Homer thinks outside the box

(Lou, Yukon)
We are exhausted. It was a long fight but we won in the end. Our battle of wits with a not very intelligent dog was fought over two hundred miles and 5 days.

We departed last Thursday to visit friends with Homer packed in his much-hated travel box. The trail had disappeared under fresh snow in places so we un-boxed him and put him upfront to find the way with his nose. Good boy.

Homer in lead

Getting him back was easy. I’d call, offer a handful of kibble and he’d come running. Then we’d stuff him in his fourth class carriage. He fell for it every time.

The trail crossed wind-blown ice, pocked by a warm southerly wind that had sent temperatures above freezing for a couple of days. In places it was so rough I thought my teeth were going to bounce out of my head. We let Homer run free, rather than risk blending him into a husky smoothie with all the slamming and bumping.

Rock hard ice

He did NOT want to go back into his box and ran up the bank into the willows, until- “Oh great kibble!” Oh yes, he came right back. In the box with him.

He’ll get wise to this soon, we thought, but no.

They will not catch me this time

They got me. I will remember next time

Kibble = box. I got it now

I forgot again

Oh. They fooled me

Great! Kibble! I'm coming

We stopped for a quick visit with friends who keep a yard of sled dogs. Homer had lived there briefly and so we let him run round for a bit. They said, "He’s not the sharpest is he?" No, he’s not. “Homer! Kibble!”

Our final destination was with our oldest and very dear friends here on the Yukon, and breeders of our retarded dog. Homer was delighted to be “home”. He wagged his tail happily- Great! All my favourite people and dog pals! We will live here together and I will never go in the misery box again!

Homer at home

He had a day off, at least, and so did we.

We are immigrants here. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle about immigration in the world recently and we are aware that we are incredibly lucky to have been accepted as Canadian residents for the next 5 years.

Moving to the other side of the world all of a sudden left us alone and vulnerable in many ways and to maintain contact with the people we first met has been hugely valuable.

To us at least. Our friends might have been thinking, “Oh fuck, it’s those English assholes with that idiot dog we thought we gotten rid of.”

I’ve mentioned before that everyone we know in the bush manages to live better than us. Despite having 3 kids and 20 sled dogs, our friends have built a small town on stilts to live in (they are at risk of spring flood).

Next generation sled dogs

They built and run a fish wheel to catch salmon, home school their kids, trap, run dogs, cook properly with decent ingredients and are now onto keeping chickens.

Chickens and ominous mitten

We just about managed to rebuild a cache and replace the roof on our old cabin this year. And we did that badly. Never mind, we brought some rum, and so until they start a distillery we have our uses.

Homer in wheel position

We plugged Homer into a dog team in the afternoon and took off down the river by dogsled. After a winter of plodding along behind a single sled dog, still trying to implant the idea of gee (right) and haw (left) into his bulletproof skull, a 6 dog team was a thrill.

"Who the hell are those two klutzes at the back?"

To Homer’s disappointment, he was stuffed in his box the next morning and unceremoniously hauled away from his team mates. “Yes,” our friends admitted, “he is a bit dim, so are his siblings.”

Day 4 and Homer remembered, KIBBLE = BOX.

We let him out to run for a bit and that bastard would not come to us. In the end, I hopped on our little machine and corralled him back to Neil. Being hunted and circled by a growling vehicle was enough to subdue the mutiny. It worked 3 times in a row. We had the upper hand again.

Another visit, another dog yard

We spent the night with more of our oldest friends. Their home is tumbling with kids and animals, warmth and fun. And I got some great patterns for making marten fur hats and beaver mitts. (That’s mittens made from beaver fur not something weird to spice up our sex life.)

Our last day was a long one. We had 3 mail delivery stops, 65 miles and moody weather, with falling snow and horrid visibility.

What we didn’t need was for Homer to get smart. Heading back over the very rough ice, we had to let him out again.

Homer had his “Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar” moment. He saw our weak spot - as I got off the machine to grab him, he could bolt. I had to get back onto the machine to chase him, then I couldn’t grab him until I got off again. And then he could run again. Neil watched this “catch me if you can” game as I drew a series of looping circles in the snow around the mutineer dog.

Neil and I regrouped and came up with another strategy. We drove off. I wrote about Homer’s Hansel and Gretel complex last week (see Homer and Gretel) so this was a cruel manipulation of his worst fears. We left him in the wilderness and disappeared.

4th class travel in a plywood box was suddenly looking more appealing. After 5 miles, I waited for him on the river whilst Neil delivered mail to a friend. Homer had scored a point there as I was hoping for a quick cup of coffee with a pal, but no, I was standing alone on the river as the snow fell gently around me. Eventually a small loping, panting dot appeared, stumbling slowly closer.

Homer was so delighted to see me he ran straight up, tail wagging, then suddenly remembered - BOX! made to run, sat down, and thought fuck it. Battle over. We had outwitted our dim-witted dog. In the box with him.

Surrender

The weather turned to whiteout conditions as a storm blew in. I could only spot the trail by following the dot to dot of fresh fox tracks as they appeared through the thick white blur in front of me. The storm passed, and there she was, ahead of us, bless her. A fluffy red fox, like a toilet brush on sticks in her enormous coat.

She stepped off the trail, delicately placing each foot, then sat to watch us pass, as if to say, “There, my dears. The storm’s over and you can see now. Cheerio.”

Very tiny fox in the distance

In London I see more foxes than people some days but we see them rarely here. It is a treat. And reassuring to know they still have 4 legs, a tail and a rich glistening coat, unlike their battered and mangey urban brethren.

Hauling snow around the yukon

Layers of cloud, some black and heavy as tar, and some as bright and white as feathers shifted between the mountains. It was warm, too warm, the wet snow clung to us and soaked through our clothes. We hadn't dressed for tropical weather.

Homer had a few ventures out of his box but, having learnt a bit more about the efficiency of combustion engines, was happy to board the plywood carriage again.

In his snow sprayed box

All went remarkably well until I looked at our Polaris Widetrak machine.

“Neil. Did you crash the machine into a tree?”
“Well no. I sort of bumped one but I checked it all over and there was no damage.”
“How can I tell then?”

Obviously, I’m able to see what's going on a few hundred yards behind me with those X-ray laser eyes I have in the back of my head.

Or is it that the cowling is buckled, split and twisted, the ski arm is bent, and the ski is flapping loosely where the bolt has sheered?

“Which bit did you check exactly?”

Neil spent a large part of the next day sheepishly fixing the damage he didn’t cause to the machine when he didn’t hit a tree.

Thawing ice off our sled in the middle of our cabin. Bloody inconvenient, we need a workshop

Inspired, and shamed, by our friend’s industriousness, we have decided our next project will be to build a log workshop/ snowmachine store.

We started getting logs yesterday and found one straight tree we could use. One down, only 49 more to go. There’s no stopping us! We’ll have it finished by Christmas. (2027. Though don’t hold me to that.)

Getting logs with chainsaw whilst waist deep in snow. More inconvenience.