DeKuiper Racing: May God Bless you all in this New Year 2019!!!

Take stock of all your good fortune – family friends and good health!!!

Well the holidays are over went to Carol and John’s along with another couple and Jan Shaw for an appetizer party and then out dancing at the American Legion in Newberry on New Year’s Eve) and it’s back to the regular routine of training everyday – 18 dogs one day and then a team of 3 the opposite days (to get the injured dog, Vinnie, back into shape – he has run 4 miles twice and still is not limping after the time off and the laser treatments!) Tomorrow we are going to try the sled on our groomed trails on this side – running them so that we miss the difficult triangle turn and only using 6 dogs in each team – it will be more work but hopefully they will gain some speed not using the snow machine to train!

They cancelled the Tahquamenon race that was supposed to be this weekend (the warm weekend and traffic ran the trail down to ice on many parts and it would not have been safe for dogs or people!) and now we are waiting to hear if the Kalkaska race is going to get enough snow for the next weekend – it will almost take a miracle because they don’t have any snow right now!!! The next weekend after that is supposed to be in Quebe and they don’t have snow there right now either!!! What a deal – Randy might have the best team he has had in 10 or 15 years and have hardly any races!!!

Tonight we went to a restaurant/inn that I have wanted to go to since I heard it advertised on the radio, Chamberlin’s Ole Forest Inn – an old lake front inn with 2 floors of rooms right out of the 1920’s!!! Lots of wood and the fireplace and view of Manistique Lake. We met the owner, Bud, while he was putting wood in the fireplace and he let me go upstairs and look in all of the rooms where the door was open and unoccupied – beautiful!!! Reminded me of the rooms that were in the movie “Somewhere in Time” that was supposed to be at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in the early century!

We didn’t use the sled today because we wanted to be sure they would take the turns well as they are not what they are used to – they did fine so the next time will be with the sleds.

We found out from Jan Shaw today that the Kalkaska race is cancelled and re-scheduled for the end of February. We also called out friend Dave Hochman in Manitoba near Winnipeg and they have 1 foot of snow yet and have a race the 3^rdweekend in January – depending on whether there is a race in Quebec we may go up there to race the first time this year!

Tomorrow is supposed to be training the injured dog, Vinnie but right now we are getting some rain – hope it doesn’t last very long and we lose snow or it ices up!!!!