Bad Hand
Veteran Member
I am still working on this one.
Sue and I had returned from selling furs and buying supplies and had just started back to our cabin at the edge of the Zerkel Wilderness Area when the snow machine broke down as usual leaving us to finish the trip on snow shoes. This was almost a 5 mile hike on snowshoes back to the cabin. On arriving at the cabin Sue in formed me that we were buying a dog team or we were moving or she was leaving. No more broken down snow machines period.
A month earlier we had gotten a letter from a musher (this is what they call a dog driver) in our post office box in Cowdrey it was addressed to “Trapper in C/O Cowdrey, CO”. The Post Master put it in our PO Box. Cowdrey, Cowdrey is a very small wide place in the road it consisted of a Post Office, a few houses and a General Store that generally didn’t have what you wanted anyway.
The letter was from Rodger and he had a dog team he wanted to sell us. The letter described the team, his address and phone number. Sue had tried to talk me into calling him right then but I had read all of “Jack London’s Books” and had watched “Sgt. Preston of the North West Mounted Police” with his dog team. The last thing I wanted was a snarling pack of huskies that would try to eat me the minute I walked out the door. If that wasn’t bad enough when ever you were driving the sled all they did was bark, they never shut up, well at least that is what they did on TV.
wanting to lose Sue or move I agreed that we would go into town in the morning and call Rodger. A month earlier we had gotten a letter from a musher (this is what they call a dog driver) in our post office box in Cowdrey it was addressed to “Trapper in C/O Cowdrey, CO”. The Post Master put it in our PO Box. Cowdrey, Cowdrey is a very small wide place in the road it consisted of a Post Office, a few houses and a General Store that generally didn’t have what you wanted anyway.
The letter was from Rodger and he had a dog team he wanted to sell us. The letter described the team, his address and phone number. Sue had tried to talk me into calling him right then but I had read all of “Jack Londons Books” and had watched “Sgt. Preston of the North West Mounted Police” with his dog team. The last thing I wanted was a snarling pack of huskies that would try to eat me the minute I walked out the door. If that wasn’t bad enough when ever you were driving the sled all they did was bark, they never shut up, well at least that is what they did on TV.
Since I didn’t want to lose Sue or move I agreed that we would go into town and call Rodger since I had to go back to town and buy the $.15 plastic part that had broken on the snow machine causing it to stop in the middle of nowhere, where most brake downs happened it never used brake down when we were in the yard. Snow Machines are in hebetated by evil sprits, at least this one was and it hated me.
For most people making a phone call is easy it was easy for us to get to the phone was the hard part. First there was the 5 miles by snowshoe to our 4X4 that was parked at the end of the road then there was the 25 mile drive to the only phone in Cowdrey. Sue said she would make the call and set up a time for Rodger to bring the sled dogs up so we could try them out to see how they would work for us.
Rodger would be up that next Saturday with the dogs. I was still apprehensive about this idea of a dog team but Sue was excited at the prospect of not having to snowshoe to the cabin every time the machine broke down or refused to start for no apparent reason. We drove into Walden and had lunch then to the snow machine shop where I bought the $.15 part except this time I bought several so it wouldn’t happen again.
Saturday was 2 days away so we were wondering what the dogs would look like and what was the breed of these Huskies. Sue was really excited about this would they be Siberians, Malamutes, or Samoyeds, I was wondering if they were going to try to eat me the minute I walked out the back door of the cabin.
Saturday finally arrived and we meet Rodger at the end of the road. He was already there and hooking up a drop chain on the side of his truck. Then he started unloading his dogs. They were not what we had expected they were a bunch of mutts only a couple of them looked anything like a Husky. 2 of them looked like wolves and one of those was impersonating a rabid wolf foaming at the mouth Rodger said her name was Fancy and the she got a little car sick.
They were all barking, screaming and jumping up and down excited to be able to run. Rodger had us help him harness the dogs. These harnesses weren’t anything like what we expected dog harnesses would look like these resembled a Chinese finger trap, we had a lot to learn and a short time to do it. The first 2 lessons were never turn loose of the sled handle bar no matter what happened or we would be pedestrians. This was something the sled dogs loved to do was dump the musher it is a great joke among sled dogs. The next thing he told us was never walk away from the back of the sled always walk to the front or we would be penetrations again.
Finally the dogs were hooked up and the screaming and barking had intensified I was sure this wasn’t going to work on my trap lines too much noise. Rodger picked up the snow hook then released the panic snap on the snub line that was looped around the front bumper of his truck. Immediately all the barking and screaming stopped and Rodger was gone in a cloud on snow. This I could deal with quite on the trap line was a good thing.
Dog Team (resv)
Sue and I had returned from selling furs and buying supplies and had just started back to our cabin at the edge of the Zerkel Wilderness Area when the snow machine broke down as usual leaving us to finish the trip on snow shoes. This was almost a 5 mile hike on snowshoes back to the cabin. On arriving at the cabin Sue in formed me that we were buying a dog team or we were moving or she was leaving. No more broken down snow machines period.
A month earlier we had gotten a letter from a musher (this is what they call a dog driver) in our post office box in Cowdrey it was addressed to “Trapper in C/O Cowdrey, CO”. The Post Master put it in our PO Box. Cowdrey, Cowdrey is a very small wide place in the road it consisted of a Post Office, a few houses and a General Store that generally didn’t have what you wanted anyway.
The letter was from Rodger and he had a dog team he wanted to sell us. The letter described the team, his address and phone number. Sue had tried to talk me into calling him right then but I had read all of “Jack London’s Books” and had watched “Sgt. Preston of the North West Mounted Police” with his dog team. The last thing I wanted was a snarling pack of huskies that would try to eat me the minute I walked out the door. If that wasn’t bad enough when ever you were driving the sled all they did was bark, they never shut up, well at least that is what they did on TV.
This snow machine break down was the last straw as far as the snow machine went. Not
wanting to lose Sue or move I agreed that we would go into town in the morning and call Rodger. A month earlier we had gotten a letter from a musher (this is what they call a dog driver) in our post office box in Cowdrey it was addressed to “Trapper in C/O Cowdrey, CO”. The Post Master put it in our PO Box. Cowdrey, Cowdrey is a very small wide place in the road it consisted of a Post Office, a few houses and a General Store that generally didn’t have what you wanted anyway.
The letter was from Rodger and he had a dog team he wanted to sell us. The letter described the team, his address and phone number. Sue had tried to talk me into calling him right then but I had read all of “Jack Londons Books” and had watched “Sgt. Preston of the North West Mounted Police” with his dog team. The last thing I wanted was a snarling pack of huskies that would try to eat me the minute I walked out the door. If that wasn’t bad enough when ever you were driving the sled all they did was bark, they never shut up, well at least that is what they did on TV.
Since I didn’t want to lose Sue or move I agreed that we would go into town and call Rodger since I had to go back to town and buy the $.15 plastic part that had broken on the snow machine causing it to stop in the middle of nowhere, where most brake downs happened it never used brake down when we were in the yard. Snow Machines are in hebetated by evil sprits, at least this one was and it hated me.
For most people making a phone call is easy it was easy for us to get to the phone was the hard part. First there was the 5 miles by snowshoe to our 4X4 that was parked at the end of the road then there was the 25 mile drive to the only phone in Cowdrey. Sue said she would make the call and set up a time for Rodger to bring the sled dogs up so we could try them out to see how they would work for us.
Rodger would be up that next Saturday with the dogs. I was still apprehensive about this idea of a dog team but Sue was excited at the prospect of not having to snowshoe to the cabin every time the machine broke down or refused to start for no apparent reason. We drove into Walden and had lunch then to the snow machine shop where I bought the $.15 part except this time I bought several so it wouldn’t happen again.
Saturday was 2 days away so we were wondering what the dogs would look like and what was the breed of these Huskies. Sue was really excited about this would they be Siberians, Malamutes, or Samoyeds, I was wondering if they were going to try to eat me the minute I walked out the back door of the cabin.
Saturday finally arrived and we meet Rodger at the end of the road. He was already there and hooking up a drop chain on the side of his truck. Then he started unloading his dogs. They were not what we had expected they were a bunch of mutts only a couple of them looked anything like a Husky. 2 of them looked like wolves and one of those was impersonating a rabid wolf foaming at the mouth Rodger said her name was Fancy and the she got a little car sick.
They were all barking, screaming and jumping up and down excited to be able to run. Rodger had us help him harness the dogs. These harnesses weren’t anything like what we expected dog harnesses would look like these resembled a Chinese finger trap, we had a lot to learn and a short time to do it. The first 2 lessons were never turn loose of the sled handle bar no matter what happened or we would be pedestrians. This was something the sled dogs loved to do was dump the musher it is a great joke among sled dogs. The next thing he told us was never walk away from the back of the sled always walk to the front or we would be penetrations again.
Finally the dogs were hooked up and the screaming and barking had intensified I was sure this wasn’t going to work on my trap lines too much noise. Rodger picked up the snow hook then released the panic snap on the snub line that was looped around the front bumper of his truck. Immediately all the barking and screaming stopped and Rodger was gone in a cloud on snow. This I could deal with quite on the trap line was a good thing.
