Aspen

Aspen
Jun 23rd 2008
wolfmoonsleddog
Southeast
Location: Northwest GA
Time - 5:55pm
Temperature: 75 degrees F
Conditions: Mostly cloudy, few sprinkles of rain
Forecast: Possible thunderstorms tonight, sunny tomorrow. Lows in the 60s, highs in the 90s

Aspen was my first Siberian husky. She was born on January 20th, 2000. I adopted her as a puppy when I was eleven and felt very strongly that I wanted to be a musher and live among sled dogs, although I knew ridiculously little about the Siberian husky breed. Looking back, it is amazing that I was able to handle a husky at that age! Even more amazing was that Aspen was calm enough for me to handle. She was nowhere near as high-strung as Sibes I have met since then. I adopted her from a backyard breeder, something I would be very hesitant to do again.

Together, Aspen and I learned to mush. At that point, the dog mushing community did not exist in Georgia so we were quite on our own. I usually did canicross and bikejor runs with Aspen and somehow we became a team. We even went on a couple of kicksled runs in Tennessee when there was snow! I always wanted to take her North to snow country but sadly, that never happened.

On the evening of June 20th, 2005, when I was bringing her inside as I did every day, Aspen collapsed and died of what we believe was a brain aneurysm. That was the worst day of my life and even now, three years later, it still hurts dreadfully to think about it. I still miss her, even as I work with the dogs I have now. I still remember Aspen. The First Dog.



This year, I put up a Dogster page in memory of Aspen. To visit it, please click here.