The alarm went off all too early; Josh woke up with a headache. He knew he'd better be getting used to short nights, since he'd have several in the next two weeks. The Warsaw Run had always been pretty much a night race; at one time, most of the second half of the race had been in daylight, back when Mark and Mike had taken 20 hours for the round trip, but more and better dogs, better training, more experience and greater competition had shaved many hours off the race.
Even with the start time pushed back, only the mandatory four-hour stop in Warsaw kept the winners from getting back before the crack of dawn. No one had broken the 12-hour barrier just yet, but it seemed only a matter of time. There had been proposals to eliminate the mandatory stop, and that would get the time down to about nine hours, with breaks, but 100 miles without a major break would be pushing it for some of the less-seriously trained teams. There had been talk of extending it
out to Walsenberg, winding the route around a bit, and making a 200-miler out of it. Josh and Tiffany had even made a demonstration run one weekend the year before, just to prove it could be done, but there wasn't enough enthusiasm for it just yet.
So, it was almost entirely a night race. To top it off, he'd be on the trail most of four or five nights on the Beargrease, depending on how it went, and the Michigan 200 was an all-nighter, too. Given a good sleep-in the morning before, Josh knew he could pull an all-nighter without any problems, but he suspected things would get a little groggy on the Beargrease. That was unexplored territory for him, and he didn't know a great deal about what to expect.
But that was still a few days off. He drug himself out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and went out to do the chores; it wouldn't be long before Tiffany would be over, to take her team to school.
It was still dark when he got outside, although there was a hint of dawn in the east. There was a glowing in the sky to the north; perhaps there was an aurora out there, but it was hard to say. It was clear, but cold, probably below zero, although he didn't bother to check. It wasn't often that you got several nice days in a row in Spearfish Lake in the winter, and that made the weekend not sound too promising.
Inside the barn, he set the water to running, carrying hot water from the trailer. While he waited for it to warm, he measured out dog food into the cement mixer, then went to the refrigerator, got several pounds of still-frozen meat scraps, and began to chop them up with an axe. Chopped up, these went into the mixer, too, along with the warm water; mixing the food with water ensured that the dogs got enough water into their systems, always a problem in cold weather.
The dogs were always happy to see him carrying the five-gallon buckets full of dog food. There were always a few friendly words as he dipped food into each dog's pan. He tried to concentrate on Tiffany's dogs first, because of their regular early morning school run. He had just finished up feeding his own dogs, and was laying out Tiffany's gangline when she showed up.
"The usual suspects, I presume?" he asked Tiffany, still yawning in the early morning cold.
"Pretty much," she said. "I think I got the weekend's lineup figured out while I was laying awake last night, so I'll concentrate on them."
"Who are you going to want?"
"George and Dancer in front, of course. Dasher and Prancer in swing, then Garfield and Snoopy, Comet and Donner, and Mongo and Hemp in wheel."
"Should be a good lineup," Josh observed. It would have been about what he would have taken.
"I'd really rather take Pipeline than Garfield, and have him in wheel instead of Hemp, but that would leave Phil short a dog," she said.
"Yeah, we owe him a couple, for giving us Nimbus and Shack, if nothing else" Josh observed. Nimbus, along with George, had been the parents of his five `diesel dogs' and Tiffany's three yearling `funnies dogs'. Shack, again with George,was the mother of Tiffany's `reindogs'. Both of the Alaskan Iditarod veteran dogs had been the core of the puppy breeding program; Nimbus had produced her last litter, but there were four litters of Shack dogs around the dog lot and in the
puppy pen; George hadn't been the father of all of them. "The thought crossed my mind that we could put together a Warsaw team for him easier than a Pound Puppies team," he added. I don't think he'd win anything with it, but he might get in the top ten. I kept thinking last night that I'd like to have Scooter, too. Under the circumstances, it wouldn't hurt to have all the dogs go that distance."
"See if you can get him out here for another night run tonight," she suggested,. "Maybe we could bounce it off of him. We need to concentrate on night training more. As long as he's here, we can get everybody out for thirty miles or so after dark every evening for the rest of the week, take Friday off, and be ready to rumble on Saturday."
"Sounds good to me," Josh agreed. "I'll get everybody else out for ten or fifteen this morning, just to blow the cobwebs out, then we can get serious this evening. Say, get started around six."
"Fine with me," Tiffany said. "We'd better get started, or I'll be late."
They turned to hooking up the dogs, and once again, Josh's mind turned to a problem he'd promised himself he wouldn't think about until the racing season was over with.
Tiffany wanted to run the Iditarod badly, when she was eligible, in two years, and Josh was considering it strongly. Any Iditarod run in two years would have to pretty much involve the dogs they already had, except for four or five that wouldn't be up to it in two years, and some of the twenty yearlings and puppies that were out in the puppy pens. They needed, at a minimum, forty active racing dogs between them to come up with 32 needed to start the race, since some dogs
would wind up being nonstarters, for whatever reason. Even that didn't cut them a lot of slack; the pros running the Iditarod usually had twice the dogs to come up with one good team, much less two. Assuming they got ten or twelve really good dogs out of the yearlings and puppies, that would be enough for a rookie run at the race, and that was about as big a kennel as they could handle, anyway. If they didn't get that many good dogs out of the puppies, they'd have to buy or borrow developed
dogs to fill out the teams. That really wouldn't be that big a problem; Josh could think of several in the Spearfish Lake area that ought to be capable of going to Nome, given proper training, and some of them were Mark's or Mike's.
But, there'd have to be a crop of puppies coming along every year as replacements for older dogs, somewhere around eight to ten a year in hopes of coming up with six or seven good replacements annually. Raising and training puppies was one of the best parts of their hobby, but they'd let themselves get into a problem: there was too much of George out there. He'd fathered nearly half the dogs in the kennel, and they were going to have to be careful about which dogs they bred
in the future, and George couldn't really be a part of future breeding plans, for the same reason.
It seemed obvious that they'd have to breed `George dogs' with Georgeless dogs', but which with which, for the litter or two they needed, was going to be a problem. There were about five or six candidates out there among the George dogs, but not as many, among the non-George dogs: Scooter, Pipeline, a couple of others, and maybe Switchstand, if they decided they were going to concentrate more on sprint racing after the Iditarod, the main reason that Josh had held onto
Switchstand, anyway. Josh and Tiffany had agreed to wait until the season was over with, to see how the candidates ran, and if that would help them with a decision, but it was something to be constantly considering.
It would be nice in the next couple years to pick up another one or two more really good Alaskan dogs, because things were going to get real complicated in the next generation, otherwise. Nine of the puppies coming along were Scooter and Shack dogs, and maybe they could try to get another litter out of Shack, by some other Georgeless dog, just to spread things out, but there was a lot of Shack out there already, too. He and Tiffany had spent many evenings debating, arguing,
picking at the problem, and they were no closer to resolution than they'd ever been.
Thinking about the breeding problem now was the last thing on Josh's mind, and he knew he'd have to get his mind off of it, somehow. Fortunately, there was an easy answer. Once he'd gotten Tiffany on her way, he finished picking up, went inside for a quick shave, then went out, got in his pickup truck with the dog box on the back, and headed for the Spearfish Lake Cafe. It'd been days since he'd had a breakfast more serious than corn flakes; a real breakfast and the conversation
that went with it would be nice. He timed it just about right; he got to the overpass just as Tiffany was coming up the rail grade, and he slowed down to see her run the team overhead. They were really whistling, too, moving right along.
Josh wasn't a regular at the Cafe, but there was an empty seat at the big table, so he sat there, anyway. Mark and Mike were there, along with Bud Ellsberg, his boss, and a few others he knew.
"Tiffany kept you out late again last night, huh?" Mike asked.
"Yeah," Josh said. "We had a real good run, though. Ran most of the Pound Puppies route. The trail is pretty good, and the grade was just about perfect."
"Your dad ran down to Kremmling yesterday," Bud said. "We're going to have to go to Warsaw, then Kremmling again Friday, though. Even if we get more snow, that should leave things in pretty good shape. I'm figuring on going with your dad Friday, to get the trestle bypass put in. We're going to be trying something different. We're gonna take your dad's snowmobile and the Burro. We'll set the snowmobile off with the Burro, and we should be able to break the trail down the
valley in just a few minutes."
"Not a bad idea," Josh said. Taking the Burro -- the construction crane -- would mean that they wouldn't even have to wrestle with the heavy snowmobile. Though running the grade was relatively boring, because it was so easy, the railroad engines did a great job of trailbreaking. "Anything going to be out there today?"he asked.
"Should be quiet," Bud said. "Have to do a Camden run tomorrow, to get ready to go to Warsaw Friday, though."
"Guess I'll run a bit of the grade today myself," Josh said.
"Maybe I'll see you," Mike said. "I'm going to try and sneak out this afternoon and get a few miles on."
"Got your team figured out for this weekend yet?" Mark asked.
"Pretty well," Josh admitted. "Couple of spots I haven't figured out, yet."
"How about the Beargrease?" Mike asked.
"I know what dogs I'd like to run," Josh said. "But I don't want to make a final decision until we see what happens this weekend."
"Wish I could go with you," Mike said. "But, I don't dare leave town that long until I can get another reporter up and running." Mike usually only had one general assignment and sports reporter on the Record-Herald staff. He'd lost his last one at the first of the year, and now was having to fill in himself. It had put a real crimp in his training for the Pound Puppies; Josh and Tiffany and Mark had helped where they could, but he was still going to have his hands full to run the
one-day race. "Maybe next year."
"You still want to leave first thing Thursday morning?" Mark asked. Mark and Tiffany were going to be his dog handlers and pit crew for the Beargrease -- Mark, because he could get free, and Tiffany, for the sake of the experience.
"Sounds reasonable," Josh said. "We could make it to Duluth in a long day, but that gives me the chance to stop a couple of times a day to let the dogs stretch their legs, and maybe get ten or fifteen miles on them each day on the way up, and still make the musher's meeting on Friday."
"Sure you don't want to take an extra day? We could scout the countryside out a bit."
"Love to," Josh said. "I don't know if Tiffany can afford an extra day off school, though. She's losing better than a week, as it is."
"Go ahead and take it," Mike said. "They've only got a half a day on Wednesday, anyway."
"Well, let me think for a second," Josh said. He'd planned on giving the dogs the day off on Monday, then thirty-milers or so on Tuesday and Wednesday, to keep them near peak, and make the final decision on which dogs to take. He planned on taking fifteen or sixteen dogs, twelve to start with, and three or four for spares, in case one or more dogs didn't seem like they wanted to start. This would cut short the local training by a day . . . but, no, it wouldn't have to. He could still run
thirty miles early on Wednesday, then load up the truck and go. He made his decision. "I can pretty well load the truck on Tuesday, and then, I can run the dogs for a couple hours early on Wednesday, then we can load up and go. If Tiffany's only got half a day, we can leave right from the school about 11, and everything should come out about right."
"That'll work," Mark agreed. "Everything should run all right for a few days. Nothing Harvey can't handle, anyway."
"You want us to call you if the system goes down?" Mike asked.
"Naw, if Harvey can't fix it, there's probably not much I can do at a distance," Mark said. "Spearfish Lake will just have to get along without Internet for a while."
Once upon a time, Mark had worked for the Spearfish Lake Telephone Company, and about twelve years before, he'd started getting interested in computers. Since the mid-80's, he'd been Spearfish Lake's leading computer dealer and repairman, at first only on a part-time basis. Then, Spearfish Lake Telephone had been bought out by Americom, who promptly transferred him to a place down south of Camden. Mark stayed in a motel there for a couple of weeks, took six weeks
accumulated vacation -- just enough to get him over twenty years service, and get his retirement vested -- then turned in his retirement papers. In order to build up his computer business, he'd become Spearfish Lake's first, and only, Internet Service Provider, and dealt a little in phone systems, besides. He'd had `marlin.com' operational just less than a year, but growth was rapid. To help out, he'd hired an absolute computer genius, Harvey, who was still in eleventh grade at Spearfish Lake High
School, but who was sharper on some stuff than he was. He wasn't sure whether Harvey's main interest was his pay -- which was very good -- or his direct access to a T-1 connection. Mark's main worry was that Harvey wouldn't want to work for him after he graduated from high school.
"You know," Bud commented wryly, "There was a time we used to sit around this table and talk football."
"Couldn't prove it by me," Josh said. He'd been eating breakfast on occasion around this table ever since he'd started working for Bud -- in the eleventh grade himself, then -- and he'd become an an all-region running back, as Bud had been a quarter century before. Even in those days, though, they hadn't talked football, at least very much: it ran more to railroading, and computers, and dogs, and not necessarily in that order.
"There really was a time," Bud said, then changed the subject: "Any chance you could drop by for an hour or two today? The traction controller's sticking on 602 again."
"Can't be the module," Josh said. "I changed it." Even computers were sneaking into railroad engines; Bud had sent Josh to a school down in Illinois to learn how to work on them, and the traction controller was among the things on the C&SL's two SD-38s that even Ed Sloat, Bud's long-time diesel maintainer, didn't know how to fix. As computers went, it was pretty primitive, but it was a key to efficient operation of the 2500-hp unit. The SD-38s had more than twice the capacity of the
older, smaller GP-7s and GP-9s, especially in pulling the long rock trains in the summer months that made up the majority of the C&SL's business.
"Gotta be in the sensor," Bud commented.
"Changed that, too," Josh said. "I think it's just a crummy connection, somewhere."
"Well, if you can find the time, come in and play with it for a while," Bud said. "If you can get it working, fine. If not, we'll piddle along until after you're done with the 200, but we want to have it working right before the pits open."
"I'll find the time," Josh said. Bud had been so good about being flexible to let him train and run the dogs, it was the least he could do, but a couple hours could easily turn into three or four, just at the peak of the training schedule. "Probably this afternoon."
It was at least theoretically possible to get in two short runs, work on the SD-38, and run a few errands, like to the grocery store, but it was going to be hectic, Josh knew as he drove back out to the dog lot. Well, there was one thing he could do to ease matters.
He went inside, got on the inner layers of his trail gear, and carried the outer layers back outside, to find Phil Wines pulling in. "Glad I caught you," Phil said. "Wanted to get out and work the team a little."
Josh remembered his discussion with Tiffany from earlier, but decided not to break it to Phil just yet; she might change her mind. "Might as well," Josh said. "I wouldn't put on any big miles, just work on getting the team to work for you. We're going to do another evening run tonight, and we'll put on some miles, then."
"Sounds good to me," Phil said "I really enjoyed that run last night."
"OK, here's the plan. I've gotta go in and work on an engine this afternoon, so we'll work together on getting stuff set up. You can take the five we decided on last night. Run them out to 919 and back, and if they're still frisky, run them around the training trails a little. Keep it under about fifteen or twenty miles or so."
"Who do you think I should have leading?"
"Crosstie, out to 919. After than, you might want to try Scooter or Signal in a double lead, or maybe just Scooter in single. You play around with it, and see what you're comfortable with."
"No problem," Phil said. "You want me to help you get hooked up first?"
"Sure do," Josh agreed. "With what I've got in mind, the help will be appreciated. You won't have any problem with five dogs, and we can put maybe three of them together early."
"What are you going to do?"
"Take everybody else," Josh said. "Every running dog on the lot."
"That's going to be a heckuva team."
"Everybody here needs a little big-team experience," Josh said.
They got out two sleds. On the older wooden sled, one of the ones Mark had built years ago, they laid out a gangline for five dogs. Josh took the plastic Tim White sled, the little lightweight sprinting hotrod, and started laying out gangline. He started doing math in his head -- it was going to take seventeen dogs. This was going to be interesting; he'd rarely run a team that big, and it wasn't the best possible training, but it would make for fast, if interesting miles. After the slow miles yesterday, everybody needed a little speed, anyway, the main purpose of this exercise, after all. "Who do you want up front?" Phil asked.
"Switchstand," Josh said. It was going to be short and fast -- Switchstand's best setup. "Alco and Geep in swing, and we'll just work out the rest as we go."
It wasn't terribly easy -- some dogs ran best next to certian other dogs, while some dogs had to be kept separated. Two females were in heat, and they had to be kept separated from most of the male dogs -- a couple had been neutered before Josh and Tiffany had gotten them -- and Josh ran them in wheel, with four other females in front of them, and the pair of neutered males ahead of them. That might keep disorder to a minimum and prevent an unplanned decision on next year's breeding program. By the time they got all seventeen harnessed up and placed on the gangline, the joint was jumping. Even after all the running yesterday, the dogs were still eager, jumping, doing four-off-the-floors; even they knew that this was going to be a day for a speed run. "I'll get my last two," Phil said. "You better get these guys out of here before they rip the bumper off your truck."
Josh stood on the runners, and looked out over the eager team. Switchstand was a long, long way away. "God, I've got to have a hole straight through my head," he thought as he reached down, popped the tieline to the truck and yelled, "HIKE, HIKE, HIKE!"
The sled took off like it was mounted on rockets, and it was strictly hang on for Josh. He stomped on the sled brake and yelled "EASY", more pro forma than anything else, since this team wasn't doing anything easy, but Switchstand did listen to his "GEE" command to take them up the spur to Mark's and the North Country Trail. Once he got them straighted out heading across the field, he just let them run, in hopes they'd work off a little of their morning dash before he got on the trail itself.
Jackie was just walking out to the shop as the team raced through the yard at what had to be a good 25 miles an hour, if not the sixty or seventy it felt like. "Lotta dogs!" he heard her yell as he shot past. The team raced down the runway, then the trail spur, and just barely made the haw turn onto the North Country Trail, heading for town, the same way they'd gone last night, and the two miles down to the crossover to the rail grade, again the way they'd gone last night, went by like a flash. Normally, he'd have expected the dogs to have run the first burst out of themselves by now, but they were going even faster, if anything.
Going down the crossover, Josh happened to think that he needed to get the dogs out on the lake, at least once, before the race, and this was as good a time as any, and besides, there wasn't as much to hit out on the lake. At the corner, he gee'd Switchstand out onto the rail grade, following Tiffany's normal route to school. At least on the rail grade, it was smooth and straight; he could relax a little, and not have to worry about ducking things. It was time to glory in the team's easy speed; they weren't bad sprinters, even though he'd been training them as endurance dogs.
He didn't think too much about the sled tracks and dog tracks on the grade as they raced down it; after all, Tiffany came this way twice a day, to and from school, but as they rounded a little bend, he could see a dog team ahead of him -- quite a ways ahead, half a mile or more. Probably one of the other locals out getting a bit of training in; there were a half dozen or more teams in the Spearfish Lake area, besides the four on Busted Axle Road, though none as ambitious as Josh and Tiffany's.
The big team reeled in the other team rapidly; as quietly as the dogs were running, the other musher might not even know Josh and his dogs were there. They drew to within a hundred yards or so, and all of a sudden, Josh could make out the foot-wide Siberian Husky patch on the back of the other musher's parka, and let a big grin cross his face: it wasn't one of the other local mushers, but Greg Mears, their main, but friendly rival in dogsled races across the state since the first state championships they'd attended, and President of the Camden Dogsled Association. Mears was probably getting in a little extra training before the Warsaw Run on Sunday. Well, there was always time for a little psychological warfare. Josh let Switchstand get as close as he dared, then shouted "TRAIL! TRAIL! TRAIL!" at the top of his lungs. That set the dogs to barking; it was Run-8 Kennels policy to teach the dogs to bark on that command -- to let others know they were coming through.
Mears turned his head around, to see Switchstand and that whole thundering herd of dogs bearing down on him, and quite quickly too. There was nothing to do but to yell "GEE!" to his own ten dogs, to get them to the side of the trail to allow the team behind to pass. Fortunately, there was a low spot to the right, and Mears' leaders took the team off into it, and to the deep, unbroken snow, bringing them to a crawl, as Josh yelled "HIKE! HIKE! to his eager team.
The big team shot by Mears and his dogs with what was probably close to a twenty-mph differential. "Hi, Greg, how's it goin?" Josh yelled as the team shot by, but he was going too fast to make out the response -- but he suspected that it was something to the effect of "Fucking hotrod!" He looked back over his shoulder, to see Mears getting his team back out into the broken trail and picking up speed, but it was clear there was going to be no catching up. If Mears was inbound, his ten dogs probably already had close to thirty miles on them, and that wasn't going to be any match for seventeen dogs with only five or six miles on them. He turned back a little later, as they were coming out of the woods and heading for the state road overpass; Mears had already fallen far behind.
After another few minutes, they reached the snowed-up trail down to the lake, again well-broken by Tiffany's repeated passage, and they took it. A hundred yards out on the lake, still following Tiffany's trail, Josh turned the team to parallel the shoreline the mile or so down to the city beach, where the start and finish line would be. Sure enough, there in the beach parking lot was Mear's truck, dog box on the back, a travel trailer attached. He gave Switchstand a HAW, to turn him out onto the lake, and a little later, another HAW, to keep him turning back; they were going far too fast for a "Come Haw" to turn around. In a minute or so, they were heading back up the trail, still going like hell.
Josh thought about stopping the team to change leaders, to get something more like a trail pace, but decided that if the dogs wanted to go like hell, they might as well get it out of their systems. They turned off the lake, ran up the trail to the rail grade, and turned onto it, just as Mears was coming the other way. In five miles, they'd have had to have pulled out a good two miles on him. This time, they saw each other coming in time to pull their teams to the side of the path, and slow them down to a walk. They eased past each other, Josh hoping nobody wanted to fight, or there'd be a hell of a mess, but all the dogs were too tired. He brought the team to a "Whoa" within talking distance, just past Mears. "You got a fast team there," the older musher said.
"Dunno if I can keep up with Tiffany," Josh said, and more or less truthfully. "She's got a hell of a fast team."
"You sure blew by me, back there," Mears said, still a little taken by surprise.
"Yeah, I didn't think they were going too bad for forty miles," Josh said, perfectly willing to let Mears think that was how far he'd come this morning. Then, he turned serious. "Hey, there's not going to be any trains out here today, but one tomorrow, maybe, and one Friday for sure."
"I called the railroad," Mears said.
"Look, I'd like to stand and talk, but maybe later," Josh said. "I gotta get these dogs home and go to work."
"I'm camped down at the park," Mears said. "Drop by if you get a chance."
"I'll try," Josh said. "See you later."
"See ya," Mears called, as both mushers hiked their teams again.
The stop had noticably slowed the big team, and they never did quite get back up to the speed they had been carrying going down to the lake, and that was just fine with Josh; one rush down the woods trail like that, behind seventeen dogs, was enough, thank you. In the fall, he and Tiffany had occasionally hooked up as many as 40 dogs, pulling the pickup truck, but that was for strength training, at a slow speed, and on the road with no snow. This was another matter entirely. However, Josh did make a mental note that sometime, it'd be fun to hook up all 32 dogs on the rail grade and see how fast they could make Warsaw. It'd be fun to do once. Twice, he wasn't so sure.
As it was, he had about as much as he wanted to handle going back up the woods trail and the spur to Mark's. Switchstand, of all dogs, didn't want to make the turn and acted as if he wanted to run some more; surprising, as this was about as far as he usually liked to go, but he'd been getting more endurance and less sprint training this year than in previous years.
Could Switchstand do the Warsaw Run? More importantly, could he do it at a competitive speed? It wasn't anything that Josh really wanted to gamble with, but if Phil did the Warsaw Run, it might be a good chance to find out. If Switchstand could manage a Warsaw Run, and still be going good at the end, it would solve a lot of problems . . .
Switchstand had never acted like an endurance dog, although he had been the mainstay of the sprint racing for three years. Josh applied the rule of thumb he'd used all this season: Could Switchstand make it to Nome in two years? It seemed hard to believe -- but it was worth a little more investigation. After all, they'd only gone about twenty miles, well within his proven range at speed. But, years past, at twenty miles at full bore, he'd seemed about ready to pack it in for the day. On the other hand, human sprinters, as they aged and mellowed and slowed, often turned into quite competent endurance runners . . . the thoughts kept Josh occupied until they were almost back at the dog lot.
Even after a fast twenty miles, it was hard to get the dogs to stop. Josh quickly set the snow hook, then ran the longer tieline to the nearest solid object. He peeled out of his parka, and glanced at his watch, almost in shock -- they'd been gone a little over an hour, even with the time for the brief chat with Mears. That meant they'd managed close to twenty miles an hour. "You good dogs!" he called to the team. "Who said you weren't sprint dogs?"
If you could hold that kind of speed to Warsaw, even with the break, you'd be under ten hours. Not twelve, ten; in fact, close to nine. He didn't think they could do it, but it was sure something to think about. The dogs seemed ready for more, and right then, he really wanted to run them -- but he wanted to run them tonight, too, and not overtrain them, so this was about right. Besides, it was going to be a helluva lot of work to break the team down.
The day was warming up; he peeled out of his overpants, as well, before starting in on the chore. First, he went in the barn, ran the water till it was warm, and filled a bucket with warm water and a little dry dog food, just enough to flavor it a little; after a run like that, the dogs needed a little hydration. He grabbed a stack of pans, and went down the line of dogs, giving each a pan with some of the flavored water. He gave Switchstand and the swing dogs their shot at the water, then the rest of the dogs, and started breaking down the team. At three or four minutes per dog, it took nearly an hour to get everybody back on their tethers with harnesses off, and even then, he'd have liked to take longer, since he wanted to spend more time socializing with the dogs than usual; they'd been dynamite this morning.
He was just giving the dogs another shot of warm, flavored water when Phil pulled in with the gang of five.
"How'd it go?" Josh asked as he helped Phil tie off the team.
"Frustrating," Phil said. "I just can't get Crosstie over a trot, and a slow trot at that. Not in the lead, not in wheel."
Josh shrugged. "Crosstie is good at pup training, but it was a tossup whether to include her in the training lineup this year. The only reason I kept her in the lineup was because I wasn't sure how Alco would work out. Alco is working out well enough that Crosstie is now strictly a training and emergency dog." It was tough to say it; Crosstie had been a key player on the team for years, but she was slowing now, as the team was getting better.
Phil shook his head. "It sure is going to be a long day Saturday, if I take her."
Josh smiled. "I could let you take Switchstand."
"That would be great . . ." Phil started, then frowned and said. "Switchstand's not a pound puppy."
"I wasn't talking about the Pound Puppies, I was talking about Warsaw."
"You're kidding! Warsaw?"
"It's a little iffy," Josh conceded. "With Crosstie out of it, that leaves only one spare dog, so you might not have a full ten to start with if anybody's out of it Saturday afternoon," he explained. "The joker is that I don't know if Switchstand can make it to Warsaw and back at any kind of speed, but he could get you halfway to Warsaw like a rocket sled on rails. If you have to drop him in Warsaw, Signal could probably get you back all right. But, I think if you hold Switchstand down early, he can make it."
"Josh, that's a little bigger than I was thinking."
"No reason you can't handle it," Josh said. "You had a bigger team yesterday and last night, and did fine. You're not going to have the best dogs, but you will have some damn good ones. If you can pace Switchstand right, you stand a good chance of getting in the top ten."
"What's right?"
Josh shrugged. "If I knew, I'd tell you. Switchstand went thirty, thirty-five miles at a pretty good pace last night, and could have gone farther, and then went real good today. About all I can say is to try and hold him down to where the rest of the team is comfortable. Look, I'm primarily interested in the dogs having a good workout at that distance, but not getting torn up in the process, so you'll want to take it a little easy. You can handle it."
"Fair enough," Phil said. "Look, you're going to have to give me a once-over about a few things, like how to handle the stop, feeding at Warsaw, and things like that."
"Shouldn't be a problem. You've listened to Tiffany and me talk about it enough over the years, but if you want to listen to me cuss at a traction controller, you're welcome to get another seminar this afternoon."