Giveaway Time & Part-Time Couch Husky, Part-Time Sled Dog

Hey everyone!

Before we get into this week’s story, we wanted to share a special opportunity with you leading up to Riley’s birthday on Friday (YAY!). As we continue to grow our audience, we want to spread the love with all of you.

SO…

I (Riley) am going to do a FREE giveaway for my birthday. If we hit 300 total subscribers by Friday, I’ll send one subscriber a BRAND NEW Noxgear Tracer2 (for you) or Lighthound (for your dog)! We’re at 273 as of me typing this, so we can do this!

Here’s how you can help us reach our goal and win one of those awesome light-up harnesses.

Share the newsletter with all your friends and family that are dog lovers! Doesn’t matter if they know anything about mushing/sled dogs. Our stories are great for all dog lovers.

It’s simple: click the share button below and either share the link on social media or email/text/Messenger/however you chat with your friends.

For every referral, you’ll get an additional entry into the random subscriber drawing. As an added incentive, sharing your link also adds to your regular Urban Mushers referral bonuses, where you get additional free perks from us.

Who will be the lucky winner? Find out soon!

PS…

I’ll be doing another promo/giveaway of sorts in Friday’s newsletter on my actual birthday, so be on the lookout!

Last week, our blast from the past story left off in November of 2022. But just a few short weeks later, in December 2022, a big announcement was made. We knew it was coming, and I (Hannah) think a lot of Uglydogs had suspicions that it was coming. Blair and Q announced that Boo would be retiring from their team and joining our family full-time in Indiana!

Blair and Q posted the announcement on their Patreon page and on Twitter. Some people were shocked, some people said “I knew it!”, but everyone seemed genuinely happy. Of course, it left a lot of questions as to how the shared-custody arrangement would work and what Boo’s life would be like in Indiana, so at the time, I tried to answer those questions in a thread.

To think back to the start of the first meteorology camp in 2022, the first summer Boo came to hang out with us, I would have never thought 2.5 years later that he would be with us full time. Later that summer, when we took Boo back to Wisconsin to begin fall training, we were saying our goodbyes and talking about how much the summer together had meant to us.

Blair said “If the time is right, and when the time comes, you’d be an amazing retirement home for him when he is ready to slow down in the winters”.

My response: “Bler I would loveeee for him to retire to my home! Of course it’s probably a few years out and it’s hard to say exactly where I’ll be in life at that point but my life has always had dogs in it and I plan to keep it that way! I will welcome him with open arms when the time comes :)”

And when the time did come, of course I was ecstatic! But it was also bittersweet because I loved to see how excited he was to run with his team. But then again, he was also now very excited about couches lol.

So we hoped to be able to give him the best of both worlds. Still getting to do some canicross, bikejoring, and scooterjoring in Indiana and some dryland races in Wisconsin, but also still get to chill on the couch and be a pet too. I think we’ve been successful at that!

When meteorology camp began, Beth and I still lived together. At the time of Boo’s retirement, we each had our own houses and lived apart, which made things slightly tricky. We’ve worked it out to where Boo gets to spend about 4 to 6 weeks at a time at one of our houses, and then about the same amount of time at the other. Back and forth. He doesn’t seem to mind at all, and gets excited to see both families. And of course he still gets to see his dog friends, and Blair and Q, whenever we go north for adventures.

Our first two winters with the Boozer have been pretty uneventful unfortunately (for him and us). We just haven’t gotten enough snow in Indiana to really be able to run him. Yes, we’ve gotten to do a lot of dryland running the past year, but we’d hoped to be able to run him on snow in the winters now too. And of course, we even got a sled, as you read about in a previous newsletter.

So while us humans are bummed about that, it doesn’t seem to bother Boo that much. He sometimes even acts like he hates the snow, so who knows how he’d react if and when we get to run him on snow for the first time. I (Riley) sometimes wonder if he gets sad or misses being out in the snow, but he seems pretty content to stay curled up in a tiny ball on a couch or a bed at whichever house he happens to be at.

It’s definitely been interesting to see how he’s transitioned to being retired on more of a full-time basis. He’s so chill 90% of the day, but you can guarantee that he gets just as excited as ever when we ask him if he wants to go for a run/walk.

Will he ever really lose his enthusiasm for running? We sure hope not!

He has been an absolute pleasure to have in Indiana; even though he is a weirdo lol. After 3 years, he still isn’t a fan of my dad. He still won’t let anyone else take him outside except me, Beth, Riley, or JT. He’s terrified of things we think he should have no problem with, and is completely fine with things we think he would be terrified of. He makes no sense. But he’s our weirdo, and we love him for all of it!

We like to say that Boo didn’t lose his family when he “retired”. His family just grew. He has so many pawrents that love him and will give him the world.

So that is the story of how Boo ended up in Indiana full time. Several people on Twitter made comments about how once you have one husky, it’s inevitable to end up with more. Or that it wouldn’t be long before we had our own team. At the time, we thought - yeah right…one is enough! Well, next week’s blast from the past newsletter will go in-depth about how we came to bringing Pence into the family!