A month after freeze up I wormed my dogs, again with Bayer’s Drontal Plus, the only wormer capable of ridding dogs from all parasitic worms.

I suppose scouring eBay for a doggy chastity belt would have been the solution. I’m talking about avoiding unwanted dog pregnancies. In Canada, Thule, one of my lead dogs, would come in and out of season and instead of the regular six months would be back in heat three months later. That amounted to 6 weeks of sledding lost not running Thule up front. It was a real pain and would disrupt the season and my team’s brains would go to their balls. I hated their fighting that resulted. Saxon was the worst offender. From that time onwards I invested in a sectioned dog pen. It is the world’s biggest contraceptive. I have 17 dogs: 16 males and one female, Girly. She’s also very popular. I put up the pen when Girly came in season and isolated her from the boys and their willies.

With all this summer’s activity for the upcoming journey, my dogs continued to patiently watch and wait for the coming of winter.

The short film "Rolfe" was screened at the Raindance Film Festival, Apollo Cinema, London, UK on Oct 6th 2009.

I continued my twice-daily training run routine and weights. Not that you’d notice. My arms still look like knots in cotton.

And I still don’t have muscles in my spit either.