Western - Day 2

It snowed all last night and half of today. Mushers were much slower cover the 18 1/2 miles. The fastest musher took about 1 hour 40 minutes. Ryan was a bit over 2 hours and yes, Keenan and his 4 dogs made around. Took a little while, but they made it.

The top four teams all came in slower with most dogs trotting instead of loping. My dogs came in trotting as expected and looked great coming in the shoot. They also looked good as soon as they stopped. Then a few of them layed down and the others were looking pretty tired (except Bing and Luke in the lead). I thought, "18 miles shouldn't make you that tired, even with some snow on the trail." We mushed them back to our land about a mile and a half away. As soon as we pulled into the dog yard, they're tails were wagging and everyone was up and looking around. We had to hold on tight bringing them to their houses. They gobbled down their pre-meal snack and everyone trotted around on their chain waiting to be fed. Those turkeys! They weren't tired at all. Think they may have learned the concept of "checkpoints" during the Kusko and were acting tired to try get a rest after they crossed the finish line.

I mentioned it snowed most of the day, but it rained the rest. Things will probably be warm, soft and sloppy tomorrow. Ryan may have a chance at beating one of the four teams ahead of him. If the working dogs keep trotting along and one of the sprint teams slows to a walk, he just may catch someone. It wouldn't make a difference in the overall time, but it'd be fun to beat someone on day 3. Should be fun to watch. I'll let you know what happens.