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After buying a number of my dogs, I realized that I needed to start growing my team while spending less money. How do you grow a sled dog team without having to buy dogs? Puppies!! :)
The only thing is the females I own have not proven themselves to be breedable dogs. I knew I had to buy one more dog: a female leader who has proven herself in distance races, has experience being a mother, and has good bloodlines.
In comes Cosmo!
I bought this spitfire of a girl from Michelle Phillips, an Iditarod and Yukon Quest musher whom I admire and got to know a bit when she ran the Paul Johnson 450 in Unalakleet while I ran the Portage 200 back in 2012.
After emailing back and forth a bit about Cosmo I decided to go for it, and boy am I happy with this girl! She is incredibly sweet (although can get a little snappy with other female dogs), a fantastic leader, has a great attitude, and loooooves to run. She even ran and finished the 2013 Yukon Quest with Michelle's husband.
Michelle brought Cosmo with her when she came to Alaska for Iditarod, so I have only had Cosmo a couple months. She has proven herself already though!
I ran her in my team for the Two Rivers 200; and while I did not have her in lead for most of the race since we really just met each other, she was awesome!
I've run her numerous times in lead during training and she is a solid leader and quite the little energizer bunny :)
Cosmo came into heat during my race, so not long after returning home Cosmo and a lucky boy had a little "fun".
A dog's gestation period is only 2 months (nice, eh?), so Cosmo is due in a few days!
Puppy pen has been put together:
I found cheap chain-link fence panels and my dad helped me set them up when he was in town for board meetings.
However, a gate was not included. So I built one:
Whelping box has been built:
And we are ready for puppies!
I'm currently coming up with potential names, but I know I will be going with some kind of wine theme in honor of my family's business :)
Yaayyy puppies!! :D
