Day one at Nicolet

Nothing like racing dogs in Florida weather……………I just put the dogs away from the race and it was 60 degrees in the back of the trailer!!!!!!  It was cool last nite when we got here and snowed a little, not nearly what they could have used on the trail and in the parking lot!!!!  The parking lot was plowed down to the grass (probably thought someone could get stuck) and today it would be good to have a mud run instead of a dog race!!  It was 35 degrees when Randy left for the unlimited race------which had been downgraded to a 10 dog, 8.5 mile race-------a little disappointing for all the drivers that have been expecting 14 and 16 mile trails.  He had put some dogs in the 6 dog race so he knew the trail was going to be a “slush fest” – (the dog he was told was a leader wouldn’t lead very good for the first 2 miles and it was only a 4 mile trail………..so he came in 28^th  out of 39…………).  He was having a very good run until he came to the place where there was head-on passing – which is not a problem for our leaders……….but it was for the 10 dog malamute team that ran across the trail while passing ours and started fighting with our dogs………oh boy……..not a good thing – Randy had to stop and hook down four times to have the dogs try and get untangled but they were still a bit tangled by the time he finished so he lost quite a bit of time and came in 11^th out of 22 teams entered.  Without the trouble he easily could have placed 4^th again – so try, try again tomorrow!!!!!  The malamute team that wrecked the race for us was disqualified, not for fighting but for taking too long to finish the trail – so nobody else will have to deal with them tomorrow but that doesn’t help our time for today!  All in all, I think we are pretty happy with how tough our dogs are – they ran really good considering the conditions being slushy!  Hopefully we will move up several places tomorrow – assuming they don’t cancel the race for the second day – but it looks like it will go right now!