By Colin Spalding
We have had 4 training sessions this week, conditions have been very wet and on the warm side and humidity has been on the high side. Humidity is one of our main factors in deciding if we train or not, as it does affect the dogs’ performance, speed stamina and recovery. In my experience the hounds suffer more with high humidity than the Huskies do.
We trained Wednesday am, Thursday pm and Saturday and Sunday mornings. Gonzo and Dexter covered 24km over the 4 sessions. Two were speed sessions and 2 steady sessions, Diamond, Granite, Akiera and Sapphire covered 20k – again a mix of speed and steady sessions.
At the weekend we had visitors training with us and a total of 21 dogs there, which had the teams hyped up and we focused on passing and speed work and had two good sessions in muddy testing conditions.
Akeira
Each blog, we are going to do a biopic of one of the dogs, starting with Akiera who in January 2011 was our first husky. We naively purchased her over the internet, not really knowing what we were doing and joined in with people who were training Huskies locally and progressed from there.
She has always enjoyed running but is famous for not being fully focused and would much rather have a good nose at what’s going on round about her, while running at full speed, which leads to some interesting moments on the trail.
Even on Thursday evening’s session, chasing a rabbit into the trees resulted in me rolling about the trail in darkness. She has over the years had numerous wins and places as part of a 3 dog team with Kiera and Sapphire and at nearly 10 years old still loves her running, but most of all loves her roll about in the mud when she finishes her training.
She was the start of the amazing adventure we have had and will always be very special to us.
Dogs’ weights
Dogs’ weights this week:
Gonzo – 31.3k
Dexter – 24.8k
Cupar – 21.5k
Diamond- 17.6k
Granite – 18.6k
Akiera – 19k
Sapphire 18.1k
Kiera – 17.6k
We have been looking to add some weight to Gonzo and Dexter as they were feeling a bit light after the girls being in season so we have upped their feeds.
