The goal is even simpler... provide as much energy to the dogs through their food...as they are using while running!

But what kind of energy? Thats the big question for us! It used to be, when we lived outside of Teller, on the western edge of Seward Penninsula in Alaska, that we would feed almost entirely natural food.

That means we fished a lot! All summer long we kept our nets in the cold Bering Sea... catching Whitefish, Tomcod, and Dog-Salmon. Feeding some of it right away but putting aside most of it (freezing or drying) to get us through the long winter when we weren't fishing

When we were fishing the dogs would eat nothing but fish, fish, and more FISH! They loved it. We would boil up 20-30 fish whole, in an old 50 gallon drum cut in half and heated over a propane cooker. The dogs would gobble up this yummy soup and never get tired of it. Then in the winter we would add a little dry kibble (15-20%) to stretch out our fish supplies. And when it was really cold, and the wind was blowing really hard, people would give us old, or unwanted seal fat to boost the dogs energy reserves.

It was a great diet and the dogs never seemed to be wanting!

Since we moved to Talkeetna we haven't been able to feed that way. Now we feed almost entirely dry kibble in the summer mixed with some dried egg and fish meal. In the winter, we cut back on the kibble and add ground chicken to the dogs diet... about 50/50. When we do that, we take out the fish meal and dried egg. On very cold days or if the dogs are training very hard and feel a little thin to us, we add beef fat to their daily feedings.

Summer: water is always available, feedings once each evening. (for +/-20 dogs 20lbs/day)

Fall: A thin (watery) soup in the morning after training runs. A full feeding in the evening. (for +/-20 dogs 30lbs/day)

Winter: A full meal in the morning and evening, soup or snack after (durring) each training run. (for +/-20 dogs 30-40lbs/day)

Spring: Depending on training and weather feeding is a mix of winter or fall feeding.

We snack our dogs fish, beef, horse, or moose.

Generally we have found that we have to soak our dogs food in water in order for them to get enough water in there system to stay hydrated. Our dogs simply won't drink plain water! We have tried and tried but to no avail... So even though we have heard and read that seperating the food and water is a better way to do it, we have not had success with this method.

What we do is mix all the feed ingrediants into 3.5 or 5 gallon buckets and add warm water to them. Then we let the water soak in for a half hour or so and then ladle it into the dog's dishes. Simple as that!

We have never really used supplements before... I think that all the fish we used to feed, guts and all, more than took care of giving the dogs a great, balanced diet...nothing scientific about that, just a hunch!

But we are starting to add vitamin E and fish oil to the diet because as training has started to get more demanding this fall (2005) we are having some trouble with bloody stools. We think this might be a nutritional problem since we have ruled out intestinal parisites. The hope is that the Vitamin e and fish oil will help increase the natural production of vitamin K... which is a blood coagulant. That's the plan anyway... check in with our training logs to see if it works!