metachronistic

Deuce died today from liver failure probably caused by a problem with his bile duct or gall bladder. He was just shy of fourteen years old and was a very healthy dog except for a having a toe removed a few months ago due to a slow growing tumor and an incident a couple years ago where he somehow managed to break his tail (!?).

Dusenberg (he came from a litter named after luxury cars) was our first sled dog and our second dog after Nika. He was a tall, gorgeous looking husky with a great coat and very upright and alert ears. We got him in the fall of 2001 when he was four years old, and despite his many quirks, he was a great dog once you learned how to handle him so he felt comfortable. He was an outdoor dog for the first six years we had him, coming inside only for food. Whenever we’d try to keep him in the house beyond dinnertime he’d pace back and forth until we let him out again. Then, suddenly, in December 2007, he decided that being in the house was OK. It took several more months before he learned to lay on a dog bed instead of the floor, and by the end of his life, he actually preferred being in the house, curled up on a dog bed. After his foot surgery, he stayed inside every night, and often during the day while we were at work.

He’d still get nervous when anything changed or he heard loud noises, often grabbing a dog bowl and pacing around with it like a safety blanket:

He was a very sweet dog, and the only one in our yard that would run away from a fight instead of trying to get involved in it. Whenever I’d clean the dog yard, he would follow close behind me, patiently waiting for me to turn around and pet his head. And in the last year, he enjoyed playing with the kittens, pawing at them and pulling them around on the floor (video at the bottom). Every morning when I came down the stairs, there’d be Deuce curled up on a dog bed (he was afraid of going up the stairs). Tomorrow morning will be hard, not seeing his furry ears and bright face looking at me as I come down the stairs.

Rest in peace Mr. Deuce. We love you.

We’ve been wanting to let the kittens into the rest of the house for several weeks now, but when we got close to letting them downstairs we realized they could get into all sorts of trouble in the utility area in the bathroom where the water heater, pump, and washing machine are. Worse, if they got in there, they could climb around behind the shower and tub surround and we’d have no way of getting them out.

So I built the doors you can see in the photo. They’re made from clear pine. I’d originally planned on using “pocket-screw technology,” on the doors, but when driving the pocket screws from the back of the rails into the styles, they cracked the styles. I wound up using glue and dowels instead, and they seem solid. I was a little worried because the doors were so large, but they’re flat and slide easily in the tracks I made.

The image looks a little warped because it’s a series of photos that are joined together using the AutoStitch iPhone app. It’s a pretty good alternative when you don’t have a wide angle lens.

Today was the first day the kittens came downstairs (except once when Jenson escaped), and things seemed to go well. Nika and Piper have been spending nights with all of us, so they’re used to the kittens. Buddy and Deuce mostly seemed afraid. Koidern and Kiva were both very interested, and spent the whole time cautiously following the kittens around. After an hour or so we put the kittens back upstairs to let everyone relax. I opened up the gates again this afternoon and captured this video of Kiva’s interaction with Tallys (and a little of Jenson). Tallys is the one rolling around on the floor in front of the heater, seemingly trying to play with Kiva’s feet.

The music (which was playing on the stereo as I recorded the video on my iPhone) is from Four Tet’s latest record.

It’s been an interesting 12 hours: seismic activity in Interior Alaska has really ramped up, causing a multitude of small quakes, and three large enough that we felt and heard them. Last night there was a magnitude 3.5 earthquake around 9 miles from our house, and this morning there have been two more (a 3.2 about 11 miles away and a 2.9 that was only 6 miles away). None caused any damage, but they do shake the house and make enough noise that the dogs perk up. Experiencing tectonic forces so large and powerful is a sobering (and exciting) experience.

There’s a general perception in the lower 48 that California is the most seismically active place around, but the huge subduction zone that stretches from the Aleutian Islands all the way to the west coast of North America causes earthquakes and volcanic activity all over Alaska. The 1964 Good Friday quake (pictured in the photo) was the largest ever recorded in North America, and the 2002 Denali earthquake (which we rode through at the Bird Observatory) was an order of magnitude larger than the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that ripped up the Bay Area during the World Series. Most of the major earthquakes are south of the Alaska Range where the plates are moving against each other closer to the surface, but all the pressure creates fault lines up here in Fairbanks and can trigger some fairly large events.

Our house is less than ten years old, but knowing it went through the Denali quake without incident allows us the luxury of appreciating the power of the geologic processes at work without worrying they’ll destroy our house.

Update: 31-May-2009, 21:35. Magnitude 3.8, eight miles away.

The 2009 Tok Race of Champions is over. It didn’t get very cold on Saturday night, so the trail didn’t get a chance to set up after the first day of racing; it was slow and had a lot of soft spots that teams had trouble getting through. Andrea held onto 15th place in the six dog class (earning a whopping $12.50), and Bonnie got 13th place. This year the eight dog course took them along the road for more than three miles so we got a chance to see Bonnie running with her team for awhile. It was cool to see her dogs running next to us, especially since I mostly see them before and after the races.

I don’t know how easily it’ll be to view this, but the following link is a video of her coming out near the road: video of Bonnie.

It was a fun race this year, and we’re at home recovering with the dogs today.

The first day’s racing is over and all the dogs are happy and healthy. There isn’t a four-dog class in Tok, so Andrea borrowed Rubus and Vive from Bonnie to make up a six-dog team. Buddy ran lead with Rubus, Koidern and Piper ran in swing, and Kiva and Vive where at the back of the team. It was 14°F when the first team went out, so the sun hadn’t started warming things up. Andrea went around the track in 18 minutes 39 seconds, which was good enough for 15th out of 25.

Bonnie raced in the eight-dog class, but the results of the first day were thrown out because the first musher on the trail went through a fence, and a series of other mushers failed to make the proper turn with the fence missing. It’s somewhat of an unprecedented move to invalidate the first day of racing.

The photo is of Kiva howling before the race.

Ugh, it’s 13 degrees F outside, and is supposed to be above freezing later. We’re up watering the dogs on our way to our own breakfast. Andrea goes out sixth in the six dog, starting at 9 AM and Bonnie is third in the eight dog class, which starts at 11.

We’re in Tok now, getting ready for the draw. It was an uneventful drive down, except that the truck seems to have zapped our GPS. Doesn’t turn on. Bummer.

The photo on the right in our room at the Snowshoe Motel.

Deuce was our first sled dog. I was supposed to get a different, older sled dog upon his retirement, but we found out that one liked to try to eat small animals and we had three cats at the time. My friend asked if I could choose any of her other dogs, which would I want? I had planned on making Deuce my “project” dog for the winter of 2001-2002, so I said him. He was only about four years old at the time. The thing about Deuce is that he has a few screws loose — mentally, that is. One minute he’s sweet and rubbing his face up against you for pets. The next minute he’s backing away from you and woofing like he doesn’t know who you are. He’s still not 100 percent comfortable with Chris. Heck, he even has his moments with me! When he wants to be, Deuce is a fabulous sled dog; he has a lovely, smooth gait and knows gee/haw better than many lead dogs. But he doesn’t want to be a lead dog; at least not always. He’ll do it on occasion, but one never knows when or if he’ll just stop leading and try to sit down (which he never does when in the team). And he doesn’t always want to be a good sled dog so sometimes he dips snow or doesn’t pull, although he never completely quits.

When we got Deuce, the plan was to let him be a house dog like our pet dog, Nika. Turns out he didn’t want to be a house dog. We were eventually able to convince him to come inside for meals (most of the time), but that was about it. He’d occasionally come inside at other times, but would just wander around and sniff things; he’d never relax and hang out. Some times he’d seem like he wanted to be in the house, but he’d still just walk around. We figured that it was his choice and we’d let him decide when or if he wanted to be a house dog. The years went by and we got more sled dogs. Next came Piper, who took to being a house dog like she’d done it all her life. Buddy, Kiva, and Koidern are all semi-house dogs — they get to be inside when we’re home and awake, but sleep outside and are out if we’re not at home or can’t be watching them. We thought that maybe Deuce would take a lesson from the other dogs and learn to be in the house. Alas, Deuce still preferred to be outside.

That is, until the evening of 6 December 2007, approximately six years after he came to live with us. Then, out of the blue, this happened:

We were so shocked that I took pictures to prove it to ourselves (and others!). After six years to have Deuce finally lay down in the house!

I couldn’t help but wonder: was this a fluke? A one time event? Did a loose screw in his head temporarily shift?

That was yesterday, 8 December.

This one too. He actually looks comfortable and relaxed! He’s been laying down again today.

So maybe it’s not a tiny bit of oil burning for eight days, and we don’t live on 34th Street, but it’s our little holiday miracle anyway.

Buddy got some of his stitches out earlier in the week and was given permission by the vet to go for his first run of the year on Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, it was 34 degrees above normal yesterday and above freezing so we decided to take him out to the Creek instead. Piper and Nika have been going with me on most of my trail walks, but this was Buddy’s first experience off the leash. He was nervous at first, and kept running back to the dog yard, but eventually settled into it and had a great time warping around the Creek with the other dogs.

Nika was going crazy; click on the image below to see a close up of her craziness. Piper looks a little freaked out.