Winter Diary Extract 2004 - 2005

I bought twenty whitefish from Albert, a Gwitch’in Indian friend. Tomorrow I hope to head out and overnight with the older dogs and return in the morning early enough to feed the pups. The fish will be handy to supplement feed before I tuck up for the night in my sled.

This time of year household freezers are shoved outside and switched off. Freezers run at -22°C so there’s no point paying electricity when it’s thirty below.

Left late this evening with Saxon, Thule and Judi’s Piper for an overnighter on the Mackenzie River’s east channel. Made camp in darkness, lay in my sled and a Wiggy’s sleeping bag watching the moon’s last quarter and magnificent northern lights. Saxon was beside me on the stakeout. Sat on his haunches he looked aloft, just watching. I could only imagine his interpretation. I soon fell asleep, warm.

Ran myself early. Dark morning for pup run with plenty of fresh snow to play in and back for feeding. Ran adults for five hours. First time for Thule up front alone. She was a complete bitch, messing around, defiant with almost every command. Thing is I know she’s very smart and is capable of leading. She’s worked in tandem with her mother Chilly. She was an only pup and developed into a female with defiant tendencies or spirit, whatever you want to call it. Jo did warn me. Used to having plenty of attention Thule will thrive from leading. I know she will but I‘ve to persist until she gets it. She’s mentally strong and dominant. Now it’s for me to positively channel her strengths.

Rested adults. I had an email from a friend living in London. Alison described standing on the new pedestrian bridge alongside Hungerford Bridge with two Dakotas passing over releasing three million poppy petals representing all those British soldiers who've died in conflict since WW1.

She wrote, “It was amazingly silent considering it was central London and you could hear the petals landing on the water - very moving”. I bet two minutes later the whole place was back to normal, angry and aggressive. It’s also a dead cert the Dakotas will be loaded with even more petals next year.

I take the puppies off the lake they play on during their morning runs and down a little creek that has a great little area to train them, individually. Today all three pups consistently sit and stay.

Throughout each dog’s life feet will be repeatedly monitored a million times over for ice build up in-between toes or uneven wear of nails that can cause lameness. Most of the time I’ll do this like grease lightening because it’ll be cold and to stop means I get colder. I make a game of playing with all ears, feet and mouths to make sure dogs aren’t resilient to touch in these areas. Worming a 75lb dog that doesn’t want its mouth handled is a timewaster.

Axed a decent sized whitefish into three and supplemented the adult’s feed with it. Despite being frozen these blocks were devoured with slathering fangs within minutes and eyes looking for more.

Seriously cold run this morning, - 42°C. First forty below day for the puppies, they couldn’t have cared less.

Ran adults for two hours. Thule made some good moves. She also made some hideous ones. I ignored this but made sure she got it right in the end. It was very trying but I desperately tried not to let it show and praised her for all her good moves.

Snowed all day. Rested adults. Lots of puppy training down the little creek. Took Twizzle on the east channel to buy more fish from Albert.

Baked bread on my wood stove and ate most of it before it had time to cool down.

Had Twizzle inside for an hour until he shamed himself by pissing on my floor. The permafrost shifted the pilings on my place this summer resulting in a tilt. The wet ran straight into and soaked the bottom of my flour sack. I didn’t thank Twizzle and sent him out.

The vet is in town. A thoroughly likeable guy, John Overell has a surgery in Dawson City and takes two days to drive here every two months. He runs a practice in Inuvik for a week before heading south again. I had some questions about feeding fish out of the Mackenzie River. Lucky I did because he said it’s been found that Mackenzie River whitefish tend to harbour a nasty strain of tapeworm that’s very difficult to eradicate if fed to dogs. I think of my own stomach. I’d found particularly fine eating until now.

John gave good advice by saying, “It’s best to worm a month after freeze-up, about now, and a month after spring ice break-up, around May time. Worms lay staggering amounts of eggs at this time giving their species greater chance of survival”. I wished John a safe drive back along the Dempster Highway. He won’t be back until January. I treated myself to a large black cherry yoghurt I’d bought last week. I appreciated the effort it had taken to get it here. The effort was reciprocated in the price.
 

Crack cocaine makes this week’s headline in the 16-page community newspaper. Apparently cops here are concerned about the ‘vigilante tone’ people are adopting as a more positive approach to punishing dealers.

I put Twizzle on the stakeout for first time. He’s four and a half months old.

I run on the Mackenzie River ice for the first time this winter in the morning dark. I followed a snow mobile trail with the aid of my head-torch for half-an-hour before turning around. Before too long my days will be 24-hour dark and my only trusted light source training the dogs over good or bad ice will be my Petzl head-torch powered by Energizer’s lithium batteries.
 

It’s the time of year to switch over to new Asics Motivator trainers and a full size bigger to accommodate for more Horizon socks. As always I slip in a new pair of Sorbothane innersoles to keep me injury free. Rested adults, walked pups and they helped me bring in some wood for my stove.