BraverMountain Twitter Stories

 Guys. GUYS. We have a mystery here on the farm. There's some dog poop involved in this mystery, so I apologize in advance. But I'm genuinely stumped.  Yesterday I went outside and saw that one of our beehives was tipped over, which is really sad. The bees survived the whole winter until now There were scratches and tooth marks in the outer insulation and almost all the bees were gone. [PIC] This seems like the work of a bear. They're just coming out of hibernation, and they're HUNGRY. Plus, the hive is pretty heavy to knock over There's a fence around the hive(s), but a tree fell on it in a recent windstorm, so it would be pretty easy for a bear to walk over and--get this--there were two piles of black poop about 20 feet away that consisted almost entirely of dead bees (bear poop is black) BUT HERE'S THE THING the pen with the bee hives is also where blind sled dog Hari lives [PIC] AND the whole thing is a stone's throw from 20 other huskies who flip their

 March 2017 Weekend update:  skipped the last race of the season, went dogsled camping instead [PIC] The race had been adjusted due to warm weather, and the snow was melting fast, so my pal taxidermist Owen and I decided to stay local It's too muddy to leave straight from the farm so on Saturday morning we drove to the end of the road and set off with the dogs from there [SHORT VIDEO] (original plan was for our spouses to join but they were at Iditarod and the state bowling championships, respectively) We drove two 6-dog teams about 30 miles into the woods and stopped at a clearing by a beaver pond with about an hour left of daylight [SHORT VIDEO] My team was Jenga-Brewtus Kid-Flame Popeye-Neo and Owen had Pepe-Pyro Gabby-Badger Maggie-Grinch First step to setting up camp was caring for the dogs. Owen made them beds out of pine boughs while I chopped through frozen creek for water They're used to straw bedding, not pine, but settled down pretty quickly. It smelled so good out t

 Mar 2017 So I tried something new last weekend and invited some astonishingly cool people to Mountain for the first-ever Dogsled Camp... I LOVE sharing dogsledding with people, and was hopeful, but had no idea if anyone would come. But then they did!! [PIC] The final campers included @andreapitzer @ek_johnston @LFarnsworth @Remember_Sarah @DriverWrites and Sally McGraw of alreadypretty.com Most of the campers arrived Friday night for pizza, dog cuddling, and prep for the next day. (All pics by marvelous @DriverWrites!) [PIC] It was clear that this was a supremely kind, funny, kick-ass group of women. Plus, we had fresh snow for the next morning's trails (whew!) [PIC] On Saturday morning, we packed up huskies and sleds and headed to some nearby dogsled trails, where we'd be setting up a base camp. We set up a dropline for the dogs and the campers spread out straw for bedding.  We'd be rotating different dog teams throughout the day. [PIC COLLAGE] We also had a lesson on har

 Feb. 2017 So, a big thing happened yesterday.  Remember these little trouble nuggets? They were born June 14th, so they're 8 months old tomorrow. [PIC GOES HERE SORRY] The time had come for them to put on their very first harnesses and run with the big dogs.  Mazel tov, pups! How they grow. [PIC GOES HERE SORRY] Spike grows, too. [PIC GOES HERE SORRY] Owen the Taxidermist and I brought the dogs to some nearby trails. We took two 4-dog teams and ran them 12 miles fast to wear them out. Then we put harnesses on the three pups we'd brought along:  Clem, Spike, and Anya [SHORT VIDEO OF CLEM] Spike is so huge already that he needed one of our biggest harnesses.  Here he is with littermate Anya. [PIC OF SPIKE AND ANYA SORRY] And here's Clem and Anya. They've seen the big dogs go running so many times but have never joined in. [PIC OF CLEM AND ANYA] Since I've never harness-broken a dog before, I just... put on harnesses.  And clipped them to the line.  They were fine! Or

 Feb. 2017 A very special thing happened before our last race, an 80-miler over two days. The special thing was that one of the dogs got into the bucket of chicken fat (we dole it out by the tablespoon) and ate, like, half of it. But we didn't know which dog Which meant that somewhere in my time, one of those happy running dogs was an explosive digestive time bomb just waiting to happen. Tick tock tick tock tick tock [PIC OF SLED TEAM HERE SORRY] tick tock tick tock tick tock [SHORT VIDEO OF SLED TEAM] Ten miles, twenty miles... all was quiet.  The dogs were running great up every hill.  We passed volunteers cheering, children waving. But truth will out. There was a splash, and Badger puked.  But the thing is, Badger pukes pretty much every day.  He shook his face and wagged his tail. And then the truth came out.  IT WAS PYRO. Yes.  Pyro. Pyro ate the fat.  There was no doubt about that.  And the mystery was no more.  THE END. Twitter reply:  so like. was this diarrhoea while runni

 Dec. 2016 Have I told you all about the time we gave Donut an exorcism? This was last fall.  Our little boss bitch Donut, who is always weird, was getting weirder.  She spent hours staring at the air, snarling. Donut had been around the block by the time we got her--she was 5, and did everything 200%.  She ran 200%, she ate 200%, she cuddled 200%. She was short and always fat and always dirty.  Every boy dog was afraid of her.  She dug up rocks bigger than her head. One time the neighbors called to tell me they'd just heard one of our dogs get killed by a pack of coyotes.  They were very upset. I would have been upset, too, except I was with the dogs and they were all fine.  Turns out all they'd heard was Donut screaming at her bowl. Which is all to say that Donut would have to get pretty strange for us to bat an eye.  But then, suddenly, she started making these noises. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BflS1OS3TM If you go to 3:57 in this video, you'll get an idea what th

Nov. 2016  Clem, the sentient potato of his litter, is shocked that Twitter finds him handsome and wanted a chance to show off his angles. [PICS GO HERE SORRY I DON'T HAVE THEM] Clem is basically that kid in gym class whose shoelaces keep coming undone so he shuffles around the track three laps behind everyone else. We love that lil tater tot.