Preparing for the Yukon Quest

Along with the ointment the students did another special project, that I am very excited about. Students decorated plastic bags for us to use when we pack our gear in the drop bags. When you are out on a long challenging race it is the little things that cheer you up. Like a clean dry pair of socks, or the wonderful artwork of young student. See some examples of the students excellent artwork below. These bags will not only cheer us up, there is no way we are going to loose them in the white snow. Thank you again to Mrs. Koble's 3rd grade at Roosevelt Elementary School in Mankato MN, we really love your artwork!

So along with the foot ointment another important part of foot care is booties, and we are packing up and sending out lots and lots of booties. For each team you will need a full set for every planned run, as well as extras so you can replace any that get holes, or get lost on the trail. We carry enough to change the entire teams booties if we need to after running through water. The amount of booties that get sent out is pretty huge. And there are different sizes, so you need to make sure you have enough of the right sizes to fit your team correctly. It is a big part of the planning that goes into race preparation.

And on that note, I know people have been wondering: which dogs will be traveling with us on the Yukon Quest trail?
we are still working out the final line up, but we have chosen groups for each of us to work with as we finalize our line up.
We are training a few extra dogs, just in case. We want to make sure we have a full healthy happy team to bring to the starting line in Whitehorse. After the Yukon Quest, the dogs that did the best and had the best attitude will go on to make up the Iditarod team I (Jodi) will be running.

As we work up to the big race we have been taking turns bringing our race teams into the garage for some extra TLC. Here are some photos of race dogs resting in the garage: