If You Aren’t the Lead Dog
You know the saying, “If you’re not the lead dog, your view never changes”. Well, I can now attest to that fact, first hand. We all went Dog Sledding at Grizzley T’s Dog Sleds in Steamboat Springs Colorado.What a hoot! They have over 117 dogs. Have you ever heard 117 dogs barking? It is deafening. As they start to bring out the sleds the dogs go crazy. They all bark and run around saying “pick me – pick me!”
It was so incredibly loud. Then after the first three sleds were set up and had taken off they all quieted down until the next set of sleds were brought out and then the barking, yelping and the “pick me , pick me” howling started up again.
It was a mad house. Each sled had one driver and one lazy ass person that got to sit all snuggled up in a blanket in the sled. Guess which one I got to be?
And so this was my view. OH wait it was really more like this! So the saying is true and here is the proof.
We had a total of 6 sleds head out for a twelve mile trip. The dogs are amazing. We stopped every couple of miles and they ate some snow, and laid in the snow and the trail guides put piles of snow on their backs and they were nice and quiet for about 5 mintues and then these dogs were itching to get moving. They started yelping, and barking and howling saying ” OK, boss we are ready to go, let’s go, can we go now, can we, can we?”. Bob was standing on the brakes, a big giant metal bar with giant spikes that stick in the snow, and these dogs were still moving the sled forward. They want to run and they want to be first, they want to get ahead of the dog sled in front of them at all costs and it is hard to keep them in the line.
Jill and Becca had a great time. And although Bob struggled to keep the dogs in line, they apparently had no problem.
Interesting facts: When the dogs are pulling the sled they stop for nothing. The dogs will pee and poop while running which makes the lazy ass person in the sled an easy target due to back draft. I wanted to change spots with Bob after the first few chunks of poop came flying at me. Half way through the trip we all traded places. Of course by this time the dogs were finished pooping but we stuffed Bob in that sled anyway.
Two of the dogs had just completed the Iditerod traveling over 1100 miles. I don’t know how the dogs did it much less the people. It takes a lot of arm strength and leg strength to stay on that sled. You are only standing on two rails or on the metal bar break.
Most professional dog sleds have 16 dogs, not the 8 we had cause we are wusses and coudn’t handle the power of any more dogs. I totaly agree with this as these dogs were really powerful, extremely eager and did I mention they wanted to run really fast and didn’t care a whole lot about the people they were dragging behind them. The key to dog sledding is to always have the main line tight. If it gets any slack the dogs aren’t pulling you and the sled will sway out of line. It is easy to keep the line tight if the land is flat or you going uphill, but downhill you have to step on the brake to keep the sled from going too fast and getting too close to the dogs and the line getting slack. You should know this if you are going dog sledding in the near future.
And you should know that these dogs are very nice and gentle.
They are nice even if they don’t like being photographed but are being forced by a small child.
We really had a great time. Photos of the landscape are under Entertaining – Photography, otherwise this post would go on forever. Enjoy. We sure did!