And a wonderful dinner was had by all!!!!

We went down to the neighbors (Ray and Patty Brown) for dinner today and enjoyed it immensely!!  We had thought about training but it had thawed and then refrozen overbite enough to make the trail dangerous for dog foot injuries so instead Randy went out and dragged 28 miles of trails so it would be good to train tomorrow - as we came back from dinner tonite it looked like we had gotten about 2 inches of new snow which will help a lot towards making the trail safe again!!!!  Again God Bless you all and remember to count those that you have been given!!! 

Back to the UP!!

Time flies by so fast and here we are already back up in Deer Park/Newberry to train dogs again!!

We were happy to have our son Luke and his family come to visit and do some dirt biking and 4 wheeling the first week we were in at the end of September and had a great visit to Oswalds Bear Ranch just down the road from us 15 miles!

What should have been a great ending to the week they were here visiting ended up with me getting a groin pull getting on the 4 wheeler that was bad enough that I went into the ER in Newberry to be sure I had not fractured my pelvis - not to worry but just soft tissue injury but painful!!!! Enough that Randy had to put me in a chair and push me into the bathroom!!! and then we ended up getting a walker from Jan Shaw that was her mother's!!!  Nothing like an injury to make to count you blessings!!!  Randy was an excellent "nurse" and even cooked and served me meals (along with the generous neighbors who stepped "up to the plate"!!!

I wasn't much help for the first several weeks of training our 18 dogs but have eased into harnessing and un-harnessing the dogs that are not berserk so have been able to support Randy over the last 3 weeks or so - I started out riding the 4 wheeler side=saddle so as to avoid further injury (cause I really need to be able to handle dogs full time starting in January!!!) but now am able to ride pretty much normal!!!

As of this writing we are up to 21.5 miles (we are entered in the Wyoming Stage Race again and need to prepare them to go 30-35 miles a day for 7 days!) and everyone is looking good!!  We have spent a few days out trimming trees and brush from the trail and until today when it got to be 46 degrees outside we had a good 6 inches of snow on the trails - who knows if we will be able to keep the base that we have already packed/dragged with the weather coming up!  It wouldn't be the "Cris and Randy Show" unless we had had some problems..............so..........the first issue we had (after me injuring me) going out 8 miles on the trails training only to have the 4 wheeler start coughing and wheezing cause - you guessed it- we ran out of gas!!  So a great muscle building experience pulling us and the 4 wheeler back home!!!

Another day we were stopped to rest the dogs on the training run and the front 6 dogs took off by themselves!!!  (we are training 9 dog teams every other day)  The cable main line had frazzled and broken!!  We tried to catch up with them (what is faster than 6 sled dogs that suddenly find that aren't pulling anything???!!!!!) so Randy unhooked the 3 at wheel and in front and took off to chase the 6 leaving me with 3 standing in the middle of the trail!!!  (Thankfully they were pretty cooperative and didn't yank me around and re-injure me!!!)  He had to go 28 mph to catch the 6 dogs but he did it and sure enough showed back up with them hooked back on the 4 wheeler ready to repair the break and hook back in the 3 I had been holding (I was a little nervous about how they would react when they saw Randy and the 6 coming back towards us with the 4 wheeler but they remained amazingly calm!!!)

So that has been the excitement so far............more to come I'm sure!!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving dinner with all the neighborhood in Deer Park!!!  I'm bringing pink stuff and Polish roses!!!