Part 2 Presentation at Besser Musuem Sled Dogs Snow Dogs Siberian Huskies

This is the basket of the sled, which is this part, see, and Jess's. And you can have a full basket, which is all these sleds going all the way to the front. But this is called a, same with Jess, a half basket sled. So it's lighter for the dogs to pull. And then, what this is here, this is called your sled bag. This is so you can carry your mandatory equipment, and so if you have an injured dog. Some people can also go in the bag, too. Yep, sometimes if people give rides. And then this is called your driving bow. And Jess does this. Platforms, curb, and then this, I can't really see it that well, but this is called the runner. And it's pretty much plastic. And then, so it glides down the snow. You can kind of see these are the same. Oh, yours goes all the way down. His go all the way down, too. He's got guards on them so they don't get scratched. And then these, this black part is called the foot pad. And so you have grip so you don't fall off your sled. See, and that's another difference between his sled and my sled. I don't have the foot pads on my sled. So it's a lot easier to fall off of, or slip. I need some of those. Black ice. There we go. And there's, on my sled I have two different types of brakes. This is called the bar brake. And I just push the arm out, and it stops. It leaves the taps to stop. It'll dig into the ground. Dig into the ground, yep. Do you have one of those? I have a small little brake on mine. A claw brake. This is just a claw brake. Because I usually don't, those sleds are designed for many more dogs. Yeah. This usually works for stopping one or two. Yeah. Usually. And then this is called the drag mat, which is a type of brake itself. When you're going down hills, you can step on it, either like this, or with your foot still on the runner, but on the mat. When you're going down hills and you try to get your foot up to this brake, two things could happen. Either you could hit a rut and stop, or you could lose your balance and flip the sled. So when you have your foot still on the runner hitting the mat, you still slow down. Kind of just slowing the sled down so you don't catch your dogs and run your dogs over. You don't run the sled into the back of your dogs. Has that ever happened to one of you? I don't think I've ever hit my dog with a hoop on. I flipped going down hills though. You flipped going down hills? And then I got a drag mat. And when you're out on the trail, if you have to stop your team, or if you have a tangle or an injured dog they have to put in the basket, there's two different ways you can stop them. This is called a snow hawk. You put it on the ground and then you stomp it into the snow. You need a lot of snow for it to stick. Or else it will just come on loose and you'll keep on going. But if you needed to stop for a long time, this most of the time wouldn't stay for the entire time. So there's also a rope that's connected to the front of your sled where the game line is. And then you hook that to a tree or a post. It's just got two little loops in it. And the handler is used as a quick release. And it'll go pretty good. And when you're ready to go, it's... Pull it right out and it comes on them? Yep. What if it gets stuck on a tree? The way it's made it won't. It'll just go around the tree. And if it does get snagged, will it stop again? If the rope breaks and your hook is stuck and you're pulling it with two hands and your dog went down a hill and you didn't really notice it as fast as they were going and you couldn't stop... Then you're in trouble. Well, if the hook is stuck and that thing is broken and the brakes aren't working... That's why you've always got to check your equipment before you go. Every single time. Check your line, check everything. Well, you could use one of those rigs on there. Yep. Yep, you could. And remember what we said the three rules were? Don't go, don't go, don't go. And if you were going down the trail and it seemed like you were going to tip with my sled and probably with Jess's too if you can get it up and if you're about to tip you just have to smack it back down. Because what I learned out the hard way is that if you go to tip and you just try to press down you're still going to fall. And that's definitely something you don't want to do. This sled definitely has more give than mine, but it's the same thing. If you're up on the side, you don't want to just slowly put your foot on there because you may end up going away. A lot of times you don't even know that you're tipping over until you've lost your balance. Because you're going 20 miles an hour around curves and stuff. And that's actually really fast. That is really fast. Especially in a small area. Everything looks so small in front of you. And the rest is kind of loose. And when you're going on a curve or a turn you want to be able to get it up almost like on your own curve when you're turning. So that you can make those nice sharp turns. Now we can try to hook up a dog to the gang line. Now like Dan had said earlier, part of the training is to get the dogs to put on the harness. Not all dogs are the same. Some dogs are fine with it. Some dogs don't really like it. Try. Is that why you put them in the harness when they're young so they get used to it? Exactly. Do you kind of just keep them in the harness? Like if they've got to go outside, you just kind of attach the lease to it so that they're still used to it? Usually it's kind of like exercising. You're going to work and train at this period of time and then when you're not training, you're not training. So you wouldn't leave it on the whole time. And while they're harnessing the dog, I'm going to talk about the gang line. Does she not like getting that on? Sometimes. If I didn't have a hold of her leash, she would probably try to run away. Is she being a little bit more supportive now? Yep, she's already got hers on. And that just goes over her head and then under both of her arms. So there's a nice padding here for their chest. Yep, exactly. The nice extra padding is good. And then that just gets nice and snug right there. So when I hook my two together on my sled, you hook it right on here. What are the most dogs you've gone with? Me? I've just been done with... Him. Me, I've most have gone with is... Now this here... See what happens when both of these dogs are hooked up? She can go that way if she wants. She can go the other way if she doesn't want to. But if she wanted to, she could. And we'll get into some of the issues that more dogs have. What if there's a tree and they're connected right there and one goes that way and one goes... That's what this is for. It's called a neck line. They stop really quick. So now their heads are hooked together. So one wants to go this way and one wants to go that way. Now they can. The bigger dog gets to go where she wants to go. It's going to pull her. She's the bigger one. She's a cute one. I'm a cute one. I'm cute. I don't put my dog in there. I don't have a bag. I don't go as far as Dan does. If I had to carry... I only go a mile or two, but I'd have to carry my dog. I have to leave the sled and carry the dog. If you have more than one dog, if you have dogs, you have to step on the line before you step over. Always step on the line before you step over. You should actually never cross the line. If you notice, for Jessa's game line, she has this bungee here. When the dogs are pulling, they're going to have a little bit of gear. It smooths the ride out for their musher. It's not so jerky when they take off. When you have a small team like this, your leader is up front. Now we can probably take these girls back off, eh? What are you looking at? There's food in your pocket. What? There's food in your pocket? No. That's what you think. It doesn't feel good. That's probably what she smells. I'm a foolish fox. It's just food. What? When you have a big line like this, it's multiple dogs, so you can double lead, like Jess did for her team. Or, if you have just one dog, you go both of the lines, and they can go. And that position is called lead. That would be your lead dog. The lead dog is usually the smartest one that listens to your commands. The best. The best, yeah. And your back position is called wheel. And you have the tug line. This is called the tug line. And you connect that to the back of the harness. And your wheel dogs are generally the larger dogs. The stronger dogs, so they can turn the sled. And then you have neck lines, which are already connected to your gang line. You hook that on there. Wait. Why don't... Are you going to let her go? Because she's not going to pull that, is she? No. Is there a lock so that, like, in here that she can go? No. Yeah. So the dog in the front is called... The lead dog. And then you have your... Team dog. And then the wheel dog. The wheel dog is... Actually, that's a point dog. That's in the middle. And they have to be able to follow the leaders. So your leaders are your smartest dogs. They have to know the trails. Point dogs, which can work with the leaders. Shouldn't the leader dog be the strongest dog, too? The lead dog isn't pulling as much as the dogs back by the sled. The dogs that are here, that are closest to the sled, they're the ones that really got to get that sled up and going. Because if you put your stronger dogs up front, they would be dragging your rear dogs. They would have the line tight all the time. This way, if you put your strong dogs in the back, they're doing most of the pulling, and then your other dogs can get the speed and get them pullers going fast. The commands to get your dog to start running is hike or let's go. And that's what the musher on the sled says. They say either hike or let's go. That gets the dogs moving. When you come up to a trail where you have to turn right, you say gee. If you want to go left, you say ha. And if you're racing and you come up to another team to let that other team know that you're going to pass, you say trail. And if you want to pass that team, you say to your dogs on by, and that tells them to keep going straight. And that pretty much goes, the on by command, pretty much goes for anything. If the dogs suddenly start looking at a squirrel that's running that way, you just keep on telling them on by, on by, on by, and they're going to be scared. It's like, I know that word. And you just tell them on by, and you want to break their focus from whatever they're being distracted by and keep them focused. And you just tell them on by, and hopefully they keep going. Hopefully. It takes a lot of training to get a dog to know gee, ha, and on by. How long does it take the person to get trained? Probably just as long. I have accidentally said the wrong command, but thankfully the dogs knew the trail, and they took the right trail. And it can happen. So how do you decide which dog goes in which position? It all kind of has to do with training. As you're training your dog, you kind of learn your dog. Shiloh is older. She doesn't really like to pull. She likes to run, but she doesn't like to pull. When my dogs run next to each other, Shelby pretty much does all the pulling. I mean, she's, her leg is tight. Shiloh doesn't run far fast, so she would make a good point dog, which is right behind the leader. She needs that extra little bit of somebody else pulling her to keep her going. She's smart enough to be the lead dog, but I think she wouldn't get past. She'd get run over. Where Shelby, when I started working with Shelby, Shelby, some dogs just take to it. They know they don't run off the trail. They, for some reason, when she's going, she's in run mode, and she doesn't run off the trail, she doesn't run into things. So I get really lucky with her. She's a bigger, stronger dog, so she would be the wheel dog. She would be in the back doing most of the pulling. And yet, she's still small for some. Now you said it takes one person per dog when you're doing races? So you have to have a team of people. When you're at the race, and your dogs are all strung out on a line, they'll put a hook in two things, and then various hooks in the center, and that's where they'll chain their dogs up. Well, when you go from that point to the sled, that's when it's hard, because you've got a free sled, and you're hooking dogs to it. So somebody's got to stay on the sled to stop it and make sure it doesn't go anywhere, while other persons have to hold the dogs so that they can get all tied up. And a lot of times, too, when the dogs get really excited, I don't know if I can get Shelby that excited, but... Shelby, can you hike? Come on, Shelby! Hike! Hike! Hike! A lot of times, you're walking your dogs just like this. I mean, it's not... They're hopping the whole way, because they're pulling you and... They want to go! They want to go real bad! Right? Two-wheeling it! And we have an activity to show you guys what it's like to be the dogs. I'm going to first explain what's going to happen. We're going to have one person on the sled. They're going to be the musher. And then... And then we're going to have six kids in the line. And... What they're going to do is they're going to be standing and holding onto the line. So I have two here to make six a team. And then the kids that are left, we're going to have you stand in the line along here and start clapping. This is what the spectators do at the beginning of the race. And the musher is going to say hike. And then the dogs are going to just walk in place. Okay, so we need two people that think they know the three commands. The hike to go. And then G for... Right. And then ha for left. So we need two people that think they can remember those three commands. I'm thinking of Emily and... Yeah, you two. Okay. Alright ladies. Stand up. We're going to clap and make all kinds of noise. Ready? Alright, start clapping. Whoa! Nice. So you hear a lot of background noise and cars going by and stuff like that. We just had to vlog outside again today. So I got a question from Blue Wolf on Twitter today. And he wanted to know...