Straw anyone?

More snow and cold on the way! We received another two inches on the ground, with a total of around 4 inches now.  Not enough though!  We expect to get some more in two or three more days.  I  want to get out on my dogsled, so I hope it’s not any longer that that. 

We also had our coldest night yet, getting down to 0°F. Only another month or so and we will start seeing 40 and 50 below. I hope the cold will come sooner rather than later so that the river freezes.  As you can see, there is not that much ice out there yet. 

 With the temps getting down to where they are, it was time to give the dogs their first round of straw for bedding and warmth. You don’t want to give them straw if you think it still might get up above freezing.  This is because if the straw gets wet then the dogs are worse off than without any straw at all. I doubt we will see above freezing until April at this

point. You can see Shaggy went right into his house just after I put in the straw.  And boy does he look comfortable! The pups thought it was pretty great too.  It was their first time getting any and at first they were just playing in it and digging it out of the houses faster than I could put it in. It didn’t take them long to get the idea though.

Tug and Pale are sharing a house and they seem quite content in there. I don’t know of any mushers who still use a double ended doghouse, but I have four of them because I think it’s a great thing for the dogs to sleep together in one house. Its not necessarily any warmer with two ends open, but it’s good for the dogs in the long run to learn to get along with one another. They will have to sleep next to each other on the race trail, so I might as well let them start doing it now as long as they get along.

 Well I hope that the next blog will have some photos of me and the dogs out on a sled, so keep your fingers crossed that we get the snow that the weatherman says we are going to get. Although Alaska weather is far from predictable!