Knitting, Spinning, Fiber and Yarn dying fun! Along with a bit of northern style adventure.
New stories include Dog Mushing in Alaska. Our trials and successes. Fun on the run!

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Catching up some

So this is how the story goes………..
Several months ago I saw a posting (yes it was originally my fault) a few months ago I saw a posting by a major oil/gas company Schlumberger (pronounced slumberjay). Jobs are hard to get up here and Jon wants to buy a plane…….so he will have to work for it right?
Anyhow they along with the State of Alaska were offering training for work up here. This is pipeline work. Cold and hard work. 12 hours a day 7 days a week and depending on contract could be 2 weeks on 2 weeks off or something similar.
So in order to be accepted to limited training and certification you had to send a resume and cover letter, that was a few months later followed by a phone interview and then a trip to Fairbanks for drug tests and physical fitness testing.
Jon who will be 55 this December passed it all. So yes he will be attending this training.
You are responsible to get yourself to Fairbanks (160 miles and in this weather 4-6 hour drive) then they will drive you to Delta Junction about 80 more miles away. There he will stay for 14 days of 12 hour a day 7 day a week training out in the freezing cold. I am sure it will also include some classroom training.

Then there is Miss Whoopsie Daisy. She is an Alaskan sprint race dog (which is a husky mutt). She was from a litter of 5. If you do the research Joee Redington https://www.adn.com/sports/2017/08/16/breeder-trainer-rac... or this is my favorite http://jukebox.uaf.edu/site/interviews/joe-redington-jr
Anyhow Daisy came from the last litter. Joee was in poor health for a number of years and decided for one last litter. I received a phone call one evening to come up and help his wife Pam get a temp on the mother. They told me that the mother had killed one pup. 4 left and not doing well. Stayed there most of the night hand feeding 6 day old pups. As it turned out 2 more didn’t make it over night. The next morning we had another musher Brent Sass bring one of his bitches over to see if the remaining 2 pups would nurse. One did and the other kept trying. So after he went home later that night we put a muzzle on the mother brought her into the house in a kennel and let the pups nurse. Somehow the mother got the muzzle off and killed another pup. That leaves one. One after a day or so was thriving and taken back out to the dog welping area. Next day they found that pup had been bitten in the head and had excessive swelling and possible infection.
That was it. I ran home and told Jon that I would like to give that pup a chance, she was just 10 days old and unable to nurse. Jon (Dr. Doolittle) said sure we can give it a try but…….you are not keeping her. Wean it and send it back.
I brought her home, and we only had some cattle antibiotics available so Jon did the math and for a pup that size it was a ‘drop’ of antibiotic given intramuscularly(yes in an insulin syringe in her hind quarter). She only had a small chance at that point for survival.
After administering said drop, within just a few hours time the swelling had reduced almost by half. At this point we were not able to try and nurse her with a syringe. We have a farm about 30 miles away that has fresh goats milk and there was NO puppy formula in this tiny town of 70-ish people. So according to the internet goats milk is about the best.
Next day we administered another injection. Swelling almost completely gone by bedtime!
One of my neighbors was in Fairbanks and on their way home soon, stopped at pet supply for a large can of formula and bottles as the syringe thing wasn’t working so well.
Ok bottles in hand now and puppy is nursing better! I forgot what having a baby was like! Every 2 hours feeding. I think that I lost a couple of months time……..tending to puppy.
Next hurdle was that her eyes started to open and one was tiny (damaged?). The mother had bitten her head remember and one canine was very close to her eye. So either she already had a ‘problem’ or mom just created one or …….the swelling created one. Anyhow, blind in one eye puppy. Ok we can deal with that.
As she became more and more mobile we noticed her balance was way off. No problem there I will just be giving her more floor time each day to strengthen and improve her ability to compensate.
We are now at a point that she needs a human bottle……..no one in this darn town had one! Again someone was in Fairbanks and picked a couple up for me. Took her about 2 feedings to get the hang of eating from that bottle……..Now she has become a champ!
Moving right along……..we think that she may even be totally blind. Oh my now what? Well as time went on she has shown that she does indeed have partial vision in her good eye. Whew.
She got her name do to the fact that she was always falling over, up the stairs and even on a blade of grass LOL! Whoopsie Daisy!
Today…..she is just 17 weeks old. Getting around fine and knows ‘come’ ‘sit’ ‘stay’ and is totally potty trained. She has one strange quirk though. When she needs or wants something she paces and it is in a circle…….always to the left. LOL.
My biggest fear through all of this is that Angus wouldn’t keep her. But to our surprise he is very tolerant of her and even teaching her when he has had enough.
After just a couple weeks with Daisy……Joee Redington passed away. Very sad. Great man and family. So Daisy is ours to keep. A puppy……..man they have a lot of energy! I am hoping that later this winter she can go hang out with another local musher once in a while and just run with his dogs. She can’t pull until she is about a year old but if she can learn she can pull me on skiis or small sleds just not for a really long distance being the only dog.

Rewind to May-ish I got chickens! Chicks really but I have always wanted my own chickens. Bought 21, 6 meat birds and the rest layers. That won’t start laying until like September. But eh it will be fun!
Lost one as a fox threatened the chicken run. She must have been stuck in the corner a few minutes too long as after a week or so had to be dispatched as she was not thriving. Next one to leave was a hen that I am pretty sure got taken out of the run by another fox that climbed the fence! Both of these Foxes have been dispatched.
Ok so now I needed a rooster from the same farm I got the goats milk for Daisy.
And now I have 2 roosters and 12 hens. Eggs started coming in mid September and I will get between 8-12 eggs per day now. I am able to sell them almost faster than I am getting them. And now they can at least buy their own food! LOL.

Next entry will be a little catch up..............over the winter.

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