You may or may not know that Homer is well stocked for bald eagles. The Daily Show even did a segment about it a few years ago (which is no longer available on the Comedy Central site, for some reason). A local resident, Jean Keane, fed them for years from her home on the Spit.

Jean died early this year, and the town council voted to end the eagle feedings at the end of March. This past Friday was designated as the final feeding day. I’d never been to one of the famous feedings, so we packed up the dogs and drove down to the Spit.

I’ll go into more detail about the whole experience later (it’s late here, and I’m really tired), but when the guys started flinging fish out onto the beach, the air was filled with eagles. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Friday, I received my first assignment for a potential part-time job. I haven’t actually discussed the terms of the job with my employers yet, so I won’t be posting anything more about it until I know the details.

Anyway, it took us down to the Spit on short notice, so we packed up the dogs (including the boss’s dog, as Libby hadn’t made it back yet), and headed down there. After I finished my assignment, we took all the dogs for a walk on the extremely windy beach. Skippy was kind enough to manage all three dogs while I took some pictures.

She had her hands full:

A couple of friendly birds looking for handouts were nearby.

Not yet, the tourist season won’t start for another couple months, little one.

Most of the businesses on the Spit are elevated up to road level, as the shoreline drops away a little too steeply. Here are the pillars holding up a series of restaurants and touring companies.

We managed to stay out on the beach for about 10 minutes, before running back to the car to regain the feeling in our faces.

Sunday, we took Ashlee and Macgee with us to run errands in town, then took them to the Spit to run around on the beach. Last time, it was covered in ice, but this time it was just really really rocky. And cold. Very cold.

Skippy took Macgee’s leash and walked around while I took pictures. The sun is still at about a 40° angle from the horizon most of the day, so the pictures are super contrasty.

I think I need to go down and take pictures later in the day, maybe just before and during sunset. If I don’t do it soon, I’ll have to wait until after midnight to capture a sunset.

Macgee even crept out into the water, and he’s usually apathetic, if not outright aquaphobic sometimes. He actually enjoyed it this time, pouncing on kelp and nosing under rocks for new smells.

This is my attempt at describing what it’s like for me in Alaska. I’ll take a typical day and break it into separate posts, so you aren’t overwhelmed by text. This is the fifth post, covering the sled dogs. Don’t miss the other posts: Mornings, Afternoons, Evenings, and Nights!

We have a lot of dogs here. Thirty-nine, to be exact. Out of those thirty-nine, nine are retired and don’t run the sled, four are puppies and don’t run the sled yet, two have congenital defects that affect their breathing so they can’t run the sled, leaving twenty-four to run, with a range in age from 2 to 13 years old. They are all Alaskan Huskies, which really have no overarching visual characteristics, so they all tend to look different. Alaskan Huskies are bred more for physical traits (non-webbed toes, brains, strength, speed, etc), and sometimes other breeds are mixed in to add some variation or boost specific traits. We do have a neighbor that runs full-blooded, gigantic malamutes, which basically looks like a pack of bears pulling a sled.

As any pet owner knows, every animal has it’s own personality. Sled dogs are no different. Each individual dog has a distinct personality, with all the features that go along with that. Some dogs are easy-going and get along with any other dog, some are aggressive with only certain other dogs (usually other dogs of the same gender), some take commands better than others (we call those “lead” dogs), some are kind of dumb but are extremely strong (we call those “wheel” dogs), some just love to run but aren’t so beefy (we call those “team” dogs) and some are lazy and don’t pull the sled as much as the others (we call those “get your lazy butt up there!” dogs).

Having worked almost daily with these dogs for over 6 months now, I can easily rattle off any number of habits or hang-ups for each dog. Meadow is a little nervous, and barks at anything she doesn’t agree with, like me moving faster than a walk. Ace is dumb and happy, and tends to follow around any other dog placed in his pen, much to the other dog’s annoyance. Whistler does a happy dance every time I start to put food in his can. Ghost will stand up and wrap his forelegs around you, staring intently into your eyes, hoping you either have more food or time enough to scratch his ears. Lu ran the Iditarod for another musher, but had to be dropped from the race because she wouldn’t eat. Now, she eats anything she can find, and has to be on a perpetual diet so she won’t resemble a hairy sausage with legs. Yes, I could probably go on forever, or at least a lot longer than most of you are willing to read.

Many of the dogs are related, and a good number can trace their ancestry back to Iditarod racers. The sibling sets here are: Boogles, Ghost, and Gusty; Motley, Goblin, Monster, and Beauty; Hunky, Icky, Ringo, Alex, and Rocket; Iceworm, Whistler, Moose, Chopper, and Stinky; Skyler, Indigo, Redoubt, Underdog, and Cindy; Noodle, Ace, and Picard; Mouse and Tiger; Can Can and Pumpkin; Rosie and Meadow; Feather, Shaman, Diggity, and Farmer. Match them to the pictures below for fun and genealogy!

As I mentioned, there are nine retired dogs who don’t pull the sled now. They are Skyler’s sibling group, Noodle’s sibling group, and Hunky. Skyler’s group is the oldest in the yard, turning 16 this year. Noodle’s group is next, turning 15. Hunky is 13 this year, and just wasn’t into running much anymore. Since we’ve been here, age and its related sicknesses have claimed three dogs: two from Noodle’s group, Buffy and Xerox, and a dog we think was 17 or older, Sister (who, despite her name, wasn’t related to any of the other dogs in the yard). Alaskan huskies live anywhere from 14 to 17 years, like most dogs their size.

Our boss takes great care to socialize the dogs, which some kennels neglect to do. These dogs are all very friendly, though they get excited to see new people and tend to all bark at once at first, which I’m sure can be intimidating to anyone who is nervous around dogs. But they are all very well behaved, and only bark on a few occasions: 1. Feeding time, 2. Hookup time, 3. Neighbors taking their dog teams out, or 4. Something unusual is happening (moose near the yard! strange car coming up the drive! loose dog!).

Okay, time to meet them. I’ve posted some pictures before, but consider this the high school yearbook of the sled dogs. All the dogs are pictured here, except Beauty, who was absent for picture day. I’ll add her in as soon as I get a make-up picture taken. Beauty has been photographed and added!

Next: Part 6, The End of the Beginning

We lost a dog to old age on Tuesday.

Xerox was 15, born here in Alaska while I was still in my junior year of high school back in Indiana. He was an excellent lead dog, and sired many of the younger dogs in the yard. I first met him when I visited last May, and he had dug a massive hole in his circle. The hole was big enough for several dogs to lay in, and he would drag his food bowl down into it and eat in relative peace, below all the ruckus generated by 30+ hungry dogs.

He would dance for pets, running around his circle and hopping, then coming back for more. He got sick a couple of months ago, and eventually stopped dancing during his slow decline. We kept hoping he would rally back and be fine, like some of the older dogs tend to do, but his downward spiral was irreversible.

Goodbye, Xerox. Run forever, now.