Sled Dog Training

The Maryland Sled Dog Adventures sled dogs.

Eric, Ethan and I got the sled dogs out this past Sunday for a 4.5 mile training run. Mother Nature was good enough to give us temperatures in the low to mid 40s so, the Maryland Sled Dog Adventures sled dogs, Eric, Ethan and I headed up to Fair Hill NRMA for a hilly training run.

On this training run were, Acadia and Gypsy in lead, Sammamish and Okemo in team, and Luke and Sobo in wheel. While I would prefer to run Sammi and Sobo in team and Okemo and Luke in wheel, Luke gets extremely excited at hook up as does Okemo. As a result, both dogs can get snarky with each other at hook up and given their personalities, that's just not a good situation. As the season progresses, we'll work with both dogs on this tendency and hopefully will be running Okemo and Luke side by side in no time at all. We'll also be working on Sammi's tendency to bite the lines at hook up. At present, to keep the team safe and hooked, we are running cable gang lines. As soon as possible, we'll be moving Sammamish up to lead where he'll be given a job to do instead of chewing neck lines.

The dogs were VERY excited to be going out to run.

Gypsy and Acadia in lead, Sammi and Okemo in team, and Sobo and Luke in wheel

As we headed into Fair Hill, we bumped into another Maryland musher. We also realized once we arrived at the trail head that a huge field trial with hundreds of off leash dogs was underway. Determining that discretion was the better part of valor, especially this early in the training season, we all headed over to another section of Fair Hill where we could run without disturbing (or being disturbed by) the field trials.

After the run, we headed to a local restaurant for lunch.