We decided to put one 'A' team in the Groveton race. The trail froze hard overnight but it warmed up in the mid 30's during the race. I had a hard time picking which leaders to start with but settled on Sirius & Snitch. The team was Sirius, Snitch, Paxson, Obi, Wired, Flutie, Qui & Harry. We took off and the team did well for the first few miles. Then we started going up hills and the dogs were not interested and focused on running. They would stop and jump off the side of the trail to eat snow and roll around. After a few times of this I thought maybe a leader change would improve the team, so took Sirius out and put Pax up front. That helped the team stay on the trail but they were still not really working as a team and seemed to lack enthusiasm. Bailey Vitello caught as and we chased off him from a bit, but when we lost him the team just really slowed. At one point I got frustrated with them goofing off up the hills and stopped to do some ' Mushing Bootcamp' methods with them going up the line and pulling on their tuglines and telling them 'everybody pull'. This helped some as they stopped goofing some after that. We went through some twisy parts in the woods which the dogs really liked. Snitch was slacking off in lead after so I tried Wired up front with Pax. That went well for a few miles then she was being overrun because she was trotting too much. I put Sirius back up front and that went better. Nothing too exciting happened for a few miles, then came the dirt road you had to go down. It was bare dirt so had to run up it or the sled couldn't move. Another musher caught me and passed me through here. I got to the top of this mtn trail where it is all in the sun, Obi was slacking off and seemed to struggle being further up in the team so I put him back in front of wheel and moved Wired up there. He seemed better there and pulled a lot more. Obi is one of those dogs who doesn't have some of our other dogs top speed but he is a constant dog who keeps loping after 20 miles so he keeps the teams speed up the further you go. By this point Greg Vitello caught me and we traveled together quite a bit. We passed each other back and forth for a bit trying to get our teams to really 'leave' one another but we seemed to be going the same speed. At one point a few miles before the finish I called my guys up and they stayed in front of his team. They were loping down the hill and instead of going straight to the finish tried to go right. Got them going straight and we finished.
We finished 9th of 12 teams with a time of 2h 29m 1s for 27 miles. I was very proud of Paxson, that dog is amazing and a super dog. He always impresses me with his speed, drive, focus and amazing feet. I have yet to stress that dogs speed, it just always seems incredibly easy for him. It's a trait we really love and are trying to breed more for. We expect to have lots of Paxson kids in our future teams! The team just didn't have their usual 'spark' and 'edge' in this race. I know they are capeable of more, not sure why they seem bored lately but they are. Something to improve on and look forward to next year though! I loved the trail and really hope we can field two teams next year!
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