Briar’s Patch Sled Dogs History
“Do you know Melissa? You guys should really meet and get together – she talks about dogs as much as you do!”
If life is a series of serendipities, this is the one that put me on the path to getting my own sled dog team. I was commuting to work by train, and chatting with a co-worker I had met while commuting. He mentioned that Melissa had Siberian Huskies and ran them as a sled dog team. Wow, how cool….
So I made arrangements to meet Melissa in the company cafeteria for lunch, and I was keen to find out how she did that. At the time we had only our house dogs – an Australian Shepherd named Jake, a Norwegian Elkhound named Elske, and a beagle mix named Marta. We did a lot of agility training and competitions with them, and a little bit of skijoring (where the dog is supposed to pull you on cross-country skis), but had never considered running them as a sled dog team. Don’t you need a sled and some other stuff?
Melissa also casually mentioned that she was trying to coordinate having a beginner’s training seminar on sled dog training called “Mushing Boot Camp” which was being taught by a couple of gals from Minnesota who’d volunteered to come to the West Coast to teach. Was I interested? You bet! It never even occurred to me that we couldn’t use our house dogs…why not? They enjoyed being with us out in the mountains when we went on skijoring weekends – although they mostly didn’t pull, and we didn’t know how to get them to pull, kind of like the blind leading the blind, but we sure had fun. So Mushing Boot Camp, here we come!
Deer in headlights
Labor Day of 1997 we showed up to the first Mushing Boot Camp, held on the grounds of what was previously Fort Ord in Monterey, CA. We had our “Motley Crew”, some ill-fitting harnesses, and boundless enthusiasm. The seminar is taught by Ann Stead and Jamie Nelson, accomplished sprint and distance racers respectively, who between them had many decades experience with sled dogs. There were many challenges with that first boot camp, not the least of which was our team who had no training gear or rig and absolutely no clue what we were doing. And of course, no genetic drive to work pulling for us, simply learning the pulling exercise as they would any other crazy thing that Mom asked them to do…as Ann later quipped “Well, ya know Liz, in Minnesota we use huskies….” Talk about drinking from the proverbial fire hose! At the end of 3 very intense and exhausting days we had our little team pull a borrowed training cart for a mile. Yahoo! We were on our way!
Spring of 1998 saw us return to the next session of Mushing Boot Camp, this time with our own training cart and lines – and still working with our motley crew of “volunteers”. Although we’d been working with our cart and team over the winter, it was clear they needed more help. So Jamie kindly offered us one of her retired racing dogs. She said this gal was 10 years old, not racing anymore but still training puppies for her and needed an active retirement, where the responsibility for a small team would be right up her alley. Jamie allowed that she thought the dog would fit in well with our crew, that she had “manners” and therefore could transition to being a house dog, and that “she could lead and your dogs could learn to pull” -- a most diplomatic way of saying that we needed big time help!!
So a few weeks later we went to the airport to pick up the crate…and Briar joined our lives and started her second career.
It really all started with Briar
Briar came to us as a lean running machine, the heart and attitude of a highly competitive athlete, and the perspective of having been an outdoor sled dog who had spent her entire life in a dog yard. You’d never know she was 10. She probably had about 25,000 miles on her when she came to live with us, and it stood her in good stead as she had retained her youthful vigor. Talk about high energy!
Sled dogs typically lead very structured lives – they have their “circle” where their house is, they are attached to a drop line when they travel and attached to the sled lines when they are working. All of a sudden she was dropped into the house dog world of pets, where the dogs just “hung out” when we weren’t playing or going somewhere. That was a completely foreign concept to her – so she paced the house for months, and the other house dogs would sleepily look at her with expressions of “What?!? Chill already! Relax!” But old dogs can learn new tricks – she quickly adapted to life indoors, house training, cats, toys, sleeping on the couch…
Just as quickly she jumped into the role of teacher, and our team rapidly started to improve. When the rest of us were a little slow on the uptake about how to get the team moving, Briar would exhibit huge amounts of patience – then she would finally say “Just do it this way – follow me!” and off we would go.
Jamie had given us hints about what a great leader she was. She wanted an active retirement home for Briar because she was quite extraordinary…a true natural leader, one whose presence enabled a team to do more with her in lead than they could do by themselves without her driving them. She had won the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon (a 500 mile race) for Jamie in the mid-90’s, and had saved Jamie’s life once in a race by bringing the team safely home when Jamie had passed out on the sled. She was truly driven to pull in harness, and was incredibly competitive – whether it was another team, a bicyclist or a rabbit, she would rather die than be passed. So she led, the Motley Crew did learn to pull, and we learned started to learn about what makes a sled dog tick.
For several years after we got her, Peggy skijored competitively with Briar and Jake as her team. Both are super competitive, high drive dogs, but a real “odd couple” in harness with Briar’s long fluid pacing gate, and Jake’s short, choppy trot with his short legs. But Jake “got it” and could somehow keep up with her – and when he heard “on-by!” (the command to ignore a distraction and keep going), in his brain it translated to “Go Faster!” and he really put it into high gear!
Hmmm…maybe I could do the Iditarod?!?
Running sled dogs (even if they’re not real sled dogs) is great fun, and training was immensely rewarding, and I started to muse where I could go with this. Just as with the Motley Crew and skijoring, the fun for me is spending time in the woods with the dogs. Going distances seemed a natural – after all, that’s what huskies live for! So I’d love to develop the skills to train a team to be able to travel through the wilderness by dog team. How ya gonna know if you can do that unless you try? Yup, that means…Iditarod.
No clue how to get there, what the steps were, what I was getting myself into. I mentioned it to Jamie…and she offered immediately to work with me. Why didn’t I come to Togo for a few days, run some dogs, see what I was getting into a bit. So my first training trip I showed up in my rental car, she loaned me a small 4 wheeler and 10 spare dogs and said here’s the trail, go do it twice a day, have fun! Immerse thyself! After a week – some successes, some frustrations, and I brought home a renewed sense of enthusiasm, and a Brick. Brick was husky #2, a 6 year-old leader that had come back to Jamie and needed a job and a home and we bonded. He was truly still a working kennel dog, and we already had too many dogs – so Barbara “Dog Drop” Schaefer to the rescue! Peggy and I had met Barb and her husband John and the wonderful Qualobo Siberians of her kennel at Boot Camp. Brick had a temporary home and I had a training partner. I would make the trek to Grass Valley and Brick (and often Briar too) would combine with some of Barb’s dogs and off we’d go with our teams into the hills and learn how to train dogs. Barb and I had a few adventures as we figured nothing could stop this team…closed roads, missed turns…we never believed ourselves really lost, even if everyone else did!
My own team
2001 brought some major changes to our lives. Peggy and I bought Crystalwood Lodge and moved to rural Southern Oregon to start new careers as innkeepers of a pet welcoming Lodge. Turns out the same requirements we’d developed for having a successful pet friendly inn were also needed to have a sled dog kennel. Cool! So summer of 2002 saw me making my first trip to Minnesota to get an installment of dogs from Jamie. ...
Briar's Patch Sled Dogs LLC — Based at Crystalwood Lodge
38625 Westside Road/ P.O. Box 498, Ft. Klamath, OR 97626
Ph: 541-892-3639 Fax: 541-381-2328
Email: Contact Briar's Patch Sled Dogs
