Ready to Race!

Today is the day! After work, we are headed to Iron County, Michigan to participate in The IronLine dogsled race. This will be our first chance to race on the snow, and we know the dogs will be pumped to run on something other than dirt.

Training has been going well. The team has done several 20 or 22 mile runs on the Frisco Highline Trail. We have been doing speed work with the dogs while running, and have been working hard on their commands while training. We are looking forward to seeing how this weekend goes, and are hoping for a great experience.

January 20 marked a fun day for us as well. The County Neighbor publication was released and featured a story on our team. Calypso even made the front page.

Last weekend we met up with a few other teams for training to work on passing and socialization. We had a chance to camp out and enjoy the beautiful winter weather.

So - our next post should have a recap of the race with lots of photos!

Photo Credit: Lori Tack (Ozark Greenways)

Photo Credit: Mary Morris (Cedar County Republican)

Calypso is on the front page!

Snow!

We have snow. Just not enough to sled on. But that's okay! We headed to the Frisco Trail (Walnut Grove) on Saturday morning for a long run. There was enough snow to make everything white and beautiful, and to make the dogs overly excited to run!

Nick took the dogs 18.25 miles on the dryland rig, while Joy logged some peaceful running miles in the snow. He switched the dogs out a few times to ensure Prudhoe had a chance to work in lead position for a bit. Overall, the dogs did very well and enjoyed the snow. Calypso did exceptionally well, and wanted to go even farther once the run was over!

Hopefully we'll have a chance to get the sled out later this winter.

Dogs and New Friends

It's been a while since our last post, but a lot has been happening! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and that you stayed safe and dry.

In mid December, we were fortunate enough to meet up with teams from St. Louis, Tulsa, and Kansas City. We spent the weekend dryland mushing on the Frisco Highline Trail (Walnut Grove Trailhead) as well as on the Lakeview Trail at Stockton State Park. We camped at Stockton State Park and enjoyed a bit of peace with our pups. We have a North Face tent meant for winter camping/mountain camping and we had a chance to try it out in the heavy rain. Needless to say, it is built well and we stayed very dry (and warm thanks to the dogs who crawled in our sleeping bags).
Our guests enjoyed the new trails, and will be returning the weekend of January 23 for another adventure! We are looking forward to this, as it allows us a chance to work on passing other teams.

Here's the big news! We have officially registered for our first sled race! While we've raced canicross and the dryland rig before, we haven't had a chance to race on snow. Nick will be mushing the team in The IronLine 12 mile sled race in Iron County, Michigan at the end of January. We are looking forward to exploring the UP and participating in the race.

Ruger and Prudhoe really enjoy opening Christmas gifts. On Christmas morning, both mals were extremely excited to tear into our gifts. They believe all gifts have their names on them, and that they're entitled to open them all. The pups received some upgrades to the sled as their Christmas gift.

We traveled to Florida over the holidays to visit Joy's family. The dogs stayed home and enjoyed the monsoon we had. Digging in the muddy yard is incredibly fun! Thanks to our amazing dog sitter for giving them all baths, and for mopping the floors :)

As far as training, we are trying to up our miles, but it's been slightly difficult as many of our trails are still soaked and muddy from the extensive rain we had between Christmas and January 1. We are headed to St. Louis this weekend for a dryland rig practice with the Gateway Sled Dog Club, followed by a long run on the gorgeous Katy Trail.

One more shout out - Happy 14th Birthday to sweet, Fox.

Thank you for following us, and keep your eyes and ears peeled for further updates! Don't forget about our new website: www.luckyfoxkennel.com.
Happy Trails to you.

Website

We are working on building a website where you can learn more about us and our team as you follow our adventures. Check it out at www.luckyfoxkennel.com.

Rig Rendezvous 2015

We love Rig Rondy. We look forward to it year round and we are already looking forward to 2016. This year was good for us, as we learned a good amount about what we need to work on with our team, and individually with each dog.

Nick participated in the 4-dog rig race and canicross (with Ruger). Joy participated in canicross (with Denali), and was the canicross runner for a relay team.

The dogs did well during the rig race and we were pleased with the way they ran. However, Denali was a bit of a "distracted husky" during canicross. During the summer, we took a lot of time off, partially due to the weather, and partially due to the fact we wanted to sleep. What we learned from this is that even if it is too warm to run, we can still work with the dogs in other ways. Obedience, hook up, etc. Not that sleeping in is bad (obviously we love it), but we want to ensure we give our dogs the best chance to perform well, and to do that, we need to put the work in.

That being said, Denali did significantly better during the canicross portion of the relay race and our relay team placed third.
The relay was a fun event. It consists of canicross, bikejor, and rig. Our dryland musher needed two more dogs to make a full team. So, Ruger and Prudhoe joined her. This was great for them as they were able to learn to work with another dog and listen to another musher other than Nick or Joy. They did well, and she enjoyed racing with them.

Overall, we were pleased with the dogs' performance and were grateful for any lessons we learned. We were most pleased with Calypso. Sometimes, she gets shy and antsy in crowds. She tends to cower, and not want to participate. We were worried that all the excitement might be an issue for her. It was a starting line decision whether to race her or not. However, she wanted to race and she truly excelled. She ran phenomenally and we were impressed with the effort she put in. She did well at the starting line, and did not seem too bothered by all the other dogs at the race.
This was exciting for us to see, as we have been working very hard with her. It was nice to know the work we have been doing is working with her.

Rig Rondy is well organized and is a great race for beginners. Everyone is willing to help, and we have learned quite a bit by watching other teams and asking questions. We are grateful to everyone who has helped us learn and grow in the sport,

New Trail Adventures and Fall Training

We are upping the mileage as fall has finally arrived! The dogs have tons of energy to burn off, and spend their days running laps around the yard and chasing squirrels. They love the cool weather, and so do we. It's perfect for rig training, canicross, and weekend hikes.

A few weekends ago, Nick headed to the Katy Trail in the Jefferson City area. Joy was running the Waddell and Reed Kansas City Half Marathon, so Nick took the opportunity to meet up with another team in the area (out of St. Louis) to work on running together, passing, commands, etc. It went very well and the dogs behaved nicely. It was a good chance to work on passing another team on both the right and left side. Sometimes, dogs will struggle with passing on a certain side (for whatever reason), so this was a good chance for us to work before Rig Rondy in November.

Last weekend we tried out a new trail in the Carthage, Missouri area. We went running and dryland mushing on the Ruby Jack Trail. This is a rails-to-trails trail similar to the Frisco or Katy Trail. The surface was a bit harder, but it was absolutely beautiful. The dogs ran well and enjoyed having a chance to run in a new area. We noticed a lot of houses right along the trail - what a perfect spot to live!

We are also gearing up for Rig Rondy hosted in Woodstock, Illinois. Both Nick and Joy will be participating in canicross, Nick will be doing the 4 dog dryland race, and Joy is part of a relay team which includes canicross, bikejoring, and dryland mushing. We had a great time at this event last year and are really excited to go back. We weren't able to participate in the rig race last year as we did not have enough dogs ready to compete, so this will be a fun adventure for us as well.

We are also excited that we will be featured in a special magazine/newspaper section called "Country Neighbor" that is distributed to several Southwest Missouri areas including Buffalo, Marshfield, Bolivar, Stockton, West Plains, and Christian County. This is really cool for us, as it gives us a chance to provide a little insight into our hobby and dog-loving family. We had a great time allowing the reporter to watch hook-up and go for a dryland ride.

Stay tuned as we post more updates about our fall training. We'll share some more photos and videos of the dogs as well.

Hello, Fall!

Fall has finally arrived. It's nice to have more than one or two cool days in a row. This means we can really start training.

You probably noticed we haven't posted much over the summer, but that's simply because there isn't much to say. We run on days that are cool enough, and we play at the lake or go camping on the weekends. Enough said.

So, here's what we have been up to lately:

September 26: Run for the Paws Benefiting Loving Paws Adoption Center
This is one of our favorite dog-friendly 5ks. Ruger and Nick took 1st overall. Denali and Joy took 2nd overall (1st female and 2nd dog awards). This was also Prudhoe's first 5k. He ran with Nick's cousin, Allison. It was a great chance for him to be around other dogs and feel the energy a race provides. He listened very well and ran great!

Training
We have been training on the Frisco Trail and are headed to the Katy Trail this weekend. These trails are pretty shady as well, which helps a bit until the weather really cools off.

Lakeview Trail at Stockton State Park
We frequent Stockton State Park quite often, and the ~8 mile Lakeview Trail is a great place to train. It's quite a bit more technical than the rails-to-trails Frisco and Katy. Nick had a wreck on the rig and we have it on video. Unfortunately, the video doesn't really capture the situation in its entirety.

So, what do we have coming up? Well, we are looking forward to Rig Rondy in Illinois in November. Nick and Ruger and Denali and Joy will be doing canicross. We have titles to defend! Plus, Nick will be entering the 4-dog rig event.

We'll be posting more frequently now that fall is here and we are back into our training routine. So, stay tuned for our dryland/mushing/canicross adventures.

 Start of Run for the Paws

 Nick and Ruger Post-Race

Joy and Denali Post-Race 

Allison/Prudhoe, Joy/Denali, and Nick/Ruger after the run