Heading North Soon

Hello from the Cosmic Canines! Sorry it’s been a while, we’ve had a great summer and now we are getting ready to head home. This is our last week in the beautiful Sheep Creek Valley. There are only 3 days of tours left, and a few days of tear down. We did twice the amount of tours that we did last year, not bad for our second year! We have to organize and inventory everything. All the fences need to be torn down, stacked and bound, as well as our tents and our little “Gold Rush” town. Winds blow 80 to 90 mph up here and last winter there was 16 feet of snow. All the dogs houses will anchored to the dog posts so that they don’t blow away.

I cannot wait to head back up to interior Alaska. I am ready to just focus on training the dogs for races. I am looking forward to waking up to frosty fall mornings. And I am anxious to get out of the rain! I have to say this summer down here in Southeast has been pretty nice. Of course it is going to rain, we live in a rainforest, but it was nothing like it was last year.

We do have some new additions to the team. Polaris and Pluto have completed their professional puppy duty and have been promoted to the team. Both are doing excellent in harness. Polaris is quite the driver. And of course they are both hams for our guests.

Spock has been reunited with his brother. Spock is my ¼ Saluki hound that I got a year and a half ago. He did so well that when I was offered his two brothers I quickly took them in too. Scotty and Captain Kirk worked with Johnny and Sebastian up on the Herbert Glacier for the summer with Coastal Helicopters. They been part of Tema Cosmic now for a couple weeks, and wow! We can feel the power boost! I hope they work out for the Quest, they are pretty houndy, if not they will be an awesome asset for mid-distance races. Captain Kirk is a leader too. Spock seemed to handle a cold winter in Two Rivers pretty well. All 3 were born and raised in Bettles and it’s certainly not the Banana Belt there!

Satellite also had three boys from Telesto on 7-07-07. So they are lucky puppies. Nova, Pulsar, and Orion look like they are going to be big, feisty boys. They are already free running 2 miles with me on the bike.

Our last addition to the kennel is Samson. I bought him form the Jaynes who worked here this summer. He was in Mike Jayne’s Quest team last year and is a nice leader. I wanted to bring a little more experience into the front end of Team Cosmic, being that Telesto and King are both retiring.

So 38 dogs total will be heading on the ferry back up to Haines and the 13 hour drive to Two Rivers. We bought a new trailer to haul the dogs in but our welder friend didn’t have time to build the frame for the box so our old box has to make one more trip. (Cross your fingers) Then the new one will be started as soon as we get to Fairbanks. It’s a beautiful trip even though it’s hard work traveling with 38 dogs. I love the Yukon, especially Kluane Country. I though I love everyone here at camp I am looking forward to waking up in the morning and enjoying my coffee with just Jim and the dogs.