We are victorious!!!!!!

 This is the bane of my existence finally brought to justice!!!!!!   My "bucket of water trap" was not getting it so we bought some brand spankin' new mouse traps and voila!!!!!!!  What I didn't know is that not only did we have a shrew problem.............but we also had mice visitors in the house!!!!  So we got 2 of them!!!!!  Now at least I don't have to be looking out of the corner of my eye at all times waiting to be surprised by that furry little critter!!!!!

The Christmas lights are up in Newberry again!!!

Zoom in on the picture to see some of God's beautiful artwork..................

Angry November day on Superior!

A very old cemetery out in the woods by Whitefish Point

The falls near Grand Marais

Beautiful October colors

We made a whirlwind trip back to Hesperia yesterday to take the 3 puppies to our friend Dee to take care of for the winter!!!!  Left at 5:15 am and got back home at Deer Park 5:30pm !!!  That included 2 McDonalds stops and several gas stations and picking up numerous things at out downstate house that we had forgotten!!!  It was pretty good weather and light traffic so we made good time!

Today we are going to train one group and not sure how far we will go - Randy found some dogs that will need to be booted to protect their feet from the icy mud puddles.  We did also bring back with us another sump pump (after the one we had up here took a dump) so we can get rid of some of these "lakes" the dogs have to go through on the trail and then freeze up over night so they break through the ice every time the run through them.

This morning they are opening up for entries for the Copper Dog 25 (a 13 mile race in February in the UP) and think we will enter.  So far our race season looks like 1). Tahquamenon 41 miles 2). Wyoming Stage Stop 35 miles a day for a week 3). Northern Pines in Wisconsin = I think 14 miles? 4).  Copper Dog and then maybe Laconia or who else knows where.............   A HUGE change in venues for us compared to our usual Quebec season!!!!!

Blessed Thanksgiving to you all!!!

Had a wonderful dinner at the Browns today - the rest of the day was spent getting ready to go down to our home in lower Michigan to take the puppies down to Dee for the rest of the season - after we had them dig out of their pen and then had to tie them up we figured now was a good time to do it - the big dogs need a bit of a break - we had gotten up to 20+ miles but were beginning to see some sore feet from the ground being frozen so it seemed like a good time to have a break - 2 days off will give everyone a time to rest up!!!!

The weather has been cool enough to train but we have still had to train only one team a day because we are limited as to how long we can be in the woods (11 to 2) and it takes us about two hours to train one team.  A little bit of snow until today when it was 41 degrees and it all melted - this week it should snow for us on Wednesday and Thursday so maybe we will have enough for our grandkids to run on the sled with a dog when they come up to see us next weekend - Luke and Erica and the kids are coming Thursday and it will be the first time half of that family has seen us train dogs - going to take in some of the local attractions like Tahquamenon Falls and just spend some time together!!!

Not much else going on around here except that I still have the "monster mouse" sneaking around the house trying to scare me!!!  The other nite I heard it in the bedroom and stood up on the bed and woke Randy up when I turned the light on and , yup, I saw it twice till it ran out into the living room!!!!  We keep finding the mouse poison blocks in our shoes so we know it is still around!!!!  I even set up the supposedly best trap.............a bucket of water with a round rod across the top, with a tin can open on both ends so that you put peanut butter on the can and when the critter steps onto the can to eat the peanut butter, the can rolls, and the critter drops into the bucket!!!!!  It's been 24 hours and it still is moving poison blocks around into shoes and boots!!!!!

 

It's like back to summer!!!!

Today as we traveled 2.5 hours to Marquette for a doctor appointment we saw lots of postings for 48 degrees!!!!  Not exactly the temperature we would like but since we weren't training today it felt kind of good!  It also worked out that we weren't out in the woods today either since it is deer season and all our trails go through state land - have only seen one deer hunter so far and that was just his truck, not him in person.....

a3 days ago we got a couple of inches of snow and it would have been nice to have it stay around but it's all gone today- instead we have all the big puddles back again!!!!  Some are chest deep on the dogs!!  Thankfully all of our 18 dogs go through the water fine!  tomorrow it will be a high of 39 and pretty much colder than that going forward.  We actually changed our training schedule because of hunting season and a bit because of the weather - so we are training only one team every day - mostly it's because we are not supposed to run the 4 wheeler in the state land from 11am to 2pm - yesterday we went 19 miles so we are on good schedule to be ready for the first race, which is up the road from us about 3 miles.  Randy will enter in the 10 dog this year and will go 41 miles-  so by January 9th we want to be going about 35 miles or so - this is longer than we have ever trained but it is to be prepared for going to the Wyoming Stage Race at the end of January which is 7 races of 35 miles in 8 days!  

When we got home today the 3 pups were in a coop attached to the pole barn where we live - they had dug out of the big pen they were in = and it was for the last time!!!!  Our neighbor, Jan, who is in her 80's found them in her yard twice and coaxed them back here using a dog biscuit!!!!!  She put them in the big pen the first time but when they dug out again she put them in a small dog run by the pole barn.  

In talking to Jan after we got home today I found out that we are having Thanksgiving at the same neighbors that we have the last 3 years - at Patty and Ray Brown's - only 6 this year though - trying to keep the numbers down.  The only thing good about Whitmer's most recent lockdown is that we aren't spending any money on eating out!!!  We did go out for a "get one in before you can't" pizza dinner on Tuesday but appears like that will be it for awhile- so it's nice to have Thanksgiving with the neighbors to look forward to!  We also got in a "take your priest out to dinner" last Saturday nite - so that was good - we may not be able to do that with him another time this year....

That's about it for now - time to start pretty up Christmas decorations soon!!! (or as Randy says maybe you could start taking the Halloween decorations down!!!!!)

Training again after 5 days off!!!

 We are just now taking a break before we run the second team - it started raining again and we were a bit wet so thought it was a good idea to have lunch and dry off and warmup!  It's 37 degrees right now and not supposed to get any warmer today - so we will be back in our current training schedule of every other day - we went 12 miles today and perhaps in 2 days we will up it another couple of miles!

We got a few things done while the weather was warm - it took me all day to clean both of the trucks (vacuum, wash floor mats, clean out debris...........) and I still didn't get to tidying up the back of the dog trailer - we have a ton of stuff on top of the dog coops that just sits there and occasionally jumps off the coop when we go over a bump and it really needs organizing!!!!  a good us of my old wine boxes!!!!!!!!!!

We took the 2 4-month old pups for a run yesterday for the first time behind the 4 wheeler!!!  We have never done that before cause we didn't ever really have a good place at home but here there are tons of trails that are "relatively smooth"  (Randy was pretty worried he was going to bounce me off the back of the 4 wheeler!!).  We had no idea how fast they could run but they kept right up with us at 18mph!!!!!!

Uh oh...........the lights just flickered!  Usually means we are going to lose power!!  Got to finish dishes and get enough water stored to flush the toilet!!! Talk to you soon!!!☂

new start for 2020/2021 Season!!!

Here we are 2020 fall training season!!  Up in the UP at the same place as the last 3 years!  North of Newberry 25 miles and only 1 mile + to Lake superior

Training was doing very good up until the last 4 days when it got too warm (over 50 degrees) to run the dogs!!!  Beautiful weather for humans but not so much for dogs!!!!  Tommorrow will finally be cool enough but it will like be raining.

The big excitement today was seeing an animal walk in front of out sliding glass door and was something neither of us had ever seen -a pine martin!!!  didn't get a picture of it but will try to post!!!