Embrace Life

I had a nice quiet, relaxing weekend for the most part, but I did manage to get myself out of the house on Saturday and to a show Saturday night. Early in the day I walked down to the dog yard (this is where most of the dog teams are kept for the winter, just outside of town in an open area near the park so heading out on the land with a sled is relatively easy) to watch Siu-Ling (my roommate) and her friend David take the dogs out for their first run of the year.

This is one of the dog teams closer to town with the mid-day sun setting in the background.

This is the dog yard with Siu-Ling’s team making up the string in the front, while the rest of the teams can be seen in the background. In other communities frequented by polar bears they have to keep their dogs in pens, but that is not an issue in Iqaluit.

I arrived before they did, so I had some time to take some pictures of the dogs and give them all a good scratch and cuddle. They are all very friendly. Caru is in the far end of this picture hiding behind Gigi. He is the oldest male of the group, but not the most dominant. He has some social issues and is submissive to most of the other males. Next is Gigi the small white female. She is mother to the six-month old puppies Bo and Shubert, who are now bigger than she is! I really like Gigi! The big black male is Giller, Gigi’s litter mate. He is only three, but he is Siu-Ling’s biggest male and he has been really testing his grounds lately, causing some trouble with dominant males and taking a licking for it, though he holds his own. When I was at the dog yard last weekend I witnessed my first dog fight, which involved Giller (who was tied at the time) and Adam, the dominant male of the group. Giller wouldn’t back down to Adam so they got into it. It happened right in front of me and really took me by surprise. They were surprisingly vicious, though they fought fair (no ear tearing, leg biting, etc.) and aimed for each other’s scruffs, trying to overpower the other by sheer force. Adam took Giller in the end, and was clearly quite proud of himself for it, running up and down the line bragging about it to the other dogs.

Next to Giller in the picture above is Tua, Siu-Ling’s alpha female. Tua is awesome! She’s got a great howl and she loves to pull and knows how to get everyone excited about a run. She is mother to Adam and Lewis (litter mates), and Gigi and Giller (making her grandmother to the puppies) and sister to Caru. The goofy brown pup on the far left is Shubert.

In this picture from the right is Bo, puppy number two, then Adam and his brother Lewis. Adam is the dominant male, and because he has his equally large brother to back him up, they are a force to be reckoned with.


From the right is a better look at Lewis, Lillian (half sister to Tua and Caru – they shared the same mother but different litters) and her brother Bedford on the end. Lillian is great, super friendly and loves a good tummy rub. Bedford is very sweet, but very submissive. He gets picked on by some of the bigger boys and I once caught him hiding in his house when Adam and Lewis were unleashed. Poor guy...

I must say, I like the girls the best; all three of them are lovely dogs, but really the whole team is pretty awesome, each of them with their own personality and endearing qualities.

Just a goofy picture of Shubert...

This is Larry. He is on one of the other dog teams and I love him. He is so pretty!

Because it has been so mild here there isn’t enough snow to run the dogs with a sled (you can see quite a bit of tundra showing through the snow in the pictures), but Siu-Ling wanted to get the dogs out for a run nonetheless. In times like these they actually run the dogs with a quad. Being the first run of the year and the first time the dogs were all of leash together in some time, especially with the trouble that Giller has been causing as of late, Siu-ling expressed some concerns that there would be issues while getting the dogs harnessed and lashed to the “sled”.

This process involves letting the dogs off and getting harnesses on each (they are really good about coming when they are called, and allowing you to put the harness on, though Tua wasn’t very impressed with me, her look said I was doing it all wrong). Then Siu-Ling lashed them to the “sled” one at a time. This is a really critical time to be in control of the team, having them go into a down command as soon as they are on the line to avoid entanglements, skirmishes, etc. This is when Siu-Ling is most stern with them and they clearly respect her authority… well, most of them. It was the first run of the year after all. It was impressive to watch; it has clearly taken some time to develop that kind of control, they would have eaten me up.

When she finally had everyone harnessed and lashed to the “bike”, she was trying a few exercises to encourage them to follow commands when all hell broke loose. I couldn’t tell who started it, but Giller finally got what was coming to him. He may have started it, but either way he was ambushed by half the team and schooled pretty fiercely. They actually managed to get him off his feet and onto his back. I have never seen such a big dog tuck itself into such a small ball, with his tail and legs tucked in tight to his belly, protecting his soft under parts. Generally, from what I’ve seen, which is very little, they fight pretty fair and mostly grab onto each other’s scruffs. I was pretty scared for a moment, and Siu-Ling had to get in there with a whip to break it up, but he didn’t even shed a drop of blood. He looked awfully sheepish though. It was probably good for him. The worst though was when Lewis jumped onto Bedford shortly after the first fight was broken up. This was completely unprovoked and made me feel really bad for Bedford, but with that one broken up, Siu0Ling quickly got the “sled” moving before anyone else could cause any trouble.

So they just put the bike in neutral and use the breaks when they need to. Most of the teams up here are run in a fan formation, with the lines of varying lengths so the dogs aren’t all running on top of one another when the trail is narrow. Even the puppies took off after them once they got moving; it was pretty thrilling to watch. I even got a little emotional watching them ride off into the mid-day sunset. That was a lot of emotions packed into a few short moments! Generally, once they get moving the troubles are few and Siu-Ling didn’t have any more problems with the team after that.

In the evening I went to see Susan Agkukark perform at a fundraiser for the Embrace Life Foundation. The Embrace Life Council is a non-profit charitable organization with a mission to support and encourage Nunavummiut to value life. Right before the show I saw her over by the side of the audience getting pictures taken with people and signing autographs. I always find that kind of cheesy, but I thought to myself “if dad knew I could get my picture taken with Susan Aglukark for my blog and I didn’t, he would not be impressed”. He wanted to get his picture taken with Polar Man while he was here (Polar Man got a new mask, by the way… did I tell you about Polar Man? I’ll save that for another day). So I went over and asked a woman to take our picture and as she was preparing to click they called Susan to the stage and didn’t I turn to find 200 people watching me get my picture taken with her! Embarrassing!

Her performance, though not well attended :( was wonderful. It was only a $10 show! Such a shame that the house wasn’t packed!

On Sunday night Siu-Ling very generously invited me join her and some friends for dinner and I shortly found myself sitting at the table with four pretty incredible women, three of which own their own dog teams, and two of which have been living in Iqaluit for 20 years. The eldest of the group, Mattie has been on several trips to the North Pole and presently trains people from all over the world on northern survival techniques. In fact, she has written a book called “On Thin Ice: A Woman’s Journey to the North Pole”. She is also an artist and teaches pottery at the Arctic College. We talked about everything from quilting to dog team dynamics, very engaging conversation. Now I think I want to make a quilt over the winter. You’re going to have to give me some pointers Kay!

That's all for now...