Today I read very sad news on www. sleddogcentral.com and http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/butcher/story/8045354p-7938337c.html
Susan Butcher a mushing and Iditarod legend passed away on Saturday 5th August. She was fighting against leukemia.
I had the luck to meet Susan at the ADMA Sleddog symposium 1999. She was a very open hearted and powerful person. I am very sad and I want to make my condolences to her family.

This remebers me how happy and thankful we all should be for being healthy and that we have the possibility to decide how we want to live our life. Make the most of it.

Tesla thinks it�s hot outside!!! 

hot summer work

it´s a very hot and dry summer here. We have everyday sunshine and temperatures around 85 F.
But things start developing... working for our future goals and dreams. I made a general cleaning in our old cow stable and you can´t imagine the tons of spider webs and rat poop... We want to rebuild it into a cosy dog stable with seperate dog rooms and heating for the winter. This week-end I threw out our whole and old kitchen furniture. The kitchen walls are old, dirty and wet; now they can dry out, we clean them and we can paint it in a few weeks and change it into a nice practice room. I am curious how it´ll be and things will work out.
So there´s a lot of work to do besides the regular job in the shop from 8- 11 hours a day. Michael is reparing the dog truck beside all the work with our happy and healthy dogs. They get trained all days from our butterflies, and we have a lot of them!! Running all day free, chasing butterflies like crazy in the heat. Michael has to get the 2 yearly technical check and an ok for the truck. This is a must for a safe and secure transport of our loved four legged athletes. With the truck we have the possibility to transport other huge things we need for the renovation and which don´t fit into my tiny Suzuki Swift,too. ;-)
Time to work!! Have fun and enjoy life with seeing how your goals develop and your dreams can come true if you only want it and put your energy towards into realizing them. Melli

Apanatschi (front) and Shy are enjoying the warmth of the kitchen stove in winter 05 / 06 

Summer

Wow.. since one week we have summer... it´s hot, I mean really hot.. 30 C every day (86 F)and it seems like it´ll stay hot. Tomorrow we´re going to buy a pool for the dogs. I am curious if they want to swim in it. It´ll be a good exercise for them and a test for the swim pond which we plan to build next spring.
We have a lot work to do, we want to restaurate our house and if everything will go like we expect, we´re going to open our animal physiotherapy practice in fall... the beginning of our planned animal physio and wellness center. But until then it´s a lot work to do. Let´s start :-)

Shakira prefers to relax inside the cool house on our sofa in the living-room and watch the FIFA soccer world-cup ;-). She´s one of our spoiled upcoming stars...

Michael and the UNLIMITED TEAM in Todtmoos 2006
Photo by Dorothea Rink from www.fotocommunity.de - Thank you!

Michael with the Unlimited Team in Todtmoos Sunday Jan 29th (photo by Wolfgang Hermann) 

Dino (in the front) and Leya after finishing 4-dog class in Todtmoos. 
Thanks to Wolfgang Hermann from www.fotocommunity.de who sent us this beautiful picture

Michael in Todtmoos 28/29th January 
Thank you very much to Axel Stein from www.fotocommunity.de who made this great shot of Michael

Mushing in Germany

I found this picture from Uli Schlotterbeck on the homepage of the Alpentrail. It´s a famous mid-distance stage race in the Alps created and held by Lutz Binzer and his crew. It´s worth to have a look on www.alpentrail.de
I hope this musher on the pic didn´t happen something worse and he and his dogs are fine. But I think it shows the energy and power a dog team has and that mushing isn´t that safe sport everyone who is not involved thinks. It´s more than standing on the runners and let the dogs work, it needs a lot of energy, physical and psychical fitness of the musher, too. Stay safe everyone and have a great mushing season.
Melli

Alpirace

The race is over...
The two stages in Pitztal Michael has had clean runs with happy and healthy dogs. But Apanatschi his main lead dog didn´t work that happy as usual, because of this they didn´t find their fastet galopp and ended with an overall 10th place (still not too bad in a field with 35 starter).
The last stage was in Nauders/Reschenpass. On the 1st day (Jan 11th) they´ve had to follow a trail over a ski piste with not very good snow conditions; they have had a missing security net on the trail, some teams got on a wrong trail and ended on a highway. The same with Michael´s team. As he saw the highway he wanted to use the snow hook but there was no chance: under the few snow was a paved way!! The team ended up on the highway with a car passing our leader´s head 5 cm with approx 100 km/h. Michael and the dogs were shocked; after getting them stopped and turning back on the right trail he finished the 5th stage 10th place in general and decided not to run the 6th and last stage the next day. He wanted to save the dogs health and happyness and thought to run the same trail next day would be too shocking. He scratched (knowing his 10th place in general would possibly not be changing on the last day) and drove home the same day.
Now they´ve recovered a few days at home and continued training yesterday. They´re looking for a good race in Todtmoos Jan 28th/29th and the European Championchips in Italy 3-5 Feb.

Alpirace update

After 2 days of the Alpirace Michael was able to keep his very good 7th place from the 1st day in unlimited class. The second day he put Snowy, a very fast but unexperienced, shy dog in lead. Snowy was afraid of the huge amount of spectators and because of this they had trouble leaving the start line and crossing the finish line (she stopped 10 meters in front of it !!)and she stopped at every photographer for giving a nice smile ;-). But nevertheless he only lost 2 minutes of the 1st day time and kept the 7th place overall. Michael is looking forward to the next 2 race days in the Pitztal, must be a hilly trail which seems to please more our dogs than the flat high speed trails (this is made for our upcoming stars for next season - our yearlings).
The Alpirace dogteam: Apanatschi (L), Diabolo (L), Sira (L), Cheyenne (L), Shy, Jenny, Dolly, Buster, Dino, Snowy (CoL), Lilly, Spacey, Bad Girl, Leia, Milka and Little
Today is rest and travel day. Recover well and good journey. We press all our paws for tomorrow. Melli
You can follow the Alpirace and see result lists and videos at http://www.alpirace.info