The Cold Truth About Our Sled Dogs

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Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay in this week’s newsletter. We hope you will accept this snowy snoot as an apology.

We’ve gotten a little more snow here over the past week, but the big news is that it has been COLD. We’ve had several days in a row below freezing. The real kicker, though, is that we had multiple nights in a row with the low temperature below ZERO. We’re actually having a winter here in Indiana this year.

With the cold temperatures and the snow, we’ve had several people make comments to us like “I bet your sled dogs are LOVING this!”. The ironic answer - no…no they’re not.

They do like to go play around in the snow for a few minutes, but then they’re ready to come back inside and warm up on the couch. Their coats are not very thick, compared to a lot of the “huskier” type sled dogs.

This is Boo’s third (I think?) winter “indoors”, and he does not grow out a winter coat at all anymore. Despite eating as much as he wants, he doesn’t keep much extra weight on either, so he doesn’t have as much fat to keep him warm.

This is Pence’s second winter indoors. Her coat is naturally a little thicker than Boo’s, and she has a little more meat on her bones than Boo does, but temperatures below zero are a bit chilly for her liking.

When it was really cold, with the wind and snow blowing, both dogs had to be nudged to go outside and do their business. They’ve gotten a little “soft” in their semi-retired sled dog days lol

When Pence would go outside in the frigid temperatures, she would sometimes come back inside and lay in the sun to warm her old bones back up.

Now that it’s a little warmer out, closer to around freezing, the dogs seem happier and are willingly hanging outside more, zooming around the yard.

Oh ya - BOO’S BACK! You may have noticed he’s been at Beth’s for a while now. We try to share time with him evenly, and we had him longer than normal around dryland race season to train and compete. To make up for it, Beth had him a little longer the last couple months, with the exception of a few days when we took the dogs with us up north to mush.

On a random note - places along the Gulf Coast like Babbie, Alabama, Pensacola, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana saw over 10” of snow last week! That’s more than Anchorage, Alaska, New York City, and parts of Wisconsin have seen all winter! What a wild January this has been.

More sled races across the Midwest and Alaska have been cancelled due to lack of snow. Between lack of snow and our schedules, it doesn’t look like we will be able to compete in any of the sled sprint races this year…fingers crossed for next year! For those who are able to attend/compete this winter, good luck and have fun!

That’s all for now, talk to you soon!

-Hannah, Riley, Boo, and Pence

PS: if you are a premium subscriber and still haven’t received your holiday mail from us - there is still hope! One person just received theirs YESTERDAY even though we sent it a week before Christmas.