Walking Dogs

Kiyiya
Sunka
Tonight I was only able to walk a few dogs. I have been very busy with my Husky rescue with 22 new dogs that are coming in. So tonight I chose to walk Sunka and Kiyiya. They are sister's to Ulric who is on the race team. I have ran with Sunka and Kiyiya before in the dirt in the woods and they do well, but when we run down the asphalt road to head to longer trails they both freeze up resulting in scrapped pads on their feet. I took Sunka first. We walked around the yard in the grass and she did well. We went up the dirt drive fine but when she got on the asphalt she froze up again. I figured out she is affraid of the asphalt. She ran in the grass on the side of the road fine. So I walked down the center of the street. (it is night and way out in the country so you can see cars coming far away). Sunka would walk 20 feet and stop and pull back against me. I would put my hand down and get her to raise her head and talk sweet to her and tell her to come on and we would walk another 20 feet. This went on all the way around the 1-1/2 mile walk. But she kept getting better. I will keep this up till she is confident. When I walked Kiyiya on the asphalt she was fine till she heard her toenails on the asphalt and that sent her bucking like a wild horse. I finally calmed her and she did well on the walk. Just a lot of new smells and sights and sounds. I sniffed the air more than I normally do and I could smell the houses where smokers were and I could smell who was cooking and who was doing laundry and many more smells. The dogs have really helped me to become more aware of what I am smelling. I can even smell deer as we run. Yes, its just a matter of time before I get down on all fours and start sniffing out an animal trail and chasing it down. I'm becoming more like a dog every day. I am hopeing that walking the girls will help them to feel more confident on the asphalt so they can run with the team. I have several young females that are small who I am going to start running seperatly from the big team. I am thinking of using Little Bear as the leader for them since she will always keep the line tight and keep them moving in the right direction. I will just have to ride the brake to keep them going slow so they all have a good time while getting used to the new experience. I will run them here in the pasture and in my woods before heading out on trails. I'm thinking of even grabbing some of the dogs from my rescue and running them with the slow team just for exercise. Lets see how they do. I find most Huskies want to pull naturally. When I first started I made the mistake of trying to walk Huskies on a leash wrapped around my wrist and clipped to a walking harness on the dog. That gave them too much power over me and kept me with pain in my arms and shoulders. I finally started using collars and prong collars for the bad ones but I designed and sewed a belt for myself. I used 2 inch nylon webbing and sewed a D-ring on it and made a belt. I then sewed leashes with clips at both ends so I can clip one end to the dog and the other to the D-ring on the belt. The soreness in my arms has gone away. My legs are much stronger than my arms and when I say stop we now stop.

Powerful dogs. Dogs once trained are capable of pulling about 1000 pounds each. As a team of dogs that increases to much more than 1000 pounds per dog. But true power is in the tounge of the musher who can encourage these dogs to work for him/her and have them to love you and love working for you and not break the dog's spirit. That is what I hope to be able to do by walking these dogs one on one and encouraging them and supporting them and having them to trust me that I will not let something bad happen.