How I adore these pups

Now that the winter has passed and spring is here, the pups and I have relaxed our training. Last Sunday, my husband kindly captured the affection I feel for these amazing canine athletes, my team mates, as we goofed around in the hay field last Sunday.

PENYA

LYDIA

ELIAS

COLT

GREYLING

Our time together ends April 15. It's been one extraordinary journey together, one I'll never forget. I have not experienced this kind of joy in more than seven years. May we all be so lucky, always.

Long awaited -- snow

This may be our last run this season (sniff) . . . and it sure was a delightful one.

Out on the Beargrease Trail . . .

Please pass the 'jumping beans'

Last Saturday, THREE BLUE EYES practiced the fine art of passing another team (and being passed by a team).

Wooooo doggggies! That is one challenging maneuver to learn. The goal is for the dogs not to interact at all. We had more than few rough starts. (Mainly rookie driver errors -- I kept giving the command "on by" WAY too soon) Thank goodness Randy came along and shot video. I've been studying it a lot (and cringing at my shrill, overly loud and obnoxious commands, which you will NOT hear in the video below-ha!). I keep practicing different ways of giving commands while I'm in the car all alone, but nothing is sounding right yet. Any and all tips welcome!)

So, here's a little video of some of our better moments of late. There's one sequence of the pups jumping that's so silly, I had to run it in slow motion so I could label the jumpers.

The team we're "chasing" and the team we're passing is Chris Johnson's awesome 10-dog team. Chris is such a trooper to work with me.

Things are going to get REAL interesting once we get some snow and I switch to a sled. Seems the more I learn, the more I find I still need to learn.

Will I be ready for my first race in January?

Stay tuned . . .