A Trail Dog Team

Here I am going to give you some basic knowledge of how I put a team of trail dogs together, the commands and what I expect each dog to learn for the position he/she runs in.

Leaders

Leaders are the brains of the team. A good trail dog leader will remember a trail the first time he travels it.

I train them to run on ice, through water, to run on trails and to run where there is no trail.

The commands I teach them are: OK, stop, stay, left, right, easy, on-by, rock & roll, over left, over right, pick-em up, left left come, right right come, up, around and take-me-home.

I think most of these commands are self explanatory so I will not explain them all.

OK : is the release word for specific commands, In the case above "OK" releases them from the "ready" command  which starts them moving.

easy: slows them down

pick-em up: speeds them up a little

on-by: tells the leader to travel by whatever we are passing

left left come & right right come: tells the leader to turn in the opposite direction that he/she is traveling.

rock & roll: tells them to run as fast as they can.

The leader that learns all or most of these commands earns the position of main team leader. All the other leader rankings are based from this point downwards.

The leader sets the pace for the team.

Swing Position

The Swing Position dog has to have speed, I only require them to learn the basic commands. Though a few of my leaders came from running the swing position and I recognized that they were learning the commands that were given to the leaders. These dogs are generally smaller than the wheel dogs. There speed will match that of the leaders.

Wheel Dogs

Wheel dogs are your power, they take up the bulk of the pulling when your in a turn. The drive in these dogs is to do nothing more than pull the sled and run, and generally never quit pulling. I only expect them to learn the basic commands.

Let me make a few points here. When running small teams (8 or less) most of the dogs will learn the commands over time.

Teams traveling in a caravan style, over a period of time, start running in a format of "follow the leader", meaning they will follow the main team wherever they go.

Mushing

You are expected to help out in small ways, like holding a dog in place, some customers help in harnessing the dogs and putting them into their positions. It just depends on how much you want to get involved.

The following commands are the only ones that you would have to know: stop, stay, left, right, ok, and easy.

There are only two rules in dogsledding:

1) Never let go of the drive bow, unless you are attaching a snub line (rope) to a tree or stomping the snowhook (anchor) into the hard pack trail.

2) Never trust your snowhook

I hope this gives you all a little knowledge on mushing. As I create the pictures, I will add more to this page.