Jess

They… chose a picture of some REALLY happy sled dogs.

Ruby fits like a glove.

Zooming around some of the tree piles the loggers left behind last season. Our neighbor is pretty upset with how they left things back here, but thankfully, our trail is still runnable.

Pretty little Ruby.

Rubin — Blue Eyes and Spitfire

For screen reader accessibility, visit her profile page on my website here: blueeyesandspitfire.com/rubin

Rubin! Ruby for short :)

Yes! He’s also just a BIG boy!

Sharing because character limits; but TL;DR her name is Rubin, Ruby for short!

He’s got a few summer pounds to lose 😆 but he’s also somehow in full coat.

Puppy: some assembly required.

Not yet 😆 I usually have them coexist in a crate and rotate fashion til he’s a little less excited about her, then introduce with the muzzle on.

Kuiper?

Big dog time.

Not yet! Not mine at least. They did get to hang out with a LORGE eurohound who happens to love puppies.

They absolutely loved the giant play yard.

After race puppy party back at the house!

Correct! It’s fairly heavy for a race rig but I wouldn’t feel comfortable running six dogs with anything else.

Race day one complete! But also, puppies.

Just for the weekend! Two will be leaving Sunday, but one is here for good!

Technically THREE puppies will be staying here this weekend, but the other two will be leaving Sunday XD

This is so romantic.

🚨 WARNING: Puppies imminent! This is not a drill! 🚨

Cold temps are back! We were able to take the dogs down to our woods trail again! We lost access due to logging all last season, but it’s been cleaned up! Sheridan lead the way to help navigate a new loop. Having two ATVs already proving to be useful!

Painting this 3” x 3” mini portrait was a delight. I have a few spots left for customs available! Plus some premades of the team and linocut prints.

www.blueeyesandspitfire.com/mush-art

The sigh of relief I felt when I saw this video.

My cart is on the heavier side, as far as race carts go, but it has a heavy duty claw brake that allows me to safely get off the rig if I need to fix a tangle or something. Safety > winning.

Kinda! There's a wide range of dryland mushing equipment. There's a variety of 3 and 4-wheeled carts for larger teams. Folks also use scooters and bikes for 1-2 dog classes. This is the cart I will be using for my 6-dog team.

Eurohound - Wikipedia

Nope, often they're short coated and with our warming climate, it tends to suit them pretty well! In sprint, the distances are short, so they end up back at their truck to warm up. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurohound

FWIW, sprint is broken up into all breed (including hounds, Alaskans, non-AKC reg dogs) and registered breed. I have basically low expectations of placing well versus the mostly hound teams I run against, so I compare my times to the reg breed class. We usually rank somewhere in the upper/middle.

It depends. I know plenty of sprint mushers with very fast Sibes. Both Sibes and Alaskans are slower than the hound teams in the sprint world. As for long distance, there are Sibe and sibe-heavy teams that finish above Alaskan teams. Manitou Crossing comes to mind. Showier Siberians are slow though.