In Cripple on Thursday morning, Nicholas Petit was feeling good, and seemingly, so were his dogs.
In his interview with our trail reporter, Laureli, Petit said that he’s been keeping with a strategy of not running his dogs too fast – a strategy that he hopes will make his dogs less prone to injury.
“Slow and steady,” he said. “I don’t know if it’ll win the race, but we’ll get there in good shape.”
It’s easier to run dogs a bit more slowly, also, when they’re heavier – and that seems to be part of Petit’s strategy, too. His dogs are eating well; with ribeye steak in their feeding bowls in Cripple, the Girdwood, Alaska musher joked that a few are getting “obese.”
“I’m spoiling these dogs,” Petit said to Laureli.
Going forward, however, the musher says he’s planning to let off the brake and let his dogs move more quickly: made possible, in large part, because of the improvements in the trail conditions going forward. “We’re ready to move a little faster now,” he says.
And with 16 dogs still in his string, with a team that he’s “really happy with,” Petit still seems to be in a competitive position.
