Mush! Gee! Haw! Whoa!

Hi, Everyone:

Before moving to Alaska, Tammy's long lasting goal was to be a sled dog musher in the Iditarod.  Ok, not really.  But she did want to spend some time trying out mushing.  Needless to say, when groupon.com put up a coupon for a sled dog ride earlier this week, we jumped at the chance.

So today we geared up and headed out for a ride with Dario Martinez, a nine time Iditarod veteran.  He hooked up a team of Iditarod dogs, and we were out:

There were 4 of us on the tour, so Dario hooked up 2 sleds.  2 people got to sit in the front sled, which he stood on the back of to direct the dogs.  Then the front sled pulled the back sled, which had one seat.  The final person would stand on the back of the back sled.

Here's the view from the front of the sled.  We learned lots of awesome information, including that the word to turn right is "Gee" and the word to turn left is "Haw."  We also got cool bits of information about the Iditarod, including that it is an 1100 mile race where the teams will go for 6 hours on and 6 hours off.  Apparently the dogs are also most comfortable at -20 degrees, so our current 10 degrees was a bit warm for them.  They had to keep stopping to eat snow to cool down.

Here we are in the front sled enjoying the ride.

We also took some pictures from the back sled.  The guy standing is Dario.  He's leading the dogs by voice commands only; they are not hooked up to any sort of reins or anything like that.  So the dogs are pretty much in control, subject to a brake on the back of the sled.  It's a really cool experience and these dogs are also really smart.  You can also tell that they LOVE to pull these sleds.  The dogs would whine and bark every time we took a break.  They kept pulling, clearly wanting to keep going.  And when we got to the kennel, the dogs who were not hooked up started whining because they wanted to go.

Dario told us these dogs have been bred over the years to love pulling.  It's in their blood.  So the mushers job is to basically calm them down and keep them in control, because otherwise they would pull forever.

We also learned that while on the Iditarod each dog will consume 10,000-12,000 calories.  As comparison, Michael Phelps was eating approx. 8,000 calories during the olympics; and he is approximately 4 times their size.  It's quite amazing that these dogs can consume that much.

We also got to see some of the dogs Dario is currently breeding.  Here were the most recent puppies!

And here's Steve standing on the back of the last sled.

It was an awesome experience and for anyone in Alaska we highly recommend Dario at Chugach Express.    You can see video of Dario taking the Today Show crew around on his sleds here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4isFT2C8CY&feature=player_embedded

Keep warm!  We're heading into 30 degree weather next week, so we'll be keeping warm soon enough!

P.S. There's a new poll on the sidebar of the blog!  Check it out!