As many of you know, I have an abundance of dogs, 6 to be exact, and I do so many random things with them. Well thanks to Skiplyn kenels for putting on a dog sledding fun day in the winter of 2010 I believe, and me taking 2 dogs to it, I have been kinda re bitten by the sledding bug.
"Re bitten" you ask?
Well yes, I once upon a time had a great little dog named Petty (because she liked to be petted of course) whom I had trained to pull with a little old sled my dad had got from one of his dog sledding friends, Petty and I did the news paper route via dog sled. Thats right... we were stylin'
Here's a picture, really one of the only pictures I can find of her, its faded and a bit discoloured and yes, cut to fit in a small heart shaped frame <3 She was my first dog, and what a great dog she was, it still baffles me that someone didn't want her anymore and dropped her off.
Fast forward several years, and dogs later, and here I am with 3 Tibetan Mastiffs and an American Bulldog cross trying to make a sled team. I have heard several interesting teams and don't doubt that one day we will be sledding around or "briskly walking" like you have never seen.
However...
It should be an interesting journey to get there.
Tibby and Elmo have each been to the dog sled fun days and dry land training days so they sort of have a bit of a background in the sport, today I figured since Elmo has a weight pulling harness, I would take him on a little walk to keep him out in front of me. He did ok, nothing to write home about but with out any pressure on the harness he wasn't doing anything other than a walk. So I found our trusty sled training aid... a 5 gallon bucket and hitched him up to it.
That fixed the boring walk ;) He stayed up front and pulled until it hit the softer snow and the bucket dug in. To encourage him pulling we did it weight pulling style. He really excelled with that but that's not our goal right now, we will be getting a bit more serious with weight pulling this spring/summer and I figure the 2 can tie in together pretty well since this sled team won't likely ever be racing.
My thoughts on it, encourage pulling against that harness no matter how hard it gets. I could be way out to left field on that one but hey... my dogs right.
After Elmo I decided to put the harness on Karma, she is my 4 year old trusty yet serious Tibetan Mastiff.
Well, after focusing SO much of our one on one time with obedience work or tracking she was quite baffled by what I was asking her to do.
She walked beside me pulling her bucket at a stellar heel... however, that is not what I wanted. I wasn't sure how to get her to work away from me especially up front.
After a little head scratch it hit me... her daughter Miss Tibby has NO desire to work beside me and is all about being out in front, plus she completely kicked ass as a dog sledder last year and this fall for dryland training fun days.
Back to the house we go, 5 gallon pail in tow and out comes Tibby. I grab a coupler and attach them together by the collars.
SUCCESS!
As planned it worked, Tibby was off like a rocket with her mom in tow.
This is when Karma had an "aha" moment and really got going with her professional grade 5 gallon pail behind her, then she hit the soft snow and in dug the pail. :o)
Tibby was relentless and kept pulling her forward, but she had nothing behind her to pull other than her mother so it was easy for her to so.
Karma quickly figured to push into her harness and really put her back into it and the digging pail started to give. Well Karma, now completely pleased with herself starts really pulling but decides to start biting Tibby in the back ( not hard but grabbing her) for what ever reason, but I can only translate it to "Thanks for the help B*&^@"
We did a nice "haw" and went back towards the house.
Over all I was quite pleased with Karma's first time in a harness when she had to actually pull.
I am completely excited to start getting them more into this, and of course getting them to work ahead of me.
Stay tuned to tomorrows adventures in training when I have no real idea what I should be doing.
However, I think as an adult I spend far too much time doubting myself, if I could do it as a kid I'm sure I can do it again. I just have to channel my inner child to figure it out
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