came our mushing friend Tim White on his 2WD ATV. He had a pickaxe, which helped us dig out the gravel underneath our ATV, and that—along with enough leverage from logs under the wheels—freed us from the river. Tim somehow managed to cruise right through.
The weather finally changed from rain and warmth to snow and cold and we were able to switch to sleds on Dec. 6. While the first days of sled runs weren’t perfect, with some unintentional head-on passes, super brushy trails, and rock grinding, I am reminded of a quote that I’ve known for many years that goes something like, “Even if you’re cold and wet, you’re always warm and dry.”
As far as we know, dogs always live in the moment. There is no future and no past, just now. I don’t know that I would want to live in that place all the time, but if my dogs have taught me anything, the present moment, no matter what the present brings, is a mighty fine place to be.