If you love dogs....

[steveb]

Saturdays skijour race on lake of the Isles.
If you like dogs you have to see some of these photos, just another fun thing you can do on snow.
http://www.skinnyski.com/tools/photoviewer.asp?Id=14802

[Lee_Uptown]

OMG... cute. I wonder what... not how Austin would do?
Looks like Nance and Lela did super! Congrats!

[steveb]

Eu....I'm sure he'd do fine. The smallest dog I know that does it is a 40 lb border colley called Mia. They say a dog can pull 4 times it's weight.
The funny thing is dogs will let you know if they want to do it or not, if not they just don't.
As you can see in the photos there's a lot of very happy dogs, before the start they just shake with anticipation and quite a lot of pandemonium ensues trying to control them , they just want to go and don't understand the race organizers " just one more minute" before the start.....
Originally I was worried that Lela might hurt herself working too hard but she showed us what happens when she's had enough, she'll just lay down on the trail and stop. " I'm done" no medal glory for dogs they have their own motivation.
This was reportedly the biggest skijour event in the history of the sport, they had 95 dogs bring their owners to race. Nancy and Lela finished 27th so we're very proud of her. Especially as Nancy decided to fall down half way through the race and take her rest lying on the trail. And had the wrong wax on her skis so they were slow, though we'll blame that on the weatherman. Nancy is a very accomplished and fit cross country skier, this year I believe will be her 20th Birkebeiner. She says this event is much harder than the 50k birke because it's an all out sprint and she feels she has to work hard to help Lela. The do the 5k in about 11.30 minutes, the winners are about 10 minutes. That's a 20 mph average speed.
Midwest mountaineering has the harnesses, dog and human. Trollhaugen ski resort has a couple of training sessions every month on their trails, you just have to go to their website to see the days. The dogs go well on the lakes too, no wind, hook up your dog.
It is hilarious to watch and Nancy tells me when Lelas going full bore ( Nancys gps said their max speed was 36 k in the race ,with no downhills, I think that's about 25mph) it's very exciting.
I just posted it as thought it would be interesting for people to see, I know we have a lot of dog lovers on Lakawa from the dog population on the beach during the windy kite days in summer.

[Fred MPL]

That's really cool! I am sorry I missed watching that.

I just got my big chocolate lab to start pulling a sled with our 16 month old. It is a blast to watch. The dog, girl and myself have smiles from ear to ear!