Teleidoscope

Thu, Mar 19, 2009

Flying Home

Posted at 7:05 pm MDT to Travel

I'm packing for a quick trip home. Air connections between Mobile and Denver are pretty gnarly, so I'm flying Friday evening (arriving very late), and Monday morning (leaving very early. But it means I will spend 3 nights in my own bed.

Dinah Kitty will be annoyed.

I'll also be attending a Philharmonic concert.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment

Iditarod

Posted at 6:58 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

This year's Iditarod finished this week and one of the news sites had a bunch of photos.

I was pleased to see that the sled dogs' equipment includes little jackets and booties when the conditions get really bad. And there was one picture of dogs at a rest stop laying on top of hay in little yellow sacks like sleeping bags. They were very cute, with just their heads sticking out of the yellow covers.

The hay seems to be standard procedure, so there is something between the dogs and the snow while they rest, but the sleeping bags (or maybe little tarps wrapped around them?) only showed up in one picture.

The Iditarod is a sporting event I'mm a bit ambivalent about. I'm sure the sled dogs enjoy racing, just as race horses do. But I think humans sometimes take excessive advantage of the animals trust. The weather turned bad near the end of this year's race, and at least three dogs died.

If it is available on DVD, I would like to rent the movie "Attla/Spirit of the Wind", (about the famous mucher George Attla) which I saw years ago. It's a beautiful film. And I remember being surprised to realize that what sled dogs ate in the old days in the native villages was mostly salmon... George Attla and his father built an amazing waterwheel salmon catching device to get the fish to feed his first competitive team.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment