2nd Place Finish!

It's been five years since the Punderson Sled Dog Classic has happened in the snow belt of beautiful northeast Ohio. Ironically, there wasn't enough good snow conditions for the race. But that definitely changed this weekend!

Snow fell, and fell, and fell steadily for days before the race, leaving an awesome foot of snow for the doggies.


Team coming out of the starting chute


Saturday saw beautiful blue skies and 22 degrees - perfect!



I am not a sprint racer, and Punderson Sled Dog Classic is a sprint race. Sprint races are shorter distances depending on the number of dogs, i.e. 2-dog = 2 miles, 4-dog = 4 miles, etc.

Punderson is exactly 55 minutes from my house, so I figured, what the heck, let's have a go at it! Big Brown and Ruffian are yearlings, so it's an excellent opportunity to expose them to a race. Dogs need to get used to all the other dogs, passing other teams, and....spectators. Lots and lots of spectators.

Big Brown loved getting acquainted with the fans...


BB reaches out for a pat from a fan. BB loves fans, both big...


and small

We had some snags on the first day of the race which significantly costs us some time. Mainly, a "team" of Airdales (yes, you read correctly) jumped my team as I tried passing them on the trail and caused a huge tangle. I had to actually hook down and unwrap Big Brown's back leg three times!

Here's a hint people: if your dogs are dog-aggressive, please do us all a favor and stay off the racing courses!

Then, my bar brake broke. I ran the entire winding, zig-zagging course without any brake whatsoever.

But, today, I had a virtually flawless run and made up time significantly. The trail set up nicely with the zero degree temps we had last night, and was hard and fast today...and so much fun!

Surprisingly, I won 2nd place!


Me with my 2nd place trophy! It will go right under the Jack Pine trophy from last year

And, more than that, I got to hang out with Amanda.


Amanda Stanoszek at the starting chute of the 3-dog class. Her team is made up of all rescues

Amanda is someone I've met through this blog!


Amanda and me at the Punderson race today

She is just getting into sleddoggin, but is hooked after her first race this weekend. All of her dogs are rescues! To think, they were days away from being euthanized, and now, they're livin' it up on the trail! What a great second chance!

Stay tuned as we head to another race next weekend!

NEWBURY, OH Punderson State Park will host sleddog races this Saturday and Sunday

If you're not doing anything this coming weekend and are interested in checking out what sled doggin' is about, come to Punderson State Park in Ohio's main snow belt of Newbury, Ohio! I will be there with my fantastic four to compete in my first sprint race in the 4-dog Open Class.

Now, sprint racing is different than the kind of mushing I've prepped my dogs for all fall. But given the changes that have happened recently, I thought this would be a good, local opportunity to give the yearlings some race exposure - which is exactly what they need.

For more information about the Punderson Sled Dog Classic, click here

I am very pleased to see this race is receiving quite a bit of local media attention from news stations and publications such as the Akron Beacon Journal and Crain's Cleveland Business.