Dog Sledding Legends

Mush! You Huskies: Dick Moulton

October 27, 2010 by teamineka

On the latest edition of Mush! You Huskies we continued our Dog Sledding Legends segments. This week we profile Dick Moulton.

It would be hard to estimate the number of miles Dick Moulton has traveled by dog sled. Compared to most mushers, it would be unapproachable. Considering the mileage and the time spent watching, thinking, figuring and reading his dogs behind his running team, Moulton’s achievements follow smoothly. He has competed in races all over North America, and won each one several times. He has been honored as “Musher of the Year” and is inducted in the Dog Mushers’ Hall of Fame. As the autumn of his career arrived, Moulton said, “even though I am getting old and slowing down, you can still find me out on the trails in the late fall, working for that ultimate dog team.”

Listen to Mush! You Huskies: Dick Moulton

Mush! You Huskies is hosted by Robert and Michele Forto. Robert is in Alaska training for his first Iditarod and running his qualifying races this year. He is racing under the Team Ineka banner. Michele is the lead trainer at Denver Dog Works and specializes in services dogs and board and train programs.

We welcome your comments suggestions and concerns. Please comment below or send them to live@dogdoctorradio.com

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Dr. Robert Forto is a canine behaviorist and the training director for Dog Works Training Centers. Dr. Forto is a musher currently in Alaska training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular programs, The Dog Doctor Radio Show and Mush! You Huskies.

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Mush! You Huskies Radio Show

September 22, 2010 by teamineka

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Mush! You Huskies Radio Show

As promised, yesterday, I wanted to showcase the sister show to our highly popular, Dog Doctor Radio Show to my rabid reader, fans and friends– Mush! You Huskies, better yet, MushingRadio.com was brought on board on the Dog Works Radio platform to fill a need for the future followers of Team Ineka and my quest to train for, and run the Iditarod in 2013.

We started the show to coincide with the start of the 2010 Iditarod in March and we followed the progress of the mushers on the trail and gave daily insight and commentary about the race. Not being a sportscaster, our shows had more of a statistical bent to it but hey, we will get better in the future, right?

This summer, we started our very popular Dog Sledding Legends series and did shows profiling the greats such as Leonhard Seppala, Scotty Allan, Doc Lombard, to name a few.

Our goal is to chronicle the adventures of my training and racing career though the show. I plan in the future of offering interviews of me (by my co-host, wife and business partner, Michele Forto). I hope to have other musher’s interviews as well.

I would also like to showcase our sponsors on the show and allow them the opportunity to take advantage of this unique advertising medium. As any musher knows, in order to get to the “big race” we have to run miles, miles and more miles, and we are often dependent on our generous sponsors in helping us reach our financial goals.

By continuing to use the BlogTalkRadio format we are able to bring the cutting edge technology of the platform and have the ability of adding video, chats, remote interviews, email, call-ins for our guests and of course an international audience. With this perfect marriage of technology and social media it is our hope to bring the sport of mushing and one man’s quest to make his own personal history a reality.

As we always say… Never Forget Your Dreams and we will see you on the trail!

I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.

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Dr. Robert Forto is a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular radio shows, Mush! You Huskies and The Dog Doctor Radio Show

You are Never too Old to Run Sled Dogs

September 10, 2010 by teamineka

You Are Never To Old Too Run Sled Dogs

By Robert Forto and Mac McClanahan (Nov. 2000)

About three weeks ago, Robert “Mac” McClanahan gave us a call and said that he received a copy of The Gangline and wanted to learn how to run sled dogs.

I said, “Sure come on over!”

This is his story.

Mac McClanahan is 82 years old and full of life. He said that he has done just about everything; flew helicopters in the Korean War, forced landed three planes, paraglide, walked the Colorado trail, but nothing compares to being behind a team of dogs. Mac said it was one of the most emotional times of his life the first time he was behind a team of dogs and that was just a mere two weeks ago.

Mac was looking for a dog last year that could meet some pretty rigid requirements. After months of research and reams of paper on the internet, he and his wife Melba, decided on a Siberian Husky. They put their plan into action and happened to find exactly what they were looking for. They found a female, open faced, gray, with blue eyes that had the build of a sled dogs, according to all of the books that Mac had read. Why a female? On Melba’s insistence, she said that you can’t get smarter than a woman and if you wanted a lead dog you needed a female. They must have made the right choice because it just so happens that the dog that they picked is a sister to one of our sled dogs here at Team Ineka, Nixon.

For the past year, Mac had been working with his new dog and friend, Chukchi, which Mac says means “sled puller”. Mac says, “I thought I would give her a name and hope that she can live up to it. It is her destiny!” They walked miles and miles and even walked a portion of the Colorado Trail this summer. Mac says “I was walking with friends 30 to 40 years my junior and if it wasn’t for Chukchi I might not have made it to the top of that pass.”

Mac’s goal is to run with some of Team Ineka’s dogs this year in a race or two with a team of three or four dogs. He is working very hard on his training and he and his dog are doing great. Right now they come over for a “session” twice a week and we try to teach something new each time. He is learning quickly. He has been dragged, had a dog fight with a dog on the trail, and even gotten lost when his team took off too fast for me to catch him with my team.

We talked about the future of the sport and what he thought about the Iditarod and he said he thinks the future is very bright. Mac said that this is a “word of mouth” sport and he will do his best to promote it. He said that he has lived in Colorado for seven years and has seen lots of dog trucks driving around but nothing else. He said that needs to change.

There needs to be more advertising in local papers and different forms of media. Mac said that he is telling everyone that he talks to that he is running sled dogs. When he does everyone stops, their ears perk up, and they want to know more and more.

That is what this sport needs. More ambitious people like Mac. His spirit keeps me motivated and all I want to do is train and train.

Mac ended by saying, “I don’t know if she (Chukchi) has the ability to be a good lead dog or if she ever will, but I do know that she has a mind of her own and when she wants to listen she will do just that.”

Well, we are going to try our best to make that dream happen for Mac and Chukchi, she is a natural in harness and will be running in races this year. I have already promised him that.

Fall is in the Air

September 8, 2010 by teamineka

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Fall is in the Air

What a great time to be in Alaska. The leaves are changing and the air is getting cooler. The nights are just a little longer and the mist in the wind refreshes your soul. Last night was a great day to run dogs. I helped out a couple new friends that are premiere Siberian Husky racers and I was privileged to go along while they trained three teams of 16 dogs. The dogs were remarkable. Probably the best trained Siberians I have ever seen in my life. Their leaders on all three teams responded quickly and turned on a dime. Many people train dogs for years to get their leaders to respond that well.

I arrived home about 12:15 with hopes of getting a first glimpse of the Aurora Borealis but it is still early yet and according to the forecasters as it a little north near Fairbanks. The aurora is actually the glow of solar particles blown into the earth’s magnetic field more than 60 miles above the earth’s surface at speeds up to 35,000 miles per hour.
The streams of charged solar particles surge and bulge along bends in the earth’s magnetic field. As they strike atoms in the earth’s atmosphere, they create greenish-yellow, faint blue, or even blood red curtains of color.

With such a dramatic show of force in the sky, it’s easy to see how some Alaska Native groups believed the lights had serious powers. Some believed the lights were the dancing spirits of children who died at birth. Others thought them spirits of the dead playing ball with a walrus skull. Some believed that whistling at the aurora would cause it to sweep down and take you from earth. Still others carried knives to keep it away.

Have you ever seen the aurora? Where where you and what did you think? I know things like this becomes common place to folks who experience it all the time but sometimes you just have to ‘stop and smell’ the roses because someday you might not get a chance…

I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.

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Dr. Robert Forto is a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular radio shows, Mush! You Huskies and The Dog Doctor Radio Show

Sled Dog Demo at Spirit of the North Kennels

August 31, 2010 by teamineka

Sled Dog Demo at Spirit of the North Kennels

By Al Magaw

Don’t forget that next Monday, Labour Day, Spirit of the North Kennels ( 966 Airport Road, Salmo ) is having a bit of an open house for those interested in seeing the racing sleddogs in action and a celebration of the start of the 2010/2011 training/racing/tour season – we’ll start running dogs at 8am when it’s still cool out of consideration for the dogs – should be done with running teams by 10am – waffles after the runs for those interested, lots of chance to pet dogs and get to know these wonderful animals and cuddle a litter of 10 week old puppies – all are welcome – let me know so I can prepare – if you have sled dogs you’d like to run, bring them along

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Al Magaw is a musher from Salmo, BC. Al keeps a medium sized kennel of 20 – 45 alaskan huskies as well as several pet dogs of various breeds. Al has been training and racing for the last 33 years. Before becoming involved with sled dogs, Al, along with his family, kept and competed with horses for many years. Al can be reached through his website athttp://www.spiritofthenorthkennels.com Al is a guest blogger for Denver Dog Works and can be reached through our website athttp://www.denverdogworks.com

Canine Research Continues

August 22, 2010 by teamineka

Canine Research Continues

By Al Magaw

It’s gratifying to see scientific research on our canine friends continuing – in a recent study, reported Aug 10/2010 in Science Now, further research has brought more understanding to how breeds have developed in virtually an evolutionary moment in time. While the report doesn’t deal specifically with sled dogs, the conclusions apply as well to our racing compatriots as it does to great danes, sheep dogs, chows or spaniels. Large or small, short hair or long, the basics are the same for all dogs. A team led by “Carlos Bustamante a comparative geneticist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and Elaine Ostrander, a comparative geneticist with NHGRI, analyzed genetic information from 915 domestic dogs representing 80 different breeds. The researchers compared the dogs’ DNA, looking for sequences that differed by a single base, known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms. Once they found out where the DNA differed, they compared those differences between dogs with, for example, short versus long legs or perky versus droopy ears.”

The researchers identified “51 regions in the genome that contributed to physical variation among the breeds. These regions can be clumped into larger areas of the genome called quantitative trait loci, which are known to contain genes that produce a specific physical effect, such as shaggy hair” “Depending on which traits are compared, genetic differences in two to six of these regions,can account for about 80% of the variation in physical characteristics among dogs, says Bustamante” most likely the ” selective pressure caused by human-directed breeding, the researchers conclude.

Co-author Heidi Parker, a geneticist at NHGRI, says that because humans initially bred dogs for specific traits—say, smaller body size or calm temperament—selection created a population “bottleneck” that narrowed the genetic variation in offspring, leaving them with just a few specific clusters of variable genetic regions. Variable genes within these clusters, such as those that govern snout length or leg length, were then selected” “by humans to create the dog breeds we recognize today” “The study validates the idea that a relatively small amount of genetic variance can lead to a large degree of physical diversity, says Jeffrey Phillips, a veterinary geneticist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The findings corroborate what many in the field suspected but do so with “a very, very impressive sample size,” he says. “It’s a wealth of information” he concluded. My interest in this aspect of dog breeding continues to grow and I look forward to learning more about it. It certainly helps explain why in less than a century, the alaskan husky, through environmental pressure and selective breeding, has gone from being a cross bred mutt to a super performing specific breed recognisable by it’s DNA.

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