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