Runember Recreational Racing

Happy to report that despite randomly trying to die of acute liver disease last season, Rune’s liver values continue to be not only normal, but low normal

Life doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes there are no answers. Happy that at least for now, the goober is good to goob on and enjoy sunbathing with the least comfortable pillows possible

Very helpful stacking firewood. Every single piece exactly where it should be

I’m gonna prophecize about ticks

I am from Lyme originally. My first Lyme disease tick bite occurred before my working memory. I don’t remember it at all, I only know it as part of my heath history. Finding ticks on you was just part of daily routine. My record for number of ticks pulled off the dog after time outside was 36 (not including getting into a nest; you literally can’t count seed ticks)

Going way back decades ago, there was debate as to whether dogs were even affected by Lyme disease. A lot of dogs died. A lot of outdoorspeople just treated their dogs with Doxycycle once a year because it was safe to assume they were infected with one tick disease or another

When I moved north… It wasn’t like that. There were ticks, but just here and there. Check yourself after being in deep woods and grass to be sure. People would call the clinic in a panic when one attached to their pet and even bring them in for tick removal because it wasn’t a thing that everyone just dealt with all the time

It’s been changing. The ticks are migrating. The changing climate is speeding up the process. Alpha gal and erlichiosis are showing up out here where lyme and Anaplasmosis previously dominated. Lyme is rapidly expanding north and west. This year, for the first time since I’ve been here, I’m picking ticks off myself and the dogs in the yard

Thankfully we have new technology to help us combat this. But there is a two-pronged issue in play: as our technology advances, ticks evolve to get around it. And that makes keeping up with it expensive

Mushers… Owners of many dogs… Heed my warning: This is coming for you. Even if you’re up north, even if it gets really cold (we had one of the coldest winters in decades this season) even if you’ve never really had ticks before. Spritzing the dogs with pyrethrin every month is not going to cut it. Bulk packs of off brand Frontline are not going to cut it. Hell, I put name brand Frontline on Ember when I rescued her in 2009 and watched live parasites crawling on her the next morning. I know there are places you can still use these things now, but it’s not going to last

This will kill and cripple dogs. Not all of them, but a lot of them. I predict that within the next decade the lower 48 is going to need oral prevention to truly stay on top of tick control

Make a plan now. Look at prevention, look in to vaccines. Look at your numbers and costs. Come up with something and be prepared. This is a factor in my kennel size

Wait and see and treat when it happens does not save anything in the long run. The things these diseases can do are horrible, the diagnosis is expensive, and the treatment is expensive. Once infected, they will continue to show positive on basic tests for years but they are not immune and can be reinfected. Which means once they have it, monitoring gets even more expensive too

And the thing that really sucks is ticks can still get around it all. Ticks are literally ancient. They were here with dinosaurs. We are not going to beat them, but we can put our best fight forward

After a brief moment of sensory overload, Bronn fixed his blown mind and nailed his first qualifying FASTCAT runs! I never really doubted he would love this game, the guy tracks and tackles fallen leaves blowing in the wind

My schedule finally went back to normal weekends off so we went out for some plastic bag m*rd*r this morning! Raven is a bit behind in points since Alaskans are not a registered breed, therefore they cannot compete in AKC events while intact

She doesn’t particularly care about the lure but she sure does love blasting through a field full tilt!

There is no universally ideal breed for a first time dog owner. There is only the right dog for you

Dogs are not a level up skill set you advance through, they’re living beings and they all have unique needs. Slamming the door in someone’s face when they make an honest inquiry about a breed is not just not helpful, it’s actively harmful. People deserve information and guidance to make the correct decision. You are cutting off a chance to provide that information and setting that person back adrift among the AI slop and blatantly lying puppy brokers on Google

Recently a puppy went viral on social media because the owner posted a cry for help, completely overwhelmed by this baby gun dog, supposedly from working lines. The response from so many dog people was overwhelming judgement. What really got missed was that the owner openly stated that they DID do research. They did not know what “high energy” meant. They had no idea a dog could be this way. Their frame of reference was other people’s lazy adult large breed dogs. The internet doesn’t provide this sort of information. But we can

Yet on the flip side, I met a little Siberian puppy recently. The owner stopped me because they’d seen me with my dogs, and they wanted to know more about Siberians. Someone had given it away to them. I said yeah, they are very different than other dogs, Siberians are not like Retrievers and such. And this brand new owner says “well I’ve never had a dog before at all, I always had Maine C**n cats”

Guess what Siberians are very much like?

They’re doing great. I see them around occasionally taking walks together. Most recently they asked me if there was such a thing as walking a Siberian too far

These are the people that we miss when we jump to gate keep without asking a single question; without a shred of information to even be gate keeping. Ultimately that hurts good dogs who need homes too. Siberians end up on the “bad for first time” list most of the time, but the truth is they’re bad for most dog owners. Most people don’t want this, but those of that do… We need these dogs, right from the start

Anyway, here’s Vance, who I adopted when I was 19, and Ember, who I took off the streets at 23 (after her first owner went off on a tear about her second owner and how 23 year olds have no business owning dogs)

"Y'ALL GOT ANY MORE OF THAT DRYLAND RACING????"

You may have heard that sled dogs don’t need health testing. This runs contrary to modern standards for ethical breeding. There is a kernel of truth to this, but it is being wildly misconstrued

Dogs cannot run thousands of miles on bad joints. Distance sled dogs are a relatively closed population all running thousands of miles. Only the best of the best of those chosen for breeding for many generations - thousands of years in some cases. This has produced a population with an incredibly low incidence of orthopedic issues

That does not mean it can not happen. The genetics haven’t ceased to exist, they’ve been suppressed and under continuous pressure to stay suppressed. Essentially, their work IS the joint test, and has been applied to every dog in the program from the start

If a dog is not running thousands or even hundreds of miles, then they have not passed that test. We know joint disorders are polygenetic and can skip generations. If that individual dog is not proven, it’s no different than saying “well his parents OFA excellent so it’s fine”

As things stand, because the overall incidence is low, you probably would get lucky. But you don’t know and the further down the line things go, the more likely your luck is to run out

The lower your distance, the younger the dog is bred, the more likely things are to slip through the cracks. Ironically, this is exacerbated if you have a solid high drive dog, because when it does start to hurt, they’ll run right through the pain. The more recent the outcrossing to non-sledding breeds, the more likely you are to still see something pop up from the other breed

This also only applies to orthopedic testing. There are other genetic tests that should be run, for instance Siberians have DM, PRA, SPS1, SHPN1… Plus the importance of pedigree tracking to identify glaucoma and epilepsy risk. Alaskans have AHE, and a test for PCD in the works, maybe more depending on the line (for example DCM has been identified in some sled dogs) plus the importance of pedigree tracking

So yes, it is normal and acceptable for a kennel with established sled dog lines, actively running their dogs to significant distance and performance standards, to not being doing orthopedic health testing. That does not apply to sled dogs as a whole indefinitely, dogs with questionable orthopedic health in their recent pedigrees, or dogs that occasionally run and/or only run short distances in harness. Nor does it justify neglecting genetic testing or the monitoring of pedigrees

If you “love Siberians I just wish they didn’t…” and proceed to list off behaviors that make a Siberian a Siberian… You do not actually love Siberians, you’re into an aesthetic

Happy 6th Birthday Ms Raven Rae!
(And Shasta and Ruby!)