I took Nika out skijoring both days this weekend. She’s still doing really well, although she wasn’t pulling as hard on the way back as she did last weekend. We had a lot of wind on Friday and it blew debris all over the trail, so not only did that slow us down, but there’s a lot more distractions for Nika. Andrea took a few photos as we came back to the house. If you click on the images you can see larger versions. There’s a sled dog team behind me in the first photo.

Andrea is out racing in North Pole and had plenty of handlers, so I decided to stay home. Instead of taking Nika for a regular walk, I waxed my skis and tried skijoring. Andrea taught her to do it almost ten years ago, but Nika hasn’t done it since, and she wasn’t very good at it back then anyway. Today I took her down to the Creek, put on my skis and hooked her up. She knew right away what was going on and she ran straight ahead and pulled like a champion dog. I have a two mile trail that starts on the Creek and then crosses up to the mushing trail in the forest for the return trip home, and Nika was hooked up for about two-thirds of it. On the mushing trail, she was pulling me fast enough that the wind was whistling in my hair and I was worried about what would happen if I fell down (I haven’t been skiing in ten years either…). Luckily, I managed to keep my balance, and except for dipping for poops, she kept up the pace the whole way.

I’m very proud of her. She did a very good job, and both of us had a good time.