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Click here for more info...  Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you are all having a great winter so far. I know this letter has been a long time in coming and for that I apologize! It seems that time gets away from me and here I find myself writing with the winter already half over. Where does time go? Sometimes I just wish life would slow down a bit. There is always so much to do in such a short time. I just came inside from feeding the dogs. It is -10 F outside (-35 in the valleys!) it is a clear ski with all the stars shining brightly and the full moon coming up……what a beautiful night! The dogs were all quiet after eating and I just had to stand there and admire God's handiwork as I looked over the valley below me. How blessed we truly are to live in this great country and enjoy the freedoms we have. I may feel time is in short supply and feel like I am not getting enough done but I still feel lucky to be alive and will keep working away one step at a time and enjoy each day God brings. This winter so far has been great! We have not gotten our normal amount of snow (about half so far) but it sure has been a lot warmer than usual. I am not complaining about that! Training started in September with a 4-wheeler. Normally I can switch to a sled the last part of Oct. but this year I had to stay with the 4-wheeler a couple weeks longer than normal. I have been training with a sled now for a while but snow was scarce. I was not always able to stop the dogs when I wanted due to the brakes hitting frozen dirt. Thirty dogs started out this year training with me and so far all are still doing pretty good. I have several young two year olds that are doing quit well. I have been working hard on training new leaders. Kuling my number one all star leader is still on the team and doing great at 10 yrs old but I can not rely on her forever. Slurp too is getting older at 8yrs old. My newest prospects for leaders are Tetsa, Annette, Grace, Ferrari, Mariah, and maybe even Ranger, Lava, Gojo, and Jaguar. I like to give every dog a chance in the lead but these are certainly doing the best. Some of you who have been following my team for awhile now maybe wondering about Spider one of my other main leaders that has run 6 Iditarod's with me. Unfortunately I have some very sad news. Spider died a few weeks ago. He was only 9yrs old and died asleep in his house. Spider was always one of my favorite dogs with more personality than most dogs and to say the least I was very sad! He will be greatly missed!! Another dog who will be missed is Reba. She died this fall at age 16 ½! She certainly lived a long full life. Reba was my main leader during my first Iditarod and is the mother, grandmother or great-grandmother of most of my entire kennel including being Kuling's mother. She left a great legacy. These huskies are so amazing! They not only run 20 to 40 thousand miles in their lifetime but live to be very old dogs as well. I still have two other dogs that finished my first Iditarod with me - Brave is 16yrs old and Egan is almost 17 and still doing great! This summer I had 6 new puppies that I named after the characters of Bonanza. The puppy I named "Hoss" is out of Kuling and is my favorite. He was the only one in the litter but has more than enough personality to make up for it. Very smart and also quit the little ham! The races are fast approaching. The dogs and I have been training and putting on some long miles. Most of our runs are about 40 to 50 miles long but I also throw some 70 to 80 mile runs in there once in awhile too. Our first race will be the 23rd of January on the Kenai Peninsula (below Anchorage). It is called the Tustumena 200. I ran it once in 2000 but have not run it since. My plan is to take the younger 2 and 3 yr old dogs and see how they do. The ultimate goal this winter is of course the Iditarod so I will run a conservative race and hope to finish around 7th or 8th which will at least pay my expenses of getting down there plus entry fee etc. After that the next race will be the Denali Doubles 265 miles on the 11th of Feb. For that race I will take the dogs with the best potential for making my Iditarod team and use it as a warm up race before the Iditarod. It will be fun to see some of the other teams and mushers and compare how my team "stacks up". My Iditarod food drop is also due about the middle of Feb so I will have to work on it all through January as well. It is a big job and requires me recruiting some extra help to get it all done. With the winter seemly going by so fast before I know it the start of Iditarod 2010 will be here! Should be another exciting year! Thanks to all of you for your continued support of the J team! I could not do this without you! I hope you have a great winter. Happy Trails
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