With another busy evening last night of doing laundry, running dogs and nightly chores, I didn’t have much time left to write a new post. Today’s encore is from June 12, 2007…

TOP TEN REASONS YOU KNOW YOU LIVE “OFF THE BEATEN PATH”…

# 10. You carry a camera with you when commuting because you never know when or what type of wildlife you might see. This morning a moose in Boomsticks Pond (sorry about the photo quality, my battery was dying) , a grouse, three deer and a bunch of tweety birds; yesterday morning, two fox kits.

# 9.  Your preferred methods of transportation: summer-ATV, winter-dog team, only because it’s faster than driving your truck on the road that you live on.  Also your commute is shortened after the first couple of snowfalls when the potholes get filled in with snow.

# 8.  There is a boot scraper outside the front door of the cabin and is used religiously by the occupants although you would never guess it since the floors inside look like they have never been vacuumed  even an hour after they have!

#7.  In a weeks time you’re more than likely to see more people paddling by your campsite in the Boundary Waters than you would have seen driving by your cabin if you would have stayed home.

# 6. “Drawing a bath” means lighting a fire in the sauna, heating a pot of water on the stove and then having to carry it outside.

# 5.  You have more pairs of wool socks and long underwear than one person could possibly need.  However, you do wear them 11 months of the year as July is usually long underwear exempt month.

# 4. You have to shut the windows on a beautiful spring night because the frogs are croaking so loud that you can’t sleep (Sunday night).

# 3.  You paid more for your ATV than you did for your truck.  (Notice I did not say car, in this neck of the woods cars don’t have much of a chance, you NEED a truck with 4WD).

# 2.  Definition of “Cleaning the Bathroom”: sweeping the floor of the outhouse.  I guess I would have to include cleaning the ashes out of the sauna stove too.

And the # ONE reason you can tell you live “Off The Beaten Path” is…

The only piece of clothing you have on your body that isn’t covered in “perma-dirt” is your underwear.  Well, not usually anyways.  Definition of perma-dirt: the dirt that stays permanently on your clothes even after washing.  We here Off The Beaten Path proudly own more pairs of jeans with perma-dirt than without.  We should petition Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein to use the design in their fall collection. Wearing clothing without perma-dirt stains is defined as dressing up.

There you have it. If you have a suggestion to add to the”Off The Beaten Path Top 10″, we could make it a Top 100. Either log in to this site and leave a comment or e-mail us directly at info@BlackMagicKennels.com.

Happy Birthday wishes go out to Mark’s mom Diane! Since it was such a crazy week last week, of course we forgot to mail your card on Friday. It will be in the mail today! Have a great day Mom!!!

Mark and the two new boy puppies made it home safely pulling in around 4:30 yesterday afternoon. While Mark was only gone for two nights, he’s happy to be home and able to sleep in his own bed since he was tenting it Friday and Saturday night. We put the two new boys in the big puppy pen right away as they are a little shy and we didn’t want to have to play “catch the new puppies”. When Calvin and the little ones were added to the mix, Mr. Calvin, who is usually Mr. Social ran to a corner of the kennel and stayed there and the other little guys followed. You have to click on the photo to get the full-effect, but poor Calvin looks pitiful. Something tells me Calvin that Aunty Cristy is going to be e-mailing today telling us that now we really need to make you a house dog! The one pup is a little bit bigger than him and the other one about the same size and the same build. Neither one of the new guys really have names yet so we will be working on coming up with something catchy in the next couple of days.

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of hosting Paula Williams, Lost Lake cabin owner, and her four sisters for a kennel tour. The girls piled into Paula’s Explorer for an Off The Beaten Path Adventure. It was unanimous by all five women…Rose is the cutest puppy ever. They thought the rest of them were cute too and since Paula and one of her sisters are loyal blog readers they knew Calvin right away. I think they had an OK time getting dirty from dogs jumping on them and getting the answers to their questions. I took a picture of all of them holding puppies, but of course it wasn’t my camera! Paula, when you read this ask your sister to e-mail me the photo.

What a difference two days can make; Friday morning Mark woke up to the thermometer reading 70, I woke up this morning to 30. I should be going on a run but for the health of my back I thought it best to wait until I have help. Mark has been at the annual Streeper Auction since Friday night so I have been doing chores by myself and after two back surgeries, I don’t want another one! I talked with him last night and he said it was almost 80 degrees in Osage yesterday and he’s coming home with two puppies! I knew if I didn’t go with he’d be bringing dogs home. I will have to wait until he gets home this afternoon to get their bloodlines, all I know is one is has some Egil Ellis bloodlines. Egil’s famous stud, Mike, is Valor’s grandfather. That’s all I know so far, stay tuned for the full scoop.

In Mark’s absence I was able to clean the cabin and work on repainting and repolying (is that a word?) the dog name plaques for their houses. We have had new BLACKlub members recently and the signs were in pretty rough shape. Hopefully it will warm up later this morning so I can get one more coat of poly on and get the plaques rehung this afternoon.

The puppies had a great time running loose yesterday afternoon. I let them out around noon and didn’t put them back in their kennel until just before dark. The photo at left is Lily. While I was gone last week I couldn’t believe how much the puppies had grown and Lily had one of her ears stand up. We are also one puppy shorter as on Mark’s way through Two Harbors on Friday he brought Daisy to Troy and Katy of Ten Squared Racing. Their dog Pingo is her father and the stud fee was a litter split with us getting the extra puppy. Since there was only three they got their choice and Troy wanted a white one. Since Lily and Daisy were so hard to tell apart, Mark did an “eeny-meeny-miney-moo”. Fortunately I was able to be in Two Harbors the same time as Mark and was able to say goodbye to Daisy. We’ll miss her but we’ll be busy with the two pups that are coming home with Mark.

Calvin also had a great time running around visiting all his friends in the dog yard. Here he is hanging out with Willie while Valor waits for his turn for some ”Calvin time”. He’s fun to watch going from dog to dog avoiding the ones that think he’d make a nice lunch. He’s slowly getting closer and closer to them and trying to use his charm and something tells me it won’t be long and he’ll win them over too.

I guess it’s time to get outside to feed puppies and water dogs so I can get some more work done while Mark’s gone. I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to get any cleaning done with Mark around so I have to take advantage of it while I can. Have a great day everyone!

After a week in the big city, it sure feels good to be home. While I didn’t travel too far from my hotel as my class was in the hotel, the little bit I did get out makes me appreciate the lack of traffic here. I have to say thanks to Lisa Luttinen for picking me up on Thursday night after classes and taking me back to her house in Roseville for a homecooked meal. Her husband Mark was the chef and did an awesome job of grilling steaks and potatoes! It was nice to relax and talk dogs and have a break from school and studying. They had me back at the hotel by 8:00 so I could study for my big test and hopefully yesterday I passed!

The drive home was uneventful and it was still about 75 degrees when I got into Grand Marais. When I pulled into the driveway at home of course it started to rain. By the time I unloaded the truck it had slowed down enough to get the dogs fed and scooped and let the monsters out of their kennel for the first time since last Sunday. While they were happy to be out, they were more happy to have a human to play with. They followed me around their pen while I was scooping it, jumping all over me. We then hung out by the cabin for a while with everyone getting a turn sitting on mom’s lap for individual attention.

After watering the dogs and getting the puppies put back in the kennel the skies opened up again. This time it was like a monsoon. The thunder and lightening were amazing and while I was sitting on the computer there was a steak of lightening that came out of the sky and a second later a huge boom. If it wasn’t so wet around here I would be worried about a wildfire starting. That one was close! The rain gauge this morning read 1-1/2 inches, but I noticed a crack in it so it might not be very accurate. One of the dog dishes that was left right side up had over 2 inches in it this morning.

While in the big city I bought a cheap digital camera so I can take pictures again that require a flash. It has a better zoom than my old one so I just had to try it out. The photo is Murphy (aka Smurf) using the zoom. It’s a little fuzzy, but much better than my old one. I’m hoping to get some more of them taken today to get posted to the Athletes page, but right now outside my window it’s overcast and looks like rain so I best get back outside and get the dogs watered before the skies open up again. Have a great day everyone!

Now this is really cool. The producers of Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers have produced a new series, Toughest Race on Earth, about the Iditarod. The series premiers October 14th on the Discovery Channel. Now I wish I had regular TV! Between Lance Mackey winning the Versus World’s Toughest athlete contest and now the series, by next year maybe sled dog racing will have as many fans as golf! Wouldn’t that be cool (no pun intented).

Also, if you are a recent BL.A.C.Klub member, I have had a chance the last couple of days to make additions and changes to both the Athlete’s and BL.A.C.Klub pages…check them out. I still have a little bit of work to do, but I’ll try to finish up this weekend.