It's a bird... it's a plane... it's our new drone!

Hey there! Sooo if you follow us on Twitter (X), you may have noticed that we got a new toy…A DRONE!

Ok…so it’s not entirely just for fun…it’s for business purposes, but we have some fun ideas for it outside of work!

We’ve never had a drone before, so there is a lot to learn. We are super excited about the photo and video possibilities we can use the drone for - including the dogs!

Before we talk more about the drone though…

As you know, it’s been pretty warm here and we haven’t been able to run the dogs on the bike or scooter recently. Looking at the extended forecast, the weather looks to continue with above normal temperatures.

Unfortunately, this likely means the scooter is going up (literally) for the next few months. During the warm months, we hang the scooter upside down from our garage ceiling on hooks to get it up and out of the way while it’s not being used. Unless something drastic changes, we probably won’t be able to use it again until maybe August or September. So, we’ll find other activities for the dogs to stay occupied and exercised.

Okay back to the drone…

Riley had to test it out in the back yard the first night, because of course he’s impatient! Come say hi on his first video posted on Twitter (X).

Yesterday, we took Pence out to Hannah’s dad’s house to free run while we tested out the new drone. We weren’t sure how Pence would react to it. It looks like a giant cicada or something like that, with a loud buzzing noise. Knowing how irrationally scared our dogs can get over the weirdest things, we thought for sure she was gonna freak out.

At first, Pence was super skeptical of the drone while it was flying, and maybe even a little scared of it. Shocker. However, after several minutes of flying, she seemed to not care about it as much. She even became a little interested in it and began following it around.

Because Boo is at Beth’s, we weren’t able to get his reaction yet. But, if we’re going to use the drone in the future to capture some runs with the dogs, they’ll have to get used to the movement and noise of it. We wouldn’t want them freaking out and running off course into the trees or anything.

Riley was able to capture some photos and videos of Hannah and Pence with the drone. In true Kodak moment fashion, Pence decided to take a dump and drag her butt across the farm field for the beautiful 4k video camera on the drone lol.

You have to watch this short clip of her moments in the spotlight, if you haven’t seen it yet..

Safe to say that Pence knows how to work the camera! Towards the end of the evening, she started to play fight with the drone, hopping around when Riley would keep getting close to her. We were surprised with how well she did overall.

Here’s a short clip of her dancing with the drone:

Way to go, Pence! We’re so proud of you!

So flying a drone can be pretty complicated. So that’s why Riley wanted to start testing it out ASAP this week. Moving up and down, side to side is not the hard part. It’s when you start trying to record a video AND move at the same time that gets tricky. You don’t want choppy, quick camera movements. You want slow, smooth movement. And that takes a lot of finesse.

No where near that level yet.

However, there are some pretty sweet features that will help us newbies out that we can’t wait to try with the dogs! The main feature being auto track, which is what captured Pence’s glorious moment above. This feature will follow us/the dogs as we run with them on trails and open areas, without us having to manually fly the drone. Talk about a lifesaver!

Tons of plans are already being through about for the future, it’s just unfortunate that we can’t really utilize it now that it’s getting hot. BUT hopefully our drone skills will be much better by the fall when we can start running again.

We will give it some test runs on walks this summer though, we just can’t use the drone on our neighborhood walks.

We’re excited for all the content that this is going to allow us to create! Visual content is always so cool to see from other mushers, so we know you’ll love videos/photos we’re going to capture with the drone! Who doesn’t love seeing a new POV of sled dogs running?!

So if any of you are drone experts, or even if you’re not, and have tips/ideas for us getting content with the dogs, send some suggestions our way! We’re newbies, but want to learn and have fun with it all, so help is appreciated!

Urban Mushers + Video

We recorded several minutes of Hannah and Pence out in the field for this week’s Urban Mushers + video. Some of the video is using the auto track feature, and some of it is Riley manually controlling the drone.

Check out the video at the bottom of the newsletter!

If you aren’t an Urban Mushers + subscriber and want to check out the video, it’s quick and easy to sign up! Click the button below to get signed up and help support our small team.

Oh, and of course see even more cute content of the dogs…

[Video] Testing out the new drone!

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