Hard to find good Handlers these days.

That is what I hear from other mushers, but we are lucky enough to have had some great help this fall. Thanks to the generous help from Uli Stroetz, Thomas Robertson and Sterling Strathe. It has been a hectic fall and the help we have received from these hard working guys has been a real asset to team squid. Thanks so much.

Uli Stroetz is from Germany and is an intern for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, doing Forestry work. He came to Fairbanks with a goal of seeing real sled dog team and has been running teams with us all fall. He has learned all the fun things that go with running dogs. like bouncing around for hours on a 4 wheeler, scooping poop, walking pups, and organizing poop covered booties. I think he likes riding the sled best.

Thomas Robertson, has been helping out in the shop and with dogs when needed. He has handled for several Iditarod mushers, so we can let him loose with the dogs, but he also has been a big help prepping parts for sleds in the shop. Thomas will be testing some new sled designs this spring that we are working on with his own dogs, so check out his sled if you see him on the trail.

Papa Sterling hung up his spurs and auctioneer outfit for 2 weeks to come help as a handler and sled builder in the shop. He went for a training run his seond day here in the White mountains. We took two teams and the snowmachine out. I ran the race team out to Crowberry and then back to Moose creek to rest. Paige and Dad went straight to moose creek cabin with the yearlings and snowmachine. We had an exciting night of cutting firewood at midnight in order to get the cabin warm as it was -35 and windy.

The next morning Paige left with the race team for a long run and dad and I packed up and headed to the road. Dad experienced one of the natural wonders of living in fairbanks... frosty eyelashes and beards... I didn't want to embarass him with his world record snot sickle picture from later in the day. :)

Back at the truck Lance Mackey and the comeback kennel crew were getting ready for a training run, so I introduced dad to Lance. He got to see what it is like when you hook up 4 teams 16 dogs long of the worlds best distance dogs..... lots and lots of excitement and noise.

The rest of dads trip was spent mostly in the shop, prepping sleds parts and assembling sleds. Dad took over the shop and home responsibilities so that Paige and I could do some longer training runs.. Thanks Again to for all the help!

So race time is fast approaching. We are currently training 13 dogs for the race team. We had a couple dogs we had to drop from the longer runs. Cholula was experiencing some soreness for a while and is now running again with the yearlings. Poncho, had some funny neck spasms, but is back running with the yearlings and Lucy has a bad cough and is undergoing treatment and laying on the couch.. Cody is currently planning to run the Copper Basin 300 on January 8th as long as all dogs are happy and healthy. It is a 12 dog race, so if any more dogs have injuries, it may not happen, but we are optimistic and taking it easy on the dogs. Paige is signed up for the Yukon Quest 300 in February which starts in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. We will also likely do some spring races so that we can get the yearlings through a race or two before next year... There might be a team in the 1000 mile Yukon Quest and the Kobuk 440 next year, so we want to expose them to as much as possible, but we'll see what happens. We'll keep you posted on the copper basin 300 and have updates here during the next two races.

Follow Squid Acres Teams while on the Trail with SPOT

Dad got us a SPOT tracker for christmas so we can keep track of each other on the long training runs we are doing solo. You can also follow along with the training runs, camping trips and spring expeditions by going to the following page. http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0YTXLnDPoJ0q6eDjMu6ABA8LrkbzpB3QN

Winter is a coming fast..

Winter is finally upon us. Snow is slowly starting to accumulate and we are itching to get off the bumpy, noisey 4 wheeler and onto a smooth, quiet, peaceful ride. The big dogs are looking good, super strong and ecstatic to be out there. The following is a little video from our training run yesterday.

Today with help from our part-time helper Uli, we will start running a larger team 14 - 16 dogs and rotate them around so that each dog runs 2 days and get one day off. It will be great to try out a bunch of new leader combinations. Be sure to check back in December and see what races we have signed up for. These dogs are going to rock this winter.

Pups are doing great. The oldest pups from Lucy and Ruger are more like dogs now and are enjoying romps in the free run pen. Kanuti and Coldfoot are loving the dogwheel and are really opening up like races horses at the kentucky derby. Unfortunately for us, these two are going to Aaron soon, but they are all awesome, so we can't lose. Here is a picture of them trying on their future wardrobe of harnesses.

The medium pups (the mustelids), Fisher, Marten and Sable are free most of the time and help us with all our daily duties and hang in the house most nights with us. They are fitting right in here and they are going to be superstars for sure.

The smallest pups have just started to get out of their house and show some personality. We finally sprung some names on these guys this week and being that I sometimes pretend to be an archaeologist, Paige decided to let me classify the pups after different archeaological traditions from the arctic. We have Ipiutak or "Ippy", Thule, Denbigh, Choris, and Norton. These are all hearty groups of people that knew how to survive in a harsh arctic land so hopefully the pups will live up to their names. Some even used the ancestors of these dogs for travel.

Thanks for checking in.. For family this is the time of the year where you might not be able to find us besides on here... we only come inside to eat and sleep and when we do, there are usually between 3 and 8 dogs in the house with us...

hang in there, i am new at this

So cody usually posts the blogs but since I am somewhat laid up due to a recent back surgery, I have taken on the blog role. However, the last post posted before I put all of the puppy pictures up so here are some more for your viewing pleasure. Here she is at 4 days old compared to her sibling on the same day. Holy canoli batman! She is tiny.

Here is a super dark picture of her tiny self next to her huge brother! His head is almost bigger than her whole body. If you can think of a good name for this pint size creature, let us know!

Well Labor day proved to be very laborious here at squid acres this year. The long awaited puppy babies arrived on labor day with a great job laboring them by Stumpy:) There are three girls and two boys in this litter. One of the girls is super tiny but is full of life so we are sure she will catch up to the others in no time. In the first photo, she is the small brown one next to the big brown one.

One monster hamster wheel

Susie and Don helped us get the dog wheel all finished up today. Yogi, our team mascot black lab was happy to walk on it as long as we gave her a treat every so many seconds. Bleeker needs a little more work and the pups are getting on it and getting the hang of it, I'm sure they'll all be up and running in a week or two. Here is a video of Yogi showing how the wheel works.

Leader gone Frisbee dog

Bleeker, the up and coming all star leader is also an amazing frisbee dog. He catches it every time that I can throw it properly. He goes long and he even knows how to read the wind.. what a dog.. here is a little frisbee video.

Paige's parents are visiting, so we sent Don out on the 4 wheeler with Paige this morning.. he got to see what fall training is all about.

You stay classy San Diego...