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Hi Everyone!
Well this is long over due and I do apologize! Life seems to get busier every year. Summer went by so fast and already December is looming ahead. We had a great summer in Fairbanks this year. I again worked up at the Chena Hot Springs Resort with all my dogs giving sled dog rides on a cart and also giving horseback rides as well. I met a lot of great people and stayed very busy. Ferrari had a litter of 6 puppies this summer, which I named after motorcycles (Harley, Chopper, Fazor, Electra, Victory, & Ninja). They are very fast little puppies! Half of my adult dogs spent the summer giving rides on the Skagway glacier while the other half stayed with me in Fairbanks.
A very big THANK YOU to everyone who supported me in last years Iditarod! Your support is so greatly appreciated and I know that I could not do any of this without your help! I am just sorry that I have been so late in getting letters out to you. I have always done all the dog care, training, race preparation, and everything else all by myself and to say the least I get pretty overwhelmed at times. Summers are spent working as many hours as possible to support the dogs. Thank you so much for your patience with me!! I know I need to get better about keeping in touch. With that said I definitely had to do a lot of thinking this summer about where the future of my team was headed. Every year the cost of feeding, training, and racing a team for the Iditarod has gone way up and the prize money in the Iditarod has gone way down. Not good! Even as well as I have done in the Iditarod it just does not add up. It roughly costs $40 thousand to train and get to the starting line of the Iditarod and last year even though I was the highest placing female and finished 15th out of a field of 71 very competitive teams I only won $15 thousand. I just cannot keep up with the difference anymore. All summer long I looked at different options as what to do. Some of the options were to sell the dogs, lease my better dogs out to another top musher, or possibly lease my whole team to someone who wanted to run the Iditarod for the first time who I could train. I even had someone contact me about guiding them on the Iditarod trail. All of those options were certainly possibilities but just didn't seem to come together. While checking out my options, I happened to call a fellow musher whom I knew had experience with leasing out teams. Just wanting to get advice, I ended up with a whole other option. This "fellow musher" was top Iditarod contender Sebastian Schnuelle. After talking on the phone, he called me back and asked if I would be interested in helping him this winter with tours, race clients, and possibly even a few races. He needed more help and even a few more dogs. Well that I could definitely do. It sounded like a very busy winter and certainly something different than what I had been doing. Once my summer job ended, I packed up the dogs and headed to Whitehorse, Canada. As I type this, I am currently sitting in a very remote cabin in the Yukon territories with 60 dogs howling outside. Just two nights ago we had a pack of wolves visit us here. They came within about 50yds of the cabin and dog yard. We were outside feeding the dogs with the wolves howling in the trees. Kind of an eerie feeling but very cool! There is not much for snow here so training has been kind of tough. We had to get creative to say the least to keep that many dogs training with just Sebastian and I to train them. With not enough snow for a sled we have been hooking two 30 dog teams side by side to a pickup truck for a total of 60 dogs pulling us out front! Yes, the bumper is still attached! There is a little bit more snow in Alaska so I think next week we will be packing everything up and head farther north and back to Alaska for me. Sebastian has a place in Paxson, AK where we will be headed. December and January will be very busy months as the racing will start up. The Sheep Mountain 150 and the Gin Gin 200 are in Dec. with the Copper Basin 300 and the Kusko 300 in Jan. February will be the Quest 300 and food drop for the Iditarod. Were will I be in all this? Good question! I will for sure be running the Sheep Mtn, the Gin Gin, and the Copper Basin. Several of my dogs will be used for all of these races with race clients running them. Then the big question…..should I run the Yukon Quest 1000 or the Iditarod again? The original plan was for me to run the Quest and Sebastian to run the Iditarod. Now it looks as though the better option might be for me to run the Iditarod as well. A lot of my training expenses are being covered by using my dogs to help with the race clients but now I just have to figure out financially how I can cover the costs of running one of the big races again. The cost of running just the Iditarod or Quest alone is around $15 thousand. I certainly have to make a decision very soon as this is already mid Nov and the last day to sign up is Dec 1st. Until then training is going better than ever. Having two musher's train together can keep you very motivated. I have more miles on my dogs right now than I ever have. Just a couple days ago we took the dogs on a 145 mile run. I certainly never used to do runs like that before! It has been interesting to share ideas and learn new ways. Sab and I have trained so differently in the past and have such different ideas on some things and yet not finished that far apart in the Iditarod. Interestingly enough, we also have a lot of the same ideas on other things though too. All in all I think this will be a very good winter. Well, it has been a couple of days now since I started writing this letter and we are now in the middle of packing to head to AK. There is snow there so-yaaah!! After discussing the different options for racing this winter with Sab, looking at financing and such, it looks as though the Iditarod is going to win over running the Quest. Now I just need to sign up to make it final. I am actually pretty excited about the possibilities. With the different training, more miles, more camping, and more dogs to choose from I think this will come out very well in the end. Certainly a top 10 finish will be the goal. It is certainly a great goal to shoot for and one that is very attainable. For now I will just keep focused on training the dogs as much as possible and hope we get plenty of snow this winter! Since I know how terrible I am at keeping in touch (even though I will keep trying) I wanted to let you know a great way to keep following me is to check out Sebastian's facebook page and his website. He keeps regular posts, pictures, and videos on there of what we are up too. His website is www.sebastianschnuelle.com and there is also a link to his facebook page on the website. If you go to his facebook page and ask for a friend request please put a short note on there that you know/are a fan of mine. Sorry I do not have a facebook page of my own and am afraid I would have a hard time keeping one up. In fact I will include my email address on the bottom of this page so that in the future you can email me your email address so I can just send you these newsletters by email. I have never done this before because I do not check email regularly as I do not have internet access so again please be patient with me as far as getting replies back. Remember I am out on the trail training dogs not sitting in front of the computer! :) Thank you all so much for supporting me in the past! I hope that you have a great winter and a very happy holiday season coming up! I look forward to hearing from you in the future! Happy Trails! Jessie and the J team jessie.thejteam@gmail.com PO Box 10279 Fairbanks, AK 99710 |
