What can individual mushers do to support and promote the sport?
Any time someone in a community owns more than a couple of pet dogs, that person is living in a fish bowl. Neighbors pay attention, sometimes more attention than is welcome. I think it is vital to the sport that all mushers demonstrate the highest possible standards of dog care and humane training. It only takes a small mistake, observed by the neighborhood busybody, to cast the entire sport in a bad light. While the busybodies notice the things we do wrong, we forget sometimes that our neighbors also take note of the things we do right. When people can see that our dogs are healthy, happy and enthusiastic about performing in our sport they are much more likely to support dog mushing and those of us who chose to share our lives with working dogs. I ve been rather surprised at how much of an interest other historical reenactors have taken in the Stardancer team. I recently took some of my dogs to a reenactment and within just a short time nearly every participant there found some excuse
Any time someone in a community owns more than a couple of pet dogs, that person is living in a fish bowl. Neighbors pay attention, sometimes more attention than is welcome. I think it is vital to the sport that all mushers demonstrate the highest possible standards of dog care and humane training. It only takes a small mistake, observed by the neighborhood busybody, to cast the entire sport in a bad light. While the busybodies notice the things we do wrong, we forget sometimes that our neighbors also take note of the things we do right. When people can see that our dogs are healthy, happy and enthusiastic about performing in our sport they are much more likely to support dog mushing and those of us who chose to share our lives with working dogs. I ve been rather surprised at how much of an interest other historical reenactors have taken in the Stardancer team. I recently took some of my dogs to a reenactment and within just a short time nearly every participant there found some excuse
