"Who ever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies."

Don't remember who said that, but it's one of my favorite cheesy quotes. Below are a couple pictures of the youngest members of our new sprint racing team.

They are seriously cute. Their Momma, Minnie, is doing a great job with them. She had a little trouble during delivery and we lost a few pups, but she has the mother thing down pat now. They were at the dog yard in my insulated puppy house until the temperature dropped. These sprint dogs don't have much for hair. We've got them in a kennel in the house. The pups are still small and not moving around much. The kids and I can go down and play with the pups while giving Minnie some attention as well. We take Minnie outside to clear her pipes a few times a day. She goes out, does her business, and then heads straight back to the house always wanting to be with her little ones.

We also have a blond male leader named Jerry (formerly Cherry, but Alethia thought it was Jerry so that's what we call him) and just got a 4 month old cream colored pup dubbed Mulan. Should also mention the pups are named Ariel, Jasmine, Cinderella, and Prince Phillip. Can you guess who's doing the naming around here? All the dogs were purchased from Howling Dog Racing Kennels in the Fairbanks area. We bought Minnie as a bred female.

We're poised to have a young team of 7 sprint dogs next season, but we'll continue to breed and train and will be in full force in a few years. As I mentioned earlier, Ryan will be doing most of the sprint dog training and racing.

You might ask why a person who proudly boasts about his working sled dogs would get into sprint racing. A valid question. It's something Johanna and I have talked about for some time. You see I don't ONLY enjoy working sled dogs. I've also owned and enjoyed working retrievers and pointing dogs, was enamoured with my grandpa's sheep dogs as a boy, and would own and train every sort of working dog in existence if I could. I love seeing working dogs peforming tasks they were bred and trained for. More then that, I enjoy seeing them doing it well. We have a small sprint racing circuit in the region and are trying to increase the number of local races and participants. So if I'm already in the dog business, have plenty of food available, and have a energetic athletic fella eager to work with them, why not own sprint dogs?

The two lines will not be crossed. Each line will continue to be raised and trained to perform its intended tasks. Raising and training sprint dogs is a whole 'nother ball of wax, but that's part of the fun of it. Never been one to sit on haunches content with the status quo. Spent the last 6 years teaching dogs to pull. They'll still be pulling, just that some of the dogs will do their pulling at 18 miles per hour.