quake + frosty morning

BIG earthquake at the kennel this morning -- 6.2 -- felt like Mother Nature was shaking me out of bed to get up and go enjoy this beautiful frosty day! Went out to check on the dogs, who let loose a loonng howl after the quake but otherwise seemed none too perturbed, then had coffee, then an interview w a washington dc news channel (yes, more below), then ran dogs!

FALL TRAINING is going well. It has been unseasonably warm this month (maybe the new normal?) and our milage has been restricted by the heat. This past week we have enjoyed some frosty nights and morning and the dogs have been able to run more miles more comfortably. We hope to be running comfortably at 10 miles by the end of the month.  

I have nineteen dogs in my training pool. Three are new additions, transfers from Mom & Dad's kennel to mine: Georgie, Lillian, and Vixen. The training pool will jump up to twenty when Pete comes back (he is a horrible rock eater and lives on a special plywood platform at my parent's kennel until snowfall), and there may yet be a few dropped off the Rondy team onto the distance team as the season progresses. 

cooler temps are letting us increase our milages :) Ruby & Vader in lead. 

brothers Papas & Pelle

Patient lead dogs, munching some delicious grass while they wait to be unharnessed. 

TWO OF THREE NEW ADDITIONS TO THE TEAM:

sweet Lillian, sister to sweet little Linnea (pictured here with Victor).

Georgie, named after George Attla, who chose her as pick of the litter when she was 8 weeks old :)
Fezzik blinking behind her.

LOOK WHAT I FOUND IN THE WATER BUCKET.... at 2pm !! 

Puppy kisses. Bike, 15 months old. 

Finally enjoying some autumn nights crisp enough
to form a skim of ice in the buckets ! 

RE: THE EARTHQUAKE & THE INTERVIEW
This morning, after the quake, as I was sitting down with a cup of coffee, I was contacted by a Facebook friend, Mark H, who works at the ABC news station in Washington D.C. He had heard about the morning's earthquake (which had its epicenter just 60 miles northwest of Willow) & reached out to me for comment. Aside from a looonnng howl from the dogs after the fact, my earthquake experience was (luckily) pretty nondescript. If you would like to hear the interview, it is available here:  http://bcove.me/th776k8b  I thought it was pretty fun to be on live TV, and thought they did a good job scrapping together information about me and Alaska's history of earthquakes in the hour or so from when Mark reached out to when they interviewed me. One thing that is clear from the interview is, as is common with folks from the lower 48, their lack of perspective of the size of our state. They presented a map on which they pinpointed the location of the earthquake (60 miles from Willow, remember) just under the Yukon River. That is closer to 400 miles away :) Ah well.