Offering dog sledding and dryland (wheeled) dog sledding programs for groups, individuals and schools in Maryland and Maine. www.marylanddogsledding.com
Maryland Sled Dog Adventures LLC offers dog sledding and dryland (wheeled) dog sledding adventures for both individuals and children's groups including Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Birthday parties. Maryland Sled Dog Adventures LLC also offers on site classroom programs for schools studying Iditarod, sled dogs or dog sledding. In addition to our Maryland dog sledding programs, we also offer our fo
ur day three night, Maine Winter Cabin Adventure in Maine. Visit our website for more information on all of our dog sledding programs.
A lot of people wonder why I keep my dogs intact. This is a very interesting study with a shift away from the paradigm of early spay/neuter which focuses on GWPs/GSPs, Goldens, Ridgebacks, and Siberians and the health effects of keeping dogs intact.
Updated information from the University of California study on the effects of spay/neutering.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/when-should-you-neuter-or-spay-your-dog
Little hike and exploring at Gunpowder around Bunker Hill. Swimming in another part of the river. Then ice cream at the new place Creamery Connection in Hereford.
Nisha—what sled dogs do in the summer. Just back from a 3 mile hoverboard with my youngest. Starks and Drogo got walks. Nice Nisha gets special privileges.
Madison, ME. Kennebec and northern lights. One town over from Starks and our cabin. Last night.
Oh, my goodness! What a wonderful, amazing night! I’ll tell you all about it in the morning! Madison, Maine
Skowhegan, ME.
Madison, ME. One town over from our cabin in Starks.
I wasn’t expecting much.
I wasn’t expecting the colors.
I wasn’t expecting the movement.
I wasn’t expecting that I wouldn’t even know where to look next so I just kept slowly spinning around.
I wasn’t expecting one amazing site to fade while another one took its place.
I wasn’t expecting that I’d feel a deep connection to the creation and the Creator unlike any I feel in church.
I didn’t expect to have tears spring to my eyes because they were unable to contain all that beauty and gentle power.
I didn’t expect to feel such powerful emotions yet watch other people drive by unaware or unconcerned with the miracle surrounding them.
I don’t know what I was expecting. But it wasn’t this.
Madison, Maine
Sharing this. Be careful people. It’s peak hiking season. As****es abound.
Short training runs with the dogs Wednesday and today. I just brought the gear inside as we’re looking at a big warm up. Not yet willing to call it but that may be a wrap folks. Alfie the puppy lead both days—Wednesday with Stark and today with Zoom. Today we ran with Bee and Mika so did some passing.
Last run of the season? Who knows. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. As long as it’s cold enough, it’s what we do. 34 this AM. 37 when we finished. Eight dogs. Teji is out of heat and back. Parkton to Bee Tree-6-7 miles round trip.
Hiking and still running the team when it’s cool enough to do so. Managed to get out for two training runs this weekend. Saturday we did Parkton to Bentley—warmer of the two days. Sunday, 36 when we got to the trail but warmed fast—60 when we finished. We did White Hall to Monkton. Saturday we hiked in the afternoon. TBD on what we’re doing this afternoon—going to 80.
As the days warm, we transition from dogsledding and dryland dogsledding to hiking. Some days the mornings are just cool enough to do both—Saturday and Sunday were such days.
FFD IS GOING GREEN!
In an effort to reduce our fuel consumption, all Fairbanks Fire Department apparatus will now be powered entirely by dogsled teams. We have partnered with several local mushers who agree that this will add an element of resistance training to their canine fitness routine. Our response times have suffered slightly, but the positive effects on the environment are well worth a few minutes delay.
The innovations aren’t limited to replacing large engines though! We also have domesticated three large beavers with carbide-tipped incisors to replace our ventilation saws. Unfortunately the immense amount of feed bags we must now purchase has cancelled out any cost savings from stepping away from petroleum products.
This is a one year trial which starts today and will be reevaluated on April 1, 2025.
Now instead of “pull right for sirens and lights” just think “pull right and park when you hear those barks!”
That’s a wrap. As today is Easter and he hath risen, I figured today was the day to post this. With yesterday’s two person Yappy Hour the 2023-24 season is officially over. From the first run to the last, here’s a recap. Thank you Allan for all the early morning handling, catching, patiently helping kids harness, lifting and otherwise supporting of dogs and musher, and, of course, humor through it all. Thank you also to my kids, Ethan, Eloise and Emmaline for all the help with dogs at home and and at the trail. Here’s a few photos to remember it all by.
From today’s group organizer. As some of you know, we got two inches of rain today so it was a wet one. And one of the parents was a client of the law firm I’m with which is a new first. Although it is Smalltimore so I’m hardly surprised. Eloise handled today.
Catherine,
Thanks for an amazing experience today! It was unforgettable! We all really enjoyed meeting you and the pups. What a wonderful helper your daughter is too! Thanks again!
Caitlin
Ps—the two whole photos I got today. 😂. Alfie and Zoom did a great job in lead.
Friday I visited with sixth grade at Mt Airy middle school in Carroll County. We’ve been working with Mt Airy since 2020. Thank you to the wonderful teachers who organize this and especially Nickole who organizes, walks dogs, scoops p**p as needed, and buys us lunch.
On my birthday I visited with the kids at Whittier Elementary School in Frederick, Maryland as part of their special Idita-read event—the kids got one mile for every minute they read and moved along the Iditarod trail with the mushers. Not many photos as I presented two one hour assemblies back to back and was on my feet moving the whole time. The kids had really great and insightful questions.
Training run with the team this morning and then dropped off outriggers with the fabricator to be (hopefully) repaired/straightened. Not one of our better runs. Arrived at the trail only to realize I had no purse (no wallet) and no hat or gloves as I carry those in my purse. My emergency gloves in the truck were MIA. 🙄.
Alfie and Stark in lead together. Alf was being a pill which resulted in a bunch of tangles at start up and during our run and a couple tifs.
My hands got really cold and I did something to my finger. Trying to figure out how it happened.
Good news is fabricator is pretty confident he’ll have the outriggers back to me Thursday. This week is busy—school programs on Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday is assemblies with one dog but Friday is assemblies and meet and greets with the dogs.
Loaded truck for Wednesday, restocked emergency gloves in truck. Took Advil. Mission accomplished.
March madness. Spring mushing. Two back to back Girl Scout dogsledding programs. Alfie and Zoom lead most of Saturday. Drogo and Stark lead all of Sunday. Saturday kids and I did a post program hike to a water fall with Pico. Sunday we did a fire pit. Sunday I clipped and bent my front outrigger so truck is going up to fabricator to straighten hopefully tomorrow. Next up: school program at Whittier Elementary School on Wednesday in Frederick, Maryland.
We’re back from Maine. Reasonably uneventful and fast drive yesterday. Back to wheels. Back from mud and snow. Photo recap below. A busy two weeks of dogsledding coming up to wrap up our 2023-24 dog sledding season—two school programs, a smattering of individual rides, and a bunch of Girl Scout group programs. If you were not able to get a date this season, our waitlist for next season is well underway with hundreds on it already. If you’d like to be placed on my wait list, please email [email protected].
Two six dog teams. Stark and Alfred ran twice. Stark lead both runs. First with Zoom and then with Alfred. And Emmaline skied. First team was Stark, Zoom, Teji, Alf, Drogo, Cash. Second team was Alfie and Stark, Nisha and Boss, Ebony and Casco.
Short run with the dogs today. About four miles. Zoom and Drogo leading.
You would never know they wanted to kill each other earlier today—Pico and Casco. These two have been warring since we arrived. Guess someone waved the white flag of surrender. Doggie détente.
Baltimore, MD
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Nisha—what sled dogs do in the summer. Just back from a 3 mile hoverboard with my youngest. Starks and Drogo got walks. Nice Nisha gets special privileges.
Good boys!
Coming up on Bee on our way back.
Each ride is different. Each ride is unique. And each ride is just the beginning. People come expecting a ride with the dogs but leave with their curiosity about sled dogs and dogsledding piqued. If that happens, I’ve done my job.
Out and about giving rides.
Little scenery from the trail today.
Not sure why this is blurry but it takes a village to put a dog team on the trail. Thanks for the video Kirsti.
First tracks! From behind the dogs. For their fourth day running, they were cooking.
Little video from today’s run. Poop from Zoom at the end. 😂
Passing video. Know how hard this is to do?!?! That’s why running dogs is 99.9% training dogs. Not just hopping on and going.
Little video of the river flying past as we headed up trail.
Video from first run of 24. No idea why Stark is crabbing like this. He doesn’t typically. Faster speeds he wasn’t crabbing as much.
Almost back. We ran the whole trail. It was nice to see a different trail and there are some gees and haws which was a nice change. Trail is relatively narrow so we did not do a ton of passing but we did pass a few times. Ethan handled and hover boarded around the parking lot. Lots of eagles.
Heading home. I was holding them back pretty hard here. In fact, pretty certain I need new brake pads again.
Hooking up for our second ride today. Proud of how my dogs who went out twice did. Drogo was the only one who was behaving a bit badly. Stark tried his best to pull him on by.
Hooking up the first team today for Shavonne’s ride. Thank you Allan for wrestling the beasts to the line. Thank you Drogo and Zoom for the line out.
