Part 1 Presentation at Besser Musuem Sled Dogs Snow Dogs Siberian Huskies

Well first, if you don't mind, Jess, if you want to introduce your dogs. I'm sure the kids are curious about their names and how old they are. This is Shelby. She is three and a half years old. And then this... This is Shiloh and she's nine years old. She's probably as old as some of you guys. I thought she was a puppy when I saw her coming down the stairs. She is nine years old. So how come a three-year-old is just bigger than a nine-year-old? That's about the size she grew to be. They come in all different sizes. Just like kids. Just like kids. Some people are tall, some people are short. I have a question. Hunter, what's your question? Have you ever entered the Iditarod? Okay, now, that's a good question and we're going to talk about that because some kids probably don't even know. So Dan can talk a little bit about... And if you don't mind, I'll pull this here out a little bit. Is there a special name for this or is it just a sled? Sprint sled. It's a sprint sled. But what's special about this sprint sled is that Dan, with his dad's help, built this all by himself. So he would have built the sled, the runners. These are called runners, right? And the seat, which is like... Boy, you got stuff in there. But underneath here is a seat that you can sit on and carry stuff. And then there's special pads back here that he stands on when he hooks the dogs up. So how old were you when you started building and racing? I was 14 when I started. Which is like about 8th grade, isn't it? 8th grade, junior high school. And how many dogs do you have? Right now I have 9 dogs. How hard is it to take care of 9 dogs and what do you have to do? To take care of the dogs, you have to make sure they're fed properly, watered properly. So every week, that's about a 50-pound bag of dog food. And every day you have to scoop their poo. Oh! At least he can see it. And I like how Aaron Graves turned me into that joke. Were the babies, were the dogs, like, did you guys adopt the dogs from an animal shelter or did you get them from a litter? Four of the dogs I bought already trained when they were adults. And then four were puppies. And one, a non-racing dog that I have. It's just a pet and I got to have the puppy also. So you had to then train those puppies all by yourself and learn how to train them not just to be good dogs, but to be raced dogs. And is there a difference between training a dog to be a good puppy? Now, how many of you have trained or gotten a puppy in your family and have had to train it? Okay. It's hard work with the body training and the feeding. So you were training how many? Four puppies? Four puppies. So what kind of special training goes into for the sled dog? When they were about six months old, I got them harness broke by putting the harness on them. And they just walk around and get used to it. And then after they're good with the harness, I hook the rope up to the back of the harness and put a tire on it. You have to drag the tire around so they get used to pulling. And then this winter I hooked them up with the sled and they ran the first time. So this was the first time you raced your puppy team. How old are your puppies then now? Right now they're two and a half. So two and a half. Is there a certain age that they have to be? Is it Sydney and Shiloh? Shiloh and Shelby. How old is Shelby? Shelby's three. So three years old, is this her first time for racing sleds? Or have you hooked her up? They started last year. So two. Yep, she was two. So is two like the average age to start dogs? I should have started my pups earlier, but that's just the way. I think a lot of it depends on the dog itself too. Shelby started biking with me when she was six months old. We would go for little short runs just on the bike when she was six months old. Shiloh didn't start. We didn't even know about any of that until she was four. Okay, and she's nine now? She's nine, yep. And now is this a new sled for you that you have, Joss? Yeah, this sled I bought last year. How many years have you been racing? I haven't ever actually entered a race. Maybe this year. Because I only have two dogs. And you can kind of see my sled's a lot smaller than Dan's nice sled. Is there a different name for yours? This is a Canadian kick sled. So a kick sled and a sprint racing sled. This sled is much stiffer than Dan's sled. When you stand on it, my sled does not move. They're his flexes. So he can go around corners. I kind of can't. Is it a kick sled because you kind of kick along? Yes, yes. Help the dogs since you only have two dogs? Yes, yes. And that's pretty much the idea behind it is to be able to, you know, kick your feet, help the dogs because I only have two. And I only have one that really likes to pull. The other one just kind of runs. How long can they go for? Like when you're out on a trail? My two dogs, just the two of them with this sled and me, two miles. That's about it. They're done after two miles. That's where a lot of the training comes in to get them used to that longer run. Yeah, and yours probably go longer. Yeah, for Dan, beginning of the season, I start out running them two miles. Then at the end of the season, we get up to four and a half, five. The farthest they've gone is six and a half at one run. Is it really hard to get them used to pulling a lot of heavy weights? Like first you started with a tire. Did you do anything heavier and heavier? Like get to heavier stages or no? No, we just have them pull the tire for much longer distances. And then we use the sled. And we have them work easily in the sled and that. Do you follow them? Or are they trained not to go that far? When they have the tire on? Yeah. When they have the tire on, I have the leash on them and I just walk beside them and give them praise so that they want to run. They have to have treats in their hand, too, and stuff. Are we going to be able to pet them when we're all done with this? Yeah, probably. Dogs play shy. Now there's, which Jess, you can talk a little bit, just helps out at the Humane Society a lot, too. And, you know, you have to be careful, like Matt, to go up to dogs. You can never, ever, ever touch somebody's dog without asking them first. And ask your parents if it's okay to touch that person's dog because you just never know. They might look nice and friendly, but you just never know. Some dogs have never seen little kids before. You never know how they're going to act. Don't you have to hold your hand if they sniff it and wag their tail? They'll most likely let you pet them? Yeah, most likely. And it's usually best when you go to pet a dog. A lot of people, I mean, these dogs are used to it. A lot of people, when they go to pet a dog, they try to pet on their head. When you first meet a dog, it's best if you kind of pet them on the side so they don't feel like you're trying to grab a hold of them. I mean, after time, they know that you're not going to hurt them. But a lot of times when you first meet a dog, it's better to pet them on their side or scratch underneath their chin, like they like it. Now, can you tell us a little bit, because I know Hunter asked about the Iditarod, which is you said you run your dogs 6 miles. So how many miles is the Iditarod? And tell us, how many of you raised your hand? I think I asked you already. 1,500 miles. 1,500 miles to raise dogs or run dogs on the Iditarod. So tell us about this, because obviously Hunter is the only one that knows. We learned about it like 3 years ago when we were out of school. We even read this one book. It's called Stone Fox. It's about this one kid. I forgot his name. He enters the Iditarod for $50. The winning prize is $500. And, well, there's this other guy who had a bunch of white huskies, and at the very end, his dog died, and he let him win when he had, like, he had one dog and the other musher had, like, 9 or 10. Well, you know what? I am glad you know a lot about this, but I'm going to ask Dan, because you said another word that I bet you that we don't know, which is musher. So tell us the history and how the Iditarod started, and you and Jeff can take turns and educate the rest of us. Do you know all of that? People work on it. I know about mushers. When it comes to dogs and racing, there's different types of racing. Running the dogs, you can do. You can do recreational. Yep, which is what I do. And you can do sprint racing, which is what I do. And that's just short distances, and most of the time it's for fun. You can also get into long-distance, which is called mid-distance racing, where you're going days, a couple days running. And sprint racing is generally time-based. It's not necessarily who's out in front. It's who does it from point A to point B in the fastest amount of time. That's why I do short distances. But if you're out for a couple days, are you sleeping out in the woods? Some of the races, a lot of the races, even I think the Iditarod has checkpoints and things like that where they can go in and get warmed up and bed down their dogs and things like that. Most people don't just, unless they have injured dogs, even then they still try to make it to a checkpoint. They put the dogs in the bag and try to make it to the checkpoint to rest because you don't really want to just be out there in the middle of nowhere. In the Iditarod, would they have extra dogs that might switch off? Or it's the same dogs the whole race? And if one of your dogs gets injured, you can stop at the checkpoint and you can drop the dogs at the checkpoint. The bag on the bigger sled is actually required in case if one of your dogs does get hurt, you can put them in the bag. Because they don't want you to run an injured dog, right? Like with sprint racing, your sled bag has to be big enough to carry your largest dog. Because if they get hurt, how are you going to get them back? You've got to be able to put them on your sled and take them back. Are they trained to just stay in there? Actually, they're surprisingly good in small areas. They really like the confined area. And you can zip them up. Oh yeah, you clip the collar right there. That's a good idea. I don't know all that much about the Iditarod, actually. Well, you know how it started with the medicine, right? Yup, yup. That was in 1925. They had to run from the city that's in the middle part of Alaska all the way to Nome. And the reason why they had to do this was because there was a really bad storm. And they couldn't get trains out. They couldn't get planes. And there was a lot of sick people that needed medicine real bad. And they had no other way to get it there. The planes couldn't fly in the storm. The trains couldn't go in the storm. So their only hope to save all these people, lots of children were sick, was the dogs. They had to load the medicine on the sleds. And it was 1,400 miles, 1,500 miles. You had to take the medicine. Has anyone ever heard of the dog Balto? Yes, I have. Balto was the lead dog that brought the sled carrying the medicine into Nome. And without a strong, brave dog like Balto, the medicine would not have gotten there. Balto was a real dog, not just a movie dog. Now, Alaska is cold with lots of snow, and it gets below zero. So what makes the Huskies, well, Husky Malamute, but what makes them good sled dogs? This. You look at their fur. They have a double fur coat. They have these nice guard hairs, the longer hairs you see on the outside of their coat. Keeps the snow off of them. When it snows, like when my dogs are outside and it snows, the snow will just sit on top of them. And then this, this is just like when you wear a jacket. This is their jacket. All this dense fur. See, you can't even see their skin underneath all that. That's what keeps them warm, keeps them insulated. And is there something special like that about their paws, too, or something, or no? With the pads or not really? They do have a big ball of fur underneath their feet. Because their paws are slightly webbed, and snow can get packed in their webs, which makes them good for traction, but that snow that gets packed in there can freeze. And it really, a lot of, most mushers will run their dogs with booties to prevent the snow from packing in there. But they do have an extra ball of fur right in the center of their paws. And those are your little boots that you put on your... Boots. They don't like it at first, but they get used to it. They get used to it. But Kayla has a question for you. Mom, how do you hook them up? Do you want to show them that now? Well, if you want to wait, yeah, because we're going to rotate. We're going to have some different activities. And then they're going to talk to you all about the commands, because they have to learn. And the equipment. And a lot of stuff you have to know. What's that little basket with the hook in it? This is the snow hook, and I'll talk more about that in a minute. Did you want to share anything more with that? And then we'll watch your video, too. I have some information about the Adidaraad. And as I said, they started it because of the CERN wanted to get the medicine to Nome. And every year since then, they've had a race to talk so people remember about what happened. And they started running the race in 1973. And it takes about 20 days to get all the teams into Nome. That's a long time. And in each team there is about 16 dogs that run the entire race. Can you imagine that, trying to have 16 dogs stay in one line? So they would hook 16 dogs up to the sled? I thought maybe if they pulled into one of the break stations or whatever, they'd swap dogs out. But the same dog started to run the whole 1,500 miles? Yes. 1,500 miles. What if one dog can't run anymore? Not that it's hurt, but it's tired and it just chooses to stop. For the race at the Adidaraad, they have an organization called the Adidaraad Air Force. And it's a group of pilots that are at each checkpoint. And if there's an injured dog or a dog that just cannot run anymore, they're flown back to Anchorage. Where they stay with a group of people that take care of them. Until the musher is done with the race, they go back and pick up their dog. Now who is the musher? You keep saying the musher. The musher... I also saw the name and I said mush. You're very obliterate. The mushers are the person who stands on the sled and drives their team. It's hard work. It's very hard work. Even as a recreational sport, it's hard work. Some people just think you stand there and do this. We get that a lot. We're out on the trail and they go, that's not work. And it's like, yeah, we're right, try it. What's your question? When you have a dog sled race, are there like some reins you hold on to control your dogs? While you're hooking them up to the sled? No. During the race, are there some reins? They're hooked right up to the sled. That would be their reins. And we're going to talk about that in a little bit and show you guys how the dogs get attached to the sleds and the different commands. Would you guys like to see some dogs run? Yeah. A video. Okay. Does anyone know what the commands are? Is it one, yeah? Like, yeah? Hike. They hike to get them going. Does anyone know the commands? Pause to the left. How do they know this? A lot of training. Body training, online research and... The best way to train them is have a trail that you follow. So every time you turn left, you say, ha. And every time you turn right... When you train, you want to start off with one command. When they know that, move to the next one. If you have two dogs, do you put them in the front or do you put them right there so that you kind of put that on the sled behind them? I think they're already connected. Or do you put this in the front and put all that on there? We'll explain that right now. Did that work? Yeah. Nope. He just needs some company. Yeah. I think he's got enough. Are you ready, guys? Yeah. We're going to first go over the parts of the sled. And this whole thing is a sled. And Jessica on her sled doesn't have one. But this is called the brush bow. Brush bow. This is so if you hit a tree, you kind of don't... Hit? Yeah. Mine is actually made out of the same material that the blenders are made out of. Because I had a wooden brush bow made out of ash wood. And I hit a tree and shattered the front of my sled. So this is the brush bow.