I forgot to tell you yesterday......

We had a full house yesterday~! just about to start breakfast and Mike Stit and his son Scooter stopped in to see us - they had come down from Willow to get bread at the outlet store that they feed to the cows and pigs - and thought they might find us here -they had had their junior 100 mile sled dog race last weekend and Mike and Chris are primarily responsible for it - it came off without too many problems -

Then while they were here in the "house" Becky Voris stopped by to visit - she didin't know when we were planning to leave for Fairbanks and didn't want to miss talking to us- so the "house" was reallllly full!!

After breakfast (at almost noon...) and dropping dogs we decided not to train - so we took advantage of Debbie Baines' offer to come and shower and wash clothes - she lives on the southern edge of town and it used to be undeveloped 30 years ago but now there is a housing development for her western view....... she has 1.5 acres and has 15 or so sled dogs, 6 horses, goats, sheep and chickens - 2 of the chickens were in the house and the one that was 2 months old was crowing almost constantly! She has a "learning day care" - that's the only easy way I can describe it - she had parents bring all ages of kids to the house/farm for varying periods of time and has an abundance of activities that the children can do - she is working on formalizing curricula for several topics including sled dog training, horsemanship, gathering wool and making wool bracelets, making cheese and ice cream, and much more. It works well for parents that are home schooling to be able to expose their "city kids" to some country-type activities especially when they are being home schooled.

She also had 2 friends stop by, Diane I think Ray....they are retired school bus drivers and have had a business after that of moving and setting up mobile homes - they were very busy during the period of time the pipeline was being built - up until the last 2 years when the economy has been bad, they were transporting motor homes and trailer up from Elkhart IN and some other places in the lower 48 - they had some harrowing stories to tell about breaking down on the mountain passes!

After a stop to Sam' Club and getting hot water from the Jiffy Lube across the street (all thanks to Pam Schamber and her car making it sooooooo much easier than dragging the food mixing barrel with 10 gallons of water in it across 4 lanes of busy traffic!) and we were both in to nurse our colds (I did catch one from Randy.....) for the nite.

This morning up at the crack of 9am to the sounds of the junior mushers getting ready for the Junior World Championship - 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 dog classes for 3 days! So after they are done using the track we will train a group of 18!

We still have a few dogs that we don't know whether it is in their heads or their bodies that they can't go the distance they were going before - we talked to Michael Tetzner yesterday and he gave us the name of a vet chiropractor he has used successfully in the past - we may try it if we can' figure out what the deal is with Dina and Snapper - they both should be great dogs in Randy's team -

We have heard lots of "moose scare stories" lately - the heavy snow is driving more than normal of them into the city = some of the lady mushers waited 1/2 hour on the trail for one of them to move day before yesterday, finally having to call someone to come and scare them away with the snowmobile! John Bunderson, form ID was here to visit yesterday and they said they had one in the parkinglot of their hotel and were even throwing snowballs at it to try and scare it!!!! No close encounters here yet!!