Skijor Utah

Pictures from our Uinta Mountain Skijor adventure, March 2010

Today, with all of the snow pretty much history in the field across from the house, we went to Willow Creek Trail to check it out!  It’s dog friendly, and came highly recommended by a friend.

When we got there, there were only a couple other people and dogs out.  I knew it was going to be a challenge to get our dogs to pay attention to us, and not want to run and check out every other dog we came across.  Off we went, and early on, it went fine!  The dogs were doing great, including Shadow, the Labrador.  He, on a leash, was listening very well, and running along side us.

We discovered quickly that most people who have dogs there, don’t really have control of said dogs, and pretty much let them run all over.  Our dogs are going to have to learn to focus very well, and just keep going on by other dogs and people on the trail, but for the first time out with other trail users, they did great.  There was only one near-miss incident where we came across a rather aggressive golden retriever, who was with this lady who obviously could not control him.  As we skied by, the dog shot out at us, teeth bared, barking.  Copper, attempting to avoid a confrontation, bolted hard to the right, pulling me over in the snow.  The lady was having a lot of trouble pulling her dog back, but eventually, we got by without a major incident.

The bottom line is – people need to learn to leave agressive dogs at home!  And we’ll have to come up with a better way to get around other people on a very narrow trail.  The snow is almost gone at Willow Creek too though – time to look higher up in the Uintas for skijoring trails!

8:10 PM -  Last night, Tuesday night.  It’s dark, and we’ve just arrived in Midway.  We plan to go in the field across the street again and take the dogs skijoring with the full moon.  We get them all harnessed up, and get outside on the field, just as the moon is coming up over the mountain.  It’s like the light just came on.  We set off up the field, and it’s COOLLLD!  We go a little ways, and I realize that Ace has cold feet, so we have to take a break to go back inside and get both dogs their booties.

8:35 PM – The dogs have their booties on now, and we’re flying up the field, going, going…. suddenly – a brown spot.  The snow has melted a lot since last week when we were out.  The dogs want to stop and check it out, and just too late, we realize that within the brown spots throughout the field is cow manure, and the dogs think it’s great.  It’s all we can do to keep them moving forward without the brown spots taking their attention.  We stay out another 15 minutes or so, and we’re all getting cold, so we turn around and head back.  The moon looks so beautiful, and there’s not a cloud in the sky.  It’s supposed to be warm the next week or so though – looks like this is the end of the snow in this field, unless we get another great storm

We’ll have to set out and find somewhere else to go skijoring the next time.  This could be challenging – the golf course tracks don’t allow dogs, and many of the other places have a lot of snowmobiles and such…

Our second day out with the dogs was Sunday, and it didn’t go quite as smoothly as Saturday went! I think that the dogs were still a little tired, and although Ace was still as enthusiastic as ever, he was a little grumpy with Copper, who seemed a bit lazy! We kept the session short, and later, took a walk up Dutch Canyon with the dogs in their harnesses, just to work on the commands a little bit! I think they are starting to understand “Whoa” for stop, “Easy” for slow down, and “Let’s Go!” for GO of course, but we haven’t made much progress on “Haw” left or “Gee” right yet. That will come with time, and hopefully, I can spend some time during the week this week working on just that!

This sport is AWESOME!  The dogs were wonderful, especially my 7-year old Weimeraner, Ace.  He LOVES to pull, and he’s great at it!  This morning, we pulled the harnesses out, and immediately, he got excited, and started wagging his tail and smiling.  We harnessed the dogs up, and decided to ‘just go for it’ one dog at a time, and Ace was first!  He did amazing… he pulled us each around the big field a couple of times, and we decided to give Copper (3 year old Weim) a turn.  He wasn’t as enthusiastic as Ace, but still, he did a great job!  We decided to just go for it, and put the 2 of them together and see what happened.  Ace immediately took the “alpha” position, and took the lead!  The team was great… the 2 of them worked very well together… and we were FLYING across the field!  What an amazing rush!

I can’t wait to keep doing this – I think we’ll work on the commands a bit more tomorrow!

Ready to go!

Chris and the team in action!

Chris and the team again!

Chris and Copper!

Jonelle and the team!

Jonelle and the team

The Aftermath....

As an asthma sufferer, cross country skiing, and/or skate skiing have pretty much been off limits to me…. Until NOW!  I recently came across an article that introduced me to Skijoring, and it immediately caught my attention.  My Dog, Ace, a Weimeraner, has always been horrible on the leash, and always wants to pull ahead.  Additionally, he LOVES to run, so I decided to give Skijoring a try.

I showed the article to my boyfriend, Chris, who is an avid skate-skier, and started looking for the necessary gear (belt, harness, bungee, etc).  After the necessary research, we ordered a harness for Ace, and one for Copper, my other Weimeraner.  we ordered a belt, a single dog bungee, and a 2-dog bungee.

The gear came today… I can’t wait until tomorrow, to try it out!