Training and conditioning are what it is all about! It is the reason for everything else... the feeding, the breeding, cleaning all that poop, and even the racing! (racing is just an excuse to get to be with the dogs all year!)

A few definations before we get going:

Training: Training is the art of communicating to a dog the things you want him or her to do, ways you want the animal to behave.

Conditioning: Conditioning is work involved in strengthening the dogs muscles and cardiovascular systems.

Age: Mushers typically divide up dogs into three age groups: Puppies (0-6months), Yearlings (6 months - 1.5, 2 years, anyway the first Full winter of running), and Adults (the rest of their lives, until they retire to sitting around the woodstove all day!).

Conditioning is not a huge factor for pups in the same way that it is for yearlings and adults. But. they still need to be exercised... taken for short walks or loose runs and it is also a great idea to build agility and coordination by placing fun obstacles (tables, ramps, logs, etc...) in the puppy pen for them to play with.

Yearlings: At about 6 month of age Pups are introduced to running in harness. There are as many different ways of doing this as there are mushers! This is a commmon theme in mushing, a sport that seems to attract independent minded people, and is a testement to the versitility and inteligence of the dogs...i.e that they can learn in so many different ways! But in anycase, introduction to the harness is a turning point in the pups life (and to me anyway, marks the boundary between puppyhood and a yearling well on her or his way to becoming an adult!) Generaly you can put the yearling in a small team right next to an experienced adult and just go for a short run (less than a mile). The adult dog will teach the yearling almost everything it needs to know!

Some things the musher need to watch for though are if the yearling gets scared or if she has a tendency to chew lines (these are two of the most common difficulties that yearlings need to be trained to overcome). If she gets scared, there are a few main tricks to make her more comfortable. A couple that ussually work are; run her in a smaller, slower team, or carry her in the sled until you turn around to come home then put her back into the team (at the begining of the run, the "hook up," all the dogs in the kennel just go crazy with barking, wanting to go on the run... and then when you leave they race out of the kennel at breakneck speed in all their excitment... both of these things can be scarry for a young dog not yet used to running in harness...but on the way home things are calmer and not so scarry)

As for line chewing... It is best to never let a young dog chew through a line. So as Trainers, mushers try to set up a sitituation where the dog will never have success in chewing. This can be done a couple of ways. First you can invite all your friend over and bribe them with Moose Steak dinner to help you hook up and stand guard over all the young dogs. This sounds great but hardly ever seems to work! A second method is to slip pieces of garden hose over the areas of line that a dog can reach to chew. This works pretty well, the dogs can't chew through the hose very quickly, so it gives the musher time to correct the behavior before the lines are chewed through and half the the dog team is running loose down the trail! A problem with it though, it seems to me anyway, is that chewing on a hose probably feels pretty good in the dogs mouth and so makes it an inviting target. Also, it requires the musher to correct the behavior. I think a far better method is to splice metal chain into the lines where the dogs could chew. In this way, because it doesn't feel good to chew on, the dogs don't do it all on their own! After a short time chewing a line is never even a thought in their heads and you can take out the short pieces of chain and put regular lines back on!

Conditioning of yearlings is a slow wonderful process of watching your pups grow ino full fledged sleddogs! A young team will usually start out running very short distances 1-3 miles. And they should be going really slow and working really hard. Hauling wood or water for the cabin is great practice! They really learn to work hard and build up muscle mass that will help protect their joint latter on when they start going a little faster.

By the end of the first year (first FULL winter of running, dogs are ussually almost 2 years old) , yearlings are capable of running a long ways (50,60, 70 miles!). Yearling teams often run in the Iditarod, but their mushers take long rest between runs... because even though they are physically able to run a long distance, mentally they are still young and not quite muture enough to run like the adults.

Adults: If you have done everything right with the dog as a pup and yearling there should not be much that you need to Train an adult dog. At most you should be working on brushing up leader commands and introdcing young adults to becoming leaders.

Conditioning is now the big thing! Working with the dog to make sure that it is physically prepared to do the things you ask it to do! This means that as a musher you really need to identify what your mushing goals are for the year: Do you want a team you can take out on sunny weekends for short fun runs? Or, do you need to do some serouis work with your team, hunting, hauling wood and water (people still do rely are their dogs for this!)? Or, maybe you want to run Sprint Races? Or even Distance races?

Whatever you choose, you condition your dogs with that end goal in mind and take slow carefull step to get there!

The time of the year is important to training (meaning both Training and Conditioning now! Sorry for the confusion). The year is broken up by seasons... Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. And for each season there is a unique training goal!

It is also great to just spend a lot of time hanging out in the kennel building relationships with the dogs, playing with the new pups, teaching them a few tricks, building new dog houses, and generally just having a good time with the animals!

Fall: Fall is when the work begins! When the leaves start falling and the rains turn cold... that's when the dogs really start getting down to it! Mushers will typically start training before the snow falls with a fourwheeler or some other type of wheeled cart. The general idea is to go on short, slow, hard pulling runs. Though, here again, every musher is different, and there are as many different ways of conducting fall training as ther are mushers! Still, the main goal... building muscle mass to protect the joints from injury latter on, when speeds increase... is pretty much universal regardless of who the musher is or what type of mushing she is training for. As is the fact that hard-pulling Fall time runs help to build work ethic and every musher wants a hard working dog in their team!

Winter: Ahh winter! Snow on the ground, cold tempertures... the BEST time of the year! Now is the time mushers start to put miles on their dogs, or if sprint racing... building speed. Training/conditioning really (and this time I mean REALLY) varries from musher to musher in the winter. In the Fall everyone needs to put big muscle on their dogs, to toughen them in from their summer of fun and relaxation. So everyone generally trains the same way. But with winter, each musher starts to focus in on his or her own goals so training methods really deverge from musher to musher... to learn more about specific training methods for different types of mushing, check out the links on the side and (if you can get them) some of the books, also listed.

Spring: Spring is the funnest time of the year! The days are long, nearly 24 hours in some places, the weather is a bit warmer, there are still no bugs, and boy are those dogs strong from all your hard work durring the winter! Spring mushing is for fun! To get out and enjoy the country! Take the family camping, really work with those pups born the spring before, and dream about the pups due this year. You get the picture, Spring before the snow melts, is all about enjoying the rewards of all your hard work durring the Fall and Winter!

The year in the life of a musher and his dogs! it is a lot of hard work, everyday you are out in the yard, on the trail, spending time with the dogs. At times it can be unbelievable frustrating... dogs and humans speak different languages after all! But the beauty of watching a dog you saw be born, grow through all her life stages, nurtured and trained and conditioned, take the lead in your team and run with joy and grace, is something un descibeable!