Let the Sun Shine!

So it is still cold enough in the shade to freeze a dog bowl full of water and two days ago when I woke up, it was -33 degrees, but you better believe it, it looks like the worst of winter is over here at Miortuk Kennels. Probably because I just wrote that, we will have a blizzard tomorrow, given the fact Mother Nature has been quite an ornery brat during the past few months, but for now and for the past couple afternoons, our thermometer sits at a blessed PLUS FIFTEEN (yes, it is mounted on a beam that gets direct sunlight all day, but hey, temperature is all in your head).

Being an Arizona kid, I can’t help but sing the praises of a sun that actually gives off some warmth as opposed to the useless orb that has been hanging around up there, teasing us and doing very little to cut through the negative 20s, negative 30s, and negative thoughts that rage in your head when your fingers feel like they are going to freeze right off. Before coming to Quebec, weather was much simpler for me: if the sun was out, it was hot. If it wasn’t out, it was probably night time.

Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed the challenge of my first winter, but it sure is nice to go outside and just BE, instead of feeling like you need to be actively surviving. According to most of the weathered Canadians I have spoken to, I really am not just being a desert baby either. When you hear a Canadian say “coldest winter in 20 years,” you know it has been friggin cold. And when the Canadians are sick of winter, everyone is allowed to be sick of winter.

But now that the sun is doing more than just getting my hopes up, I can’t get enough of being outside. I knew I was an outdoorsy person (you don’t move to the forest to train sled dogs if you aren’t….), but sunshine that has been prescribed for my cabin fever has really turned into a gateway drug for a much more severe nature addiction. (Did you follow that Dr. House diagnosis there? (lupus! he has lupus! it is always lupus!)) After we finish morning chores in the kennel, with 30 dogs hanging about, I don’t have to search to hard to find ways to stay outside for hours. Walk a dog, mush a dog (haha), pet a dog, brush a dog,  (Actually, the dogs might be getting annoyed with how often I brush them; they probably see me put on the brushing mitt we have and think: “There’s the crazy brush girl again. Give it a rest before you turn us into naked mole rats.”) to name just a few activities. I also have taken up some cross-country skiing, a real challenge for someone who grew up around mostly cactuses and has difficulties getting all four limbs to move and cooperate in tandem; today I even managed to pick up a great rhythm between the poles and the skis (when in doubt, ski to the tune of “22” by T Swift) and to fall only twice (it is a flat lake, so this still needs some work…). After skiing today though, I still hadn’t quite gotten my fix yet, so I picked a puppy (Nicky, who is not actually a puppy, rather full grown booger who has never picked up the knack for running with the team) and we went for a walk/run/climb around the lake and through the forest. Nicky played his old game of pretending he doesn’t know what a leash is or how to walk, let alone pull, but all of the sudden, he was ready to go and only turned around to look back at me if I wasn’t running as if to say “Ok, lardy, let’s go already.”

After all this moving and breathing and wandering and living though, sometimes the only activity left is to take a nap on a dog house. Some dogs are perplexed by this behavior (“First you want to take all our fur, now you want our houses too??”), but most of them enjoy the addition of a permanent dog-petter to their homes, and take the opportunity to take a nap on the napping human.

So yes, I have survived winter. I have embraced the cold, the snow, the wind, the nose that never stops running (literally, when it is cold, everything just seems to turn to liquid in your face. Snot, tears, etc, you really have no control), the frozen fingers and toes, the strategizing of clothing, all of it. And boy have we had a blast!

But now, here comes the sun* and I have just a few more weeks here to live and breath and love its warm rays. With 30 dogs, 2 feet, and an endless forest, I don’t intend to waste a minute!

*(the real sun. Not quite Arizona status yet, but we are getting there =D)

Thanks to fellow handler Cecile for all of the great photos! Check out her blog here for more!

Foreground: Hokee.

Midground: Lila

Background: Julia, Hinto, Max

                                           

        

For the honor and glory.

Myth Busters: Sled Dog Edition

It is always an interesting and tedious game trying to recount my experience in the mushing world to those who have never been there. There are usually two preconceptions of sleddogs and the sports that I have to debunk within the first 45 seconds of the conversation, misconceptions that can be attributed to the Wonderful World of Disney and the wonderful world of negative journalism:

       

      1)   All sled dogs look like this:

 Or like this: 

and

 2) Sled dogs are sad creatures who have had their rights infringed upon and work like slaves for mushers. 

It is an unfortunate reality of the today's media that causes news consumers to believe that this is the case for every dog that has ever been placed in front of a sled. I am not so naïve to say that there are more than a few irresponsable and infamous mushers in the world; the bulk of exposer that the mushing community recieves is from this group of individuals. The articles about the rest of the community, the majority of the community are few and far between. Try to remember the last time you read an article in the news about the love, care, and time that most mushers devote to their dogs. Outside of the annual "living section" piece that is usually written in time for the Iditarod, there are far to few articles written about the mushers whose dogs eat better than they do, about the hours of petting and brushing and massaging, about the attention that is paid to every slight physical and mental change in every dog.

Maybe, just maybe you know the names Buser or Butcher, mushers whose love and care and hard work have been recognized from time to time outside the world of sled dog racing. It is a great injustice to the sport that so many people work and live with their dogs just like them, and yet face opposition from the media and therefore the public anytime they talk about their passion; these are the mushers with last names like Morgan and Gonsolin and so many others that I have had the pleasure to meet and learn from during my "survive-Canadian-winter-leave-college-and-become-a-musher" adventure.

So, to all of those unharolded mushers, I may just be a desert kid from Arizona, but I recognize your dedication to your dogs and the hours you spend in your kennels: the poop you pick up; the soreness in your back, your arms, your legs from carrying buckets of food, buckets of water, buckets of poop and bending to put on booties, to massage legs, to scratch ears.

I recognize you and I applaud you because you do all you do not for recognition, but for your dogs. Your passion is an example for people in any field, following any dream, interacting with type of animal or human being. If everyone treated people the way you unsung mushers treat your dogs, the world would genuinely be a better place.

This is what I like to call FaceTime.

Which I guess would make this Butt Time, because if there is one thing that a dog likes more than having his ears scratched, it's having his butt scratched. 

A beautiful moment...."Halona, I love you too, but please don't lick my mouth. I have seen you eat your poop."

Sun bathing in Canada really has nothing to do with tanning, as the suns rays are inhibited by parkas and insulated overalls. They are more of an act of rejoicing that for the first time in months, the sun actually feels warm instead of just being a useless ball of light in the sky, doing nothing to render the -35 degrees more bearable. 

For the honor and glory.

Date a girl who travels, or don’t; she doesn’t really care

Date a girl who travels, or don’t; she doesn’t really care one way or the other.

It’s true. You can argue whether to date her or not, but by the time you make your decision, she has already moved on. It is this short attention span that makes her retie the boots that just came off her feet and repack her bags that were only empty long enough for her underwear to come out of the wash.

She doesn’t need your validation because, for a girl who travels, there is nothing more validating than reaching into her well-packed bag and pulling out exactly what she needs for any given situation, except for maybe being able to help someone else who who didn't think to bring a two headlamps, a handful of cough drops, Velcro straps, or a tube of super glue. 

She will certainly be more concerned with how many pockets and pouches and zippers and gear loops she has on her backpack and jacket than with whether you want to date her or not. Her rule is: the more pouches/pockets/zippers/buckles/straps the better prepared she will be; so she might even be too busy customizing her rain jacket, hand-sewing slack lines onto it that can be taken off and used as clotheslines/compression straps/tourniquets/etc to notice if you are in the process of wooing her or not.

She is enchanted by languages, so date her or not, she will always have someone else to talk to because there is a whole wide world out there ready to share their culture, their passions, their story with her in every language that she is studying at the moment. And believe me, it is always more than one, so she doesn’t care if you have time for her or not because she’s busy reading four different Harry Potter books in four different languages.

She doesn’t care if your want to date her because she loves being around strangers in new places, but she is also confident enough to keep herself company.

If she has a family like mine, she will always miss them more than you when she is away, so if you are dating her or not, they will always get the priority “first hug” when she finally gets out of the customs line at the airport.

She is probably going to be busy trying to see all the fish in all the seas to be worried about dating them. She doesn’t take vacations, she makes voyages, and whether you are with her or not, she is still going to retie those laces (there are probably two sets on each shoe because she knows about 18 uses for a shoe laces), repack the clean underwear (probably no lace there because she would rather pay $15 for a pair of travel undies than for lacy ones), and she will be gone yet again.

So date her or don’t, she is a girl who travels, and she really don’t care.

For the honor and glory.

Crappy Conversations

So I have been getting  lot of complaints recently from my adoring fans (*cough-my-aunt-and-one-cousin-coughcough*) that I haven’t been updating the blog weekly. I would update weekly, but I typically like to wait for divine inspiration instead of making hour-by-hour journal entries and sometimes the Divine is too busy to waste time helping me come up with new and inspiring insights on dog crap.

But apparently the good Lord saves some time for me on Saturdays (this is the day that  I always have good ideas about anything), usually-ironically enough-while I am picking up dog crap. This is even true when I am not living in with 29 sled dogs; when I am at home, my thinking cap seems to only work when I am mowing the lawn or sweeping the patio. My brain is a little glichy and strange that way.

Talking about gliches…where were we?

Oh yes, God telling me what to write about while I was picking up dog poop on a Saturday. There I was. slipping and sliding around the kennel with a shovel and hoe, trying to avoid the double whammy that would have been breaking my hip while slipping on icy dog poop, when the divine light bulb was switched on.

“Write about dog crap,” it whispered in my ear.

“Really? Again?” I argued.

“Are you arguing with the Divine?”

“Are you sure you are the Divine? I think this voice might just be the poop talking.”

“…what would you get such a crappy idea?”

“Because I don’t think when the Lord whispers in peoples’ ears His breath has such a fecious odor”

“Fecious? You made that word up.”

“I don’t like to swear in my blog, so I am running out of real words to say and describe “poop” “

“I really make a great blog subject, no?”

“Yeah, and if I keep listening to you, I am going to have to change the title of this blog to Dog Crap and Other Tales.”

“ You could spell ‘tales’ like ‘tails’ to be extra witty.”

“Oh I like tha--STOP! I will take no more of your poopy advice! This is getting ridiculous.”

“Wait! But what about poop quotas?”

“Excuse me?”

“You could write about how the dogs have quotas for how much poop they allow in their areas. People think dogs can’t count, but they certainly can count the poop in their spots and they wait until just after you pick some up and then they poop some more to fill the quota.”

“Crap quotas…I like that too---NO! This has to end now. I’m freaking myself out talking to poop for so long.”

“But wait, there is more! What about ‘shit chipping’ and ‘shit slipping’??”

“Hey! I told you that we—that I don’t swear in my blog!”

“Sorry, I really have shit for ears.”

“STOP! We’re finished.”

“So, you really aren’t going to tell your one and one cousin who actually read this blog about s*** chipping and slipping? About how it is a big game with the frozen poops to chip them perfectly into the shovel with the hoe? About how it really is a science to tap just the right poopy corner with a precise amount of force and exact angle? About how the game changes to s*** slipping when the bad weather turns the whole kennel into ice and you slide around like a curling disc while trying to pick up the doodoo?”

“Did you really just mock me about my followers?”

“Is that what they call extended family these days?”

“Shut up.”

“Your own mother didn’t even seem to care that you haven’t updated in a month.”

“Now you’re really being a jerk.”

“Your mom was probably too busy reading my blog to read yours.”

“You need to go now.”

For the honor and glory.

Happy Build a Winter Shelter and Sleep in It and Not Die Day

One time in Arizona, I slept outside my house for the entire month of January. For some reason, this made me feel equipped to spend one very winter night outside in Quebec. I stayed alive long enough to make this video, so apparently it didn't go too poorly, but you can watch and see for yourelf =D

For the honor and glory.

No really, what does a fox say?

We certainly had an exciting week here at Miortuk (Inuit for “howling dog” Kennels. The excitement can be broken up concisely into three particular areas:

1)   Dog Excitement

We are currently training with a Ski-doo, this amazing machine that I had never heard of before I came to a place where it snows. Skidoo is kind of like Kleenex, where the brand name for a benign object actually has entered the vernacular as the proper noun for the object. Here, an SAT style question to see if you can guess what a Skidoo is:

 Keenex :: tissue ; Skidoo ::_____?______

            Ding ding, for you entry into college, the answer is: snow mobile.

Dogs pulling a snow mobile is more fun than dogs pulling a VTT (Quebecois for English: ATV and French: quad) because the runners really glide on the snow and make you feel like you are floating and basically falling all the time even when you are perfectly secure. The falling sensation might also come from the fact that I usually stand up on the back while Stan drives so that I can see around his parka, so I actually might be falling. So far so good though, but apparently Skidoos are pretty tippy, so we will see what happens in the future. Exciting factoid with the dogs though: despite the fact that I come from a desert, Stan thought it would be best if I learned how to drive a Skidoo for the first time with 12 dogs running out in front of it…12 dogs added to any “first” naturally make it better…or at least some firsts….ok maybe just this one because the more I think about it, there are plenty of “first” experiences that would be really strange with 12 sled dogs mixed in…

àADENDEM: Apparently due to the fact that I wrote that I HADN’T been in a flip over yet this morning, meant that when I went outside this morning, I would inevitably be in a Skidoo flip. It wasn’t that bad I guess and my foot only got a little squished under the snow mobile, not broken.   

2)   Weather Excitement

By weather excitement, I mean weather cold. ß So cold that I have reverted to caveman speech because the rest of my brain is putting tremendous effort into things like warmth. On the coldest day since I have been here, when the temperature stayed lower than -30C until around noon (That is Fahrenheit for just too freaking cold), Cecile and I decided it would be a good day to start building winter shelters. Stan didn’t make one because he already has one: his cabin. But the two of us unseasoned winter survivalists want to try our hands (which might wind up missing a few fingers as a result of frostbite) at sleeping outside in the snow, so huts had to be built. Mine is built on the bank of our lake and is a cross between a fox den and a Hobbit hole. In fact, it is sort of in the same spot as a fox den, so I don’t know what a fox says, but it sounds a lot like “Get the F out of my house.”

The huts are complete, but we are waiting for a night that is a little warmer than -36C before we sleep in them because we are dumb, but not that dumb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq2AmxH0eJA

3)   Trying to get a package excitement

On December 11^th this week, we were able to celebrate the one month birthday of the package that my mom sent a month ago for my birthday. I have never had to try so hard to have a package delivered to me. Here are some excerpts of conversations I had with UPS people

Automated Recording: Please say your tracking number.

Me: Oh great.

Automated Recoding: I am sorry. We didn’t get that. Please repeat your tracking number.

Me: 1Z99E8F36830286198

Automated Recording: Did you say” 168fmf0t730f?

Me: No, not even close.

Automated Recording: Sorry about that. Please say your shipping number again.

Me: 1Z99E8F36830286198

Automated Recording: Did you say: 1Z99E8F975—

Me: AGENT! Let me speak to an AGENT!

Automated Recording: Please hold while we connect you with an agent.

Sadly, the situation never really got any better even with a real human:

Agent 1: I am showing here that we don’t deliver to your area.

Me: Correct. I live in a remote area, 36 kilometers up a dirt road from the nearest village, so the truck driver should deliver to the pharmacy in the village.

Agent 1: No, he will deliver to the UPS center in the area.

Me: No, you see, the village doesn’t have one. All UPS packages that are delivered to the pharmacy and picked up from there.

Agent 1: Ma’am, we would not deliver to a pharmacy. We would only deliver to the nearest UPS facility.

Me: (bang bang bang goes my head on the wall) Ok, fine. That is in Blainsville correct? Two hours away? Where it is a useful to me as if it was still in Arizona.

Agent 1: Yes, that is correct.

Me: Ok, thanks for your help.

Five minutes later:

Agent 1: Oh, actually there is a note here from the sender that was just received a few moments ago to deliver the package to the pharmacy in St. Michel des Saints. Everything should be taken care of then.

Me: Excellent!

            Agent 1: Your package will be there on Monday.

            Me: …oh, actually…the pharmacy is closed on Monday.

            Agent 1: Well, the truck will be there on Monday.

Me: If your driver drives two hours from Blainsville on Monday, he will find that the pharmacy is closed and then he will drive two hours back with my package still in his truck. Can I give you a different address?

            Agent 1: No, only the sender can do that.

Me: The sender is my mother. She just wants the thing to arrive. She wouldn’t have known that the pharmacy is closed on Mondays.

Agent 1: No. She will have to call back.

           

A few days later:

Me: Hi, I see here on the tracking information that my package has already been in Canada for over three weeks, but now there is a government agency hold on it. Do you think you could elaborate on this for me?

Agent 2: Yes, of course ma’am: a “government agency hold” means that a government agency is currently holding your package.

Me: …

Agent 2: Ma’am?

Finally, FINALLY! I got a message saying that the package had been delivered to our friends Laurent and Valerie two villages over (my mom did have to call back with the address provided from Stan’s phone book). So I knock on the front door.

Me: Bonjour Valerie, I got a message saying that my package arrived.

Valerie: ….we didn’t get a package.

Me: …

Turns out, Stan’s old phone book was too old. After more calls to UPS, this time in French, we discovered that the package had indeed been delivered to Lauren and Valerie’s house….their old house.

So we hop in the truck and drive there, where holy freaking crap, the package is actually on the front step. Everything was still in it, even the dehydrated fruit and the unpackaged protein powder in ziplock bags that looked like crack.

Happy Birthday Package.  

For the honor and glory.