Sunday, Feb 6

Sunday:
Well this turned out to be a very special day…………not in a good way……….
I went out first in the 6 dog, and this should be no surprise to you, was blinded by the sun just coming over the mountains, didn’t see the corner till too late, got caught in the deep snow and wiped out – lost the team, walked for what seemed to be a mile, found the team with another woman racer with her sled tangle in mine, got her unstuck, then tried to pull my snow hook out and could not – not even chancing it by standing right over the top of it and pulling with both hands, not even hooking neck lines to the handle to get a better angle on it, not even pulling back on the sled while there was an infrequent slack moment from the team – bark and pull and whine and bark, bark bark………I don’t know how many teams went by but they started the 8 and 10 dogs classes and I started telling people going by that I couldn’t get my snow hook out and to send help…….about ½ hour later, Randy came on the snow machine with another guy and loosened it by pulling up on the rope in front of the snow hook and bam, it came out – so I finished the race without any further problems, but of course was disqualified. The trails are beautiful and twisty but not too many bad turns – I went 7.9 miles and by the time I got back, being hot and sweaty and then cold on the trail I was chilled. Well, the not so good news was that because Randy had come out to help me he missed his start time!!!!! So he told them that he wanted to run the trail still, even for a training run. So we got him out the chute almost an hour after the first open team went out and had only a minor mishap with him almost hitting the fence with the sled and having to drag on his knees for a few feet – he took 19 dogs because he had given me 2 of the 1-year olds (Snapper and Andy) because he felt they were not going to be able to keep up for the 20 miles. So I go in and change clothes and talk to a guy from 3 hours north of Circle that you can only get to by snow mobile or boat and hear his interesting life’s history and because he left at 1:13 I am thinking he should be back about 2:35 – now as I am looking around there are getting to be fewer and fewer trucks in the lot and I am starting to get worried that if he has trouble of any kind, there wouldn’t be anyone here to help me. So I wait another 15 minutes or so and I see 2 dogs running the trail by themselves and they run up to the truck – then 2 more (now Randy has asked me who came in in what order and I must have been so stressed I didn’t keep track –just kept hooking them to the truck and un-harnessing and putting away in the trailer) –not long after 5 more dogs come back alone with the lines on them literally in a ball so tight you couldn’t possibly see beginning or end and the main line looks like it was cut– I wait a few minutes and call the president of the dog club and leave a message on her phone telling her that ½ the team is back and Randy is out there and some of the dogs have blood on their coats- a few more minutes and no answer from her and I called 911 who connected me with the state troopers – it seemed like forever before they came but luckily 2 of them had snowmobiles with them (one is a wildlife trooper and the other is a trooper for 15 remote villages) and while those 2 are out looking for Randy the 3rd is trying to keep me from losing it – at 4 pm still no sign of Randy or more dogs and no sightings by the trooper on snowmobiles. Shortly after 2 more and then 2 more dogs run in. Finally we can see Randy walking the incoming trail with 3 dogs in tow – I run out the trail and call the dogs and am running towards him to see how he is and he lets the dogs go and they run past me and he yells at me to catch the dogs (so I know at least he is not seriously injured……) and before I can run back to the truck, the dog that he was leading (with great difficulty for 6 miles to keep her from getting bred) is in fact, getting bred at the truck……….. When I finally get to talk to Randy he tells me he has lost the tip of his finger and needs to go to the hospital – tip of the finger was an exaggeration………and under-exaggeration…… it looked like a shark had bitten his finger off!!!! Ring finger, right hand to just about the first joint!
The team had taken a wrong turn and he had to turn them back on themselves to get them back on the right trail, which created major tangles. He had untangled the front ½ and they all still had their tug lines off and were only pulling off their neck lines- while he was untangling yearling dogs at the back of the team the main line snapped and the front ½ of the team ran away and the end of his finger popped off and flew out into the snow somewhere (he can only guess that there were lines around his fingers and when the string of dogs snapped the line it noosed around his finger and the Kevlar line was stronger than his finger and off it came……). So he hooked up what dogs he had left and tried to keep going down the trail with the sled – after several attempts, I stop, because they won’t go ahead. Right then he saw the front half of the team tangled in a mess. Next, mind you with a decapitated finger that’s bleeding, he tries to unhook as many dogs as he can so that they wouldn’t get any more tangled and they took off down the trail – he walked back to the back ½ of the team and unhooked everybody and just took the in-season dog and spooky Holly and leading them with 3 neck lines and start walking the trail knowing that he had to stay on the main trail to get back even thought many times the sun indicated he was going in the opposite direction of the clubhouse.
One of the troopers took us to the hospital (after Randy refused treatment by the firemen..) and a plastic surgeon (a very tall, Native with alligator boots and a long braid) took the bone and tissue out down to the joint and sewed him up! The middle finger is also fractured and laceration and there is a skin tear on his index finger. We were there until 10p and the trooper told us to call the station when we were done and if there were no robberies, etc. maybe someone would be able to take us back to the truck (the hospital is probably 20 minutes away) and the trooper that kept me from getting hysterical was the one that brought us back! When we got here we looked at the generator and knew we were almost out of fuel so Randy had the trooper spray ether in the engine to get the truck started so we could drive to the gas station for fuel. Now for those of you that don’t know this, Randy had a 10 speed transmission put in the truck this summer………and this is his right hand we are talking about…….and there is no way I am prepared to learn how to drive this monster truck tonite – so he limps along shifting and I have to push and pull the air shift for him. We get the fuel, make it back to the club house and it’s time to drop the dogs and feed them. Well my job is usually to be the one inside and letting the dogs in and out of their individual boxes………guess what my job is now?! Wrestling the octopus Ron in and out and onto his hook on the truck – mind you I didn’t lose a finger, but I did catch all 19 dogs and put them in the truck one by one by myself and I am beginning to wear out – we finally get everybody fed and back in the trailer and I feed Randy and give him one of his pain pills (percocet) in case the numbing medicine wears off in the middle of the nite.
We wake this morning at the crack of 9 and he says his hand still doesn’t hurt and 3 fingers are numb – so that could be a good thing because it doesn’t hurt yet or maybe not so good depending on how long they stay numb……..
We fed breakfast this morning, got them back in, ate our breakfast, talked to Shannon Earhart –the club president to fill her in- wrote this note- and it’s time to drop dogs……….Randy on the inside with one hand and me on the outside with the octopus………