So You Want To Be A Musher?

So You Want To Be A Musher?
Jun 8th 2009
wolfmoonsleddog
Southeast
Location: Armuchee, GA
Time - 8:39am Eastern Daylight Time
Temperature: 67 degrees F (19 C)
Conditions: Clear, humid
Forecast: Partly cloudy today and tomorrow. Highs in the 80s, lows in the 60s


Last month at MCK

This was posted a month or so ago by Jodi Bailey and I thought some of you would get a kick out of it. I certainly did!

So you want to be a Musher: ..

1. Burn a $100 bill—right now. Preferably while standing outside in freezing temps. No freezing temps, then just burn the money and move on to step 2

2. Visit your local butcher and pay to sit in the walk-in freezer for a couple of hours.

3. Soak your gloves and begin storing them in your freezer. Don’t worry you can defrost them in your pants and work with bare hands for at least ½ hour daily in freezing temps.

4. Fasten a tight, wide-rubberband around the top half of your head before you go to bed each night.

5. If you wear glasses, begin wearing them with glue smeared on the lenses.

6. Slam your thumb in a car door. Don’t go see a doctor.

7. Find the nearest ice rink and walk across the ice several times holding two leaping, lunging, screaming, 80 lb. Sleddogs by the back of their harnesses.

8. Take a large amount, like 40 pounds, of meat and defrost it in your living room or kitchen every day.

9. Buy a new pair of gloves and immediately throw one of them away.

10. Plan a romantic vacation that you know you can never take.

11. Go to your local feed and gear store and just give them your credit card.

12. Fill a blender with ice, hit the pulse button and let the spray blast your face. Leave the ice on your face until it melts. Let it drip into your clothes. Do this in a walk-in freezer if possible.

13. Dress up in as many clothes as you can and then proceed to take them off because you have to go to the bathroom. Again do this in the walk in freezer if possible.

14. Do all your chores outside in the cold and dark. Acceptable chores include carrying 2 full five gallon buckets of water, carrying 2 full five gallon buckets of poop, carrying 2 full five gallon buckets of cooked rice and fish, chopping 50 pound frozen solid blocks of meat into even neat little snack sized chunks. Spill anything and you must start over.

15. Eat only foods that are already frozen solid or can be cooked with just boiling water.

16. Have at least one conversation daily with each of your friends about poop, diet, and digestion.

Repeat all of the above every day for a month, if your OK with it then you just might make it as a musher.

Below are some additions that others added to Jodi’s post.

17. Don’t forget to put a 5-gallon bucket of fat blend just inside the door so you can trip over it all winter. Your guests will enjoy the pleasant, um, scent when they walk in the door.

18. What about being dragged head first into knee deep snow so cold it takes your breath away, start to get up, only to be dragged down again by the same bunch of wild banshees. Repeat 5 times.

19. Dip your gloves in fish oil, touch every thing you own, and then try to wash the smell off of your hands. Repeat daily.
20. Stand out in the cold, pouring rain and chop up semi-frozen meat with an axe. Then pick up chunks of said meat until your hands go numb. Then eat trail mix or cheese flavored crackers.…

21.Buy a bunch of babie socks, soak them, freeze them and then attempt to melt and separate them. Spend hours each day carefully examining them and hanging them up to dry.

22. Also spend hours each day trying to get these “socks” on wiggling dogs’ feet so that they will not fall off. Then take them off yourself.

23. Smear mud all over your clothes.

24. And then if you want to be a malamute musher times all those weights and workloads by four… per dog.
25. Do all of the above but on 2-3 hours of sleep a night in the walk-in freezer if possible. . .
26. You tell your patient’s mom that you know that the kid’s poop is ok….looks just like your dogs…
27. And the said patient’s mom says….have you been fishing? this is in the middle of winter, and you were sure that you didn’t smell like dead fish anymore…..
28. You ask all the local restaurants when they cut their meat, can you have the scraps???? and they think that you are crazy….but it helps cut down the food bill at AFW and it is people grade good stuff.
29. You can recognize 25 dogs by their voice and can yell quiet from inside the house….and they all listen….
30. Go to your local dog park and pick up every piece of poo you can find. Take the poo to the infamous walk-in freezer and scatter it all over the floor. Once it is stuck in the ice, chip it out with a hoe (preferably in the dark, wearing a headlamp). Remember to keep your mouth closed.
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2 Responses to “So You Want To Be A Musher?”
Dave Lukosik on 10 Jun 2009 at 10:12 pm # edit this

Your Musher List says it all! Looking at those full 5 gal pails of dog chow makes my arms and back muscles sore! But seeing those happy smiling husky faces makes it all worth it, don’t you think!

wolfmoonsleddog on 11 Jun 2009 at 4:22 am # edit this

Yes, it does! This is the “reality” of the sport. Nothing glamorous but if you truly love it, the rewards are worth the work.