Well.... it is just the most important part of running dogs there is!

"Kennel Management" is how you take care of your dogs!

How do you shelter them? How do confine them? How do you feed them? How do clean up after them?

These are the kind of question every musher must answer based on where they live, what the climate is like, what resources are available, how many dogs they have, and what type of dogs they own.

So in general...

How do you Shelter (house) them?

That is going to depend on a couple of things:

1) Where do you live? How cold is it in the winter? Hot in the summer?

and

2) How much fur do your dogs have?

Depending on how you answer those questions you build your dog houses accordingly. But, basically, you want your dog house to be small- to conserve the dogs body heat- but big enough to be comfortable. Usually they are made of plywood, 2ft. by 2ft. by 2ft. with a small 1ft. by 1ft. door on one side. If you live in a very cold place, or have thin coated dogs, you may make a double walled version with insulation... or even add a door flap (like a cat door but bigger) to help keep in body heat. Building materials can very... plywood can be very expensive in rural Alaska... so maybe logs will be used, or even well cleaned and insulated 55gal. drums.

And if you live somewhere where it is hot in the summer, you will need to think about how to keep the dogs cool. Shade trees are great! Especialy, if they drop leaves in the winter and allow the sun's warmth in durring the cold months.

P.R.I.D.E

Health

Race Care

Confinment:

This is a sensitive issue! And one many annimal rights organizations take offense at!

Sleddogs are generaly happiest on chain tethers! It maybe hard to believe, but it seems to be true. Of course the chains need to be fairly long, at least 5ft., and many mushers prefer to set it up so that dogs next to each other can rub up against each other and play... but not so close that they can tangle, fight, or breed... a fine line that takes a lot of time and attention to get just right.

What happens, I think, is that since they have not taken the time to understand what goes on in a modern working sleddog kennel, they are not able to see a difference between a sleddog resting on a tether between runs and play periods and Cousin Joe's pet Fido who is chained up 24hrs a day behind the house...only ever seeing human attention if there are table scraps to toss out the broken down screen door! This attitude is unbelievably nieve and narrow minded... this type of un-informed fanatisism is the root cause for much of the Hate the fills the world today.

Although, in the grand scheme of things, the conflict between animal "rights" groups and mushers is a small one, it is edemic to world culture and creates un-nessessary conflict. It is our hope, and why we are part of Teaching WoW, that through lifestyle-sharing learning expeirnces, understanding and consideration... tolorence... can be built for different ways of life and belief structures!

The average sleddog eats like a PIG! They need so many calories, relative to their body weight, that it is unbelievable! So many calories in fact, that when it is cold out and the dogs are working hard it can be one of the musher's hardest jobs to get them to eat as much food as they need in order to get all the colories their bodies demand!

It is just like that rare human who eats and eats and eats and EATS! But never seems to gain any weight! Dogs are just like that... in certain conditions they have a hard time eating enough food not to lose weight. Then how do Mushers get them the energy they need to stayfat and healthy?

Mushers have to feed food that is packed with good quality calories!

In other words, dense "fattening" food... patatoe chips! :)

But the dogs help us out a bit here... over time they have developed the ability to metabolize high percentages of fat in their diet. That means that under normal circumstances...light training, moderate temps... dogs will eat up to 20-30% of their total calorie intake in pure FAT! (see... patatoe chips!). The rest of their food should be high quality protien with just enough fiber to keep their stools tight. Dogs could really care less about carbs!

Then when things get tighter... very, very cold weather, hard trianing or racing... dogs need even more fat... up to 80% of their total calorie intake! Can you imagine what would happen to a human with a diet like that? Checkout the movie "Super Size Me" and all the health problems that guy has! But dogs LOVE it!

And so those are the main considerations mushers must deal with when planning the yearly menu for their kennel... but what foods do they serve?

Well, must mushers start with a high quality comercial "Kibble" or dry dog food. Because dogs digestive systems are easily upset by changes in diet, the kibble must consistantly be made of the same ingrediants (most dry dog food brands change ingredients regularly depending on market prices for such things as corn, chicken, fish, lamb, etc...). That means a musher must pay higher prices to get higher grade, consistant quality dry food. The kibble should also have mimimum of 30% protien and 20% fat.

The kibble acts as a base or foundation for most kennels' feeding programs. Then mushers generaly add meat and fat to their dogs diets depending on weather and the stages of training the are in.

Sources for meat (protien) include: Fish, Cow, Horse, Chicken, Lamb, Beaver, Liver, Tripe (not sure if liver or tripe are really meat, but I include them in here anyway!) Fish Meal, Bone Meal, Powdered Eggs...

Sources for fat include: Beef Fat, Chicken Skins, Turkey Skins, Beef Lard, Lamb Fat, Corn Oil...

And Finally... What do you do with their POOP?

It's a funny question but an important one! A musher spends endless time keeping their dogs well sheltered, safe and warm. They work really hard to keep them all confined in a safe manner that allows them to socialize with one another and the musher, as well, without being able to hurt each other our accidentally breed. And finaly, they plan and spend tons of money on food for their animals... all so they can spend those magical moments on the sled runners together... but what about the POOP! Mounds and mounds POOP!

It has to be taken care of! The dogs have to have a clean environment to be in...So mushers clean their kennels once, twice, maybe even three times everyday! And then what they do with IT all?

Remember that fast metabolism of dogs? All the food they need to eat? Well, it has to go somewhere! Mushers use a few stategies to deal with their dogs waste: One, run them a lot and all their poop is out on the trail... just kidding! But really, one stategy is to dib a big hole somewhere a little ways away from the kennel and pile all the poop in there. This works okay, but when it fills up you have dig another one, and then another, and another, and before you know it your whole yard is full of filled in poop holes! So a better idea that many people use is composting. This takes a bit of set up but the basic idea is to turn the poop into usable soil... this can take from between 2-5 years so you have to have an area large enough to store that much stuff in varouis stage of decomposistion... but it beats having poop holes everywhere!