Seeing into Darkness: Sled Dog!

At the end of March, I decided that if I was going to get a chance to try Lottie at pulling a sled, it had to be soon, or relax and wait until next year. After winter camp, I saw an awesome video of a blind/deaf Aussie that loved to pull a sled, and I was dying to try this with Lottie. She gets so upset when we walk because I keep her on leash and the others get to run free in the woods. I realized hooking her up with her buddies in harness is a way to let her run run run through the woods, and still keep her safely attached to her buddies. So over Easter weekend I LOADED the car up with Lottie, Keebler, Skye and five border collies to make a quick sledding run to Dog Scout Camp in Michigan. We dropped off foster border collie Charlotte at a potential new home in Ann Arbor, and the rest of us continued our trek to find a dog sled and snow.

At first, all we found was MUD. I’ve never seen camp so muddy. The trails had some snow in places, but not much. So all we did for the first two days was hike. Tango got to play on the Trash Agility Course, and we spent a lot of time in the woods.

Tango practicing for Trash Agility

That was fine with the others, but Lottie wasn’t happy. Then, the last night, the temperature dropped and we got lovely SNOW!

Tango on the Trash Agility course

I hooked up Tango, who has pulled a sled several times in the past with Kannika. Then I chose to pair him with Pascha, who had never been in harness before. The plan was to see if I could get Pascha to pull with Tango, and then add Lottie and Jasper behind. Tango, however, had different ideas. This is my Wonder Dog, who is so scary smart and athletic, and biddable. But not that day. He flat out refused to move forward. He chewed the harness and tried to back out and finally lay down. Absolute refusal. I was shocked. Pascha, however, seemed quite willing. The best I could do was to walk behind them and pull the sled myself. This was the only way I found to get Tango to move forward. Finally I decided to just hook Lottie and Jasper up behind and see what happened.

Once in harness, Lottie jumped gleefully forward, and Jasper stayed willingly with her, but Tango put on the brakes while Pascha tried gallantly to pull forward with her harness partner Tango acting like a post. It was twisted mess of harnesses and gang lines that resembled spaghetti. So I just unhooked Tango and Pascha and let Lottie and Jasper go on their own. And guess what? Lottie totally ROCKS as a sled dog! She loved it. Only problem was that the snow trails were barely covered, and bumpy icy, so I’m looking forward to next winter when we can try it with some real sledding snow. Lottie is, too!