(fair warning, I went for getting this up and going instead of fussing over getting it perfect, this isn’t for a grade, it’s just for fun and maybe to help other people).
I (Addie) have been fascinated by and interested in dogsledding since I was a little kid. I read a lot, I begged my parents for a husky (sorry for all the pestering, and holy cow, thanks for not giving in, as an adult I know how much that would have not been a great fit for our family!). I got lucky enough as a senior in high school to go on an “Wider Opportunity” through Girl Scouts through Outward Bound in the Boundary Waters, and spend my winter break week dogsledding, skiing, skijoring and winter camping in the back country with a bunch of great people including a gaggle of other Girl Scouts. Great memories, there!
As I grew older I realized a few things. Dogsledding as a profession is HARD. Like it’s really expensive, you don’t really make money doing it, there seems to be no time to sleep and did I mention… not sleeping a lot? Especially if you do one of the big name races like the Iditarod… So maybe that’s not my thing for like a profession. Or even currently, a hobby. Sleds aren’t cheap.
But despite that, this winter I decided to at least bring together a bunch of things, like our new dog Kevin, the serious amount of mental and physical exercise he needs, the exercise I should be getting, the winter weather we usually get, and my limited but somewhat adventurous “making things” skills.
I did a bit of researching on the internet about various designs for simple dog sleds, discovered something called kick sleds, attaching skis to things, and how the roping connects everything. I’d already done some roller blade-ing skijoring with our two previous dogs, and not died (actually had some fun). I’ve done a smidge of skijoring with them. I’m not totally incompetent at cross country skiing… my Achilles Tendons are healing a bit, I love jogging, I love walking… and Kevin isn’t great at leash skills yet. He could be way worse but…
I decided that on our long walks on the trails, instead of practicing unwanted behavior of pulling on his leash on his collar or face halter, he would wear his harness and it would be “ok” to pull on the harness within reason, and be on a longer leash than just 6 feet. (yes, we could also practice loose leash walking but that’s another project, will take a lot of time, and I’d rather devote that time to mental and physical exercise for both of us for now). He would get more sniffs and more mental exercise that way, and I wouldn’t confuse him about the future when I hoped we would try some kind of dog plus me plus sliding in some capacity on snow. If I’m walking him around the neighborhood, in a business (some of them let dogs in), etc. where I need to have him less pull-y, and a bit under more teamwork control, he wears a face halter and a shorter leash (6 feet or even shorter). Neck or face, the goal will be to eventually work on Loose Leash Walking, harness means working and pulling. I started using a bungee repurposed thing as a waist belt to absorb some shock of having him on a long leash as well as keeping my hands free-er than having to hold the leash all the time (waist attachment means only having to untangle or grab the leash if we run into distractions). I started noticing some lower back pain… I eventually pulled my skijoring harness (from Manmat company) which I got in a used equipment store over a decade ago and used occasionally in the past with Ralf. I also figured out a few iterations of shock absorbing for the line that way. I added the use of the kids sled as an experiment and tried to do some sliding kneeling in that (with mixed results, mostly involving falling over). I ended up putting my emergency gear pack in the sled usually.
*** SIDE NOTE: DO INVEST IN A GOOD HARNESS AND AT LEAST REASONABLE SKIJOR TYPE BELT if you try this stuff. Please don’t let your dog pull you by just their neck, don’t use a ‘no pull’ type harness to pull you (duh but still, don’t). Do some research about the kinds of harnesses dogsledding and skijoring people use with their dogs, your dog deserves to be comfortable and minimize risk of injury. Also, you can get away with a cheap lash up for some stuff, but protect your back, don’t just use some strap around your waist, get something designed to take the force off your back and onto your hips (and maybe tushy/booty). This isn’t a fashion choice, this is a functional and safety thing for both of you. Those are two things I DO NOT suggest trying to make your own of to save money or time or just for fun. Maybe you can find one in an equipment resale shop or on something like Craigslist, but do some research before you get one, and get one that will help keep you or your dog safer and happier. Injuries will suck, try to avoid them!***
Here’s a group of video clips of the Green Sled Era. https://youtu.be/JnJJR9DfV1c
If I go into our gear working up to the kick sled further it’s going to be even longer and that will be other blogs, I’m sure, but this seems to have gotten me to a fair starting point for this one…
I did a LOT of brainstorming while walking and jogging with Kevin, and idea generation, and in-brain-building and in-brain-testing, and deciding I needed to change my ideas or add to them or modify them…
The main idea, getting some skis from a thrift store and attaching something to them to keep them spaced apart and allow me to have a handle bar kind of thing was fairly simple but not exactly detailed enough to just go and do.
I ended up deciding on a few 2x4s to space the skis out and create the main framework for the contraption. I’d then attach something to brace off of to them… And for a while I thought about some kind of lawn chair (like the old aluminum ones), and I toyed with ideas to make it easy to store… and saw a few designs for kick sleds on line that people made (or were factory made) and realized that yes there could be a fold down aspect but the way they were achieving it would be way more of a build hassle than I wanted to deal with… but a lot more thinking came up with a flop up flop down framework, and and a way to attach it. And stabilize it. And build it. And eventually I settled on PVC for that. I decided a low profile would be better than having lift between the things going from the left ski to right ski. I wanted a very low center of gravity, and figured that we would be in fluffy snow or packed snow or all of the above and adapt…so I screwed the 2x4s directly to the skis. I’m still happy with this decision after a few weeks using it in stick thicky snow, wet smushy snow, dense packed smooth snow, deep snow, and shallow snow.
I chose PVC because it’s easy to cut, it comes with push on 90* corner pieces, and it’s fairly cheap. If I did it with wood, I’d need to do a lot of accurate cuts, buy a lot of corner brace pieces, and do a lot more screwing things together. I also figured I could find something which would wrap around the pipe and allow it to be attached to the board but maintain rotation (and I did, conduit hardware strap thingies). If it breaks, I can easily replace a piece, because I’m not glueing the corners. I’ve already replaced 1 corner, and re-popped corners back in a bunch, no biggie. I now carry an extra 90* piece in my backpack, although if a PVC pipe breaks on a walk, well I just don’t ride the sled until I get home and fix it.
The rope I chose to web the center of the PVC rectangle wasn’t super specific. I went for something NOT paracord because paracord stretches like NUTS. However, I couldn’t think of an easy way to use the stuff I have that isn’t going to stretch, in terms of attaching an end and maintaining tension and tying knots. The stuff I have that won’t stretch much is either braided polypropylene rope or UHMWPE (ultra high molecular weight polyethelyne, which isn’t cheap but for some things is worth the investment) and that stuff I need to splice and that gets complicated (but I do love splicing in some projects, just not on a framework and needing to be all webby). So I went with something from one of those bins of general tie downs and ropes in one of the big box hardware stores in town which looked not too sretchy and something I could tie knots into easily. I think the working load was like 30 pounds but I figured that’s not a big deal, I’m not putting a ton of weight on the rope or the PVC frame hopefully, as well as I’m not depending on a single strand, but also knots and bends in rope decrease the strength but it’s worked so far.
I went with polypropylene woven rope for basically all of the weight bearing lines because as mentioned, it doesn’t stretch much and I can splice it and it also was used in a lot of the lines offered for sale on the websites for dog sled gear I looked at for inspiration. I had to order some online because the only stuff I could find easily locally was 90 pound working load, which meant a 72lb dog pulling a 165lb me (plus whatever for my clothes and gear) on a sled which may reduce the force of my weight by being slidey, but if we hit a stick and stop suddenly or he suddenly sees a moose or more likely, a squirrel and hits the turbo boost, there may be some sudden forces applied to the rope and I need it to NOT snap and suddenly having Kevin as a fur projectile towards whatever has his interest (we are working on reactivity to dogs because we keep getting run up on by loose dogs who don’t read his OMG I’M OVERSTIMULATED AND BARKING AND LUNGING AND GROWLING AT YOU as “maybe I should not get closer to that dog” and they literally will walk right up to him and seem to be thinking “gosh this guy looks like a fun thing to sniff and stick my nose into his bubble of personal space, I bed he would love that” mean while I’m trying to pull us back and distract him. We’ll work on the reactivity to dogs later, first we are working on the cats and it’s really hard to work on reactivity to dogs in the winter haha, especially when I need a lot of distance to maintain his chill. He’s also been charged by a loose dog who was guarding his yard while we walked by on the sidewalk and on leash and Kevin didn’t take that well… Long story but no blood, could have been worse, but didn’t help him either. We have already been to a local force free, fear free trainer and done a session on how to work with it, she literally said it’s hard to work on in winter because it’s cooolllllld haha. Anyway back on topic of why I don’t want the rope to break). So I ordered some rope which has a working load of 300 pounds from online, and made stuff.
I made a bunch of segments with loops on each end, some longer and some shorter. I looped them into a long rope. I don’t know what the name for this is, but it’s how a lot of the gang lines for the dog sleds I was seeing online look like they work. Basically take the loop on one rope end, run it through the loop on a different rope’s end, then tuck the other end of the original rope through the loop that got tucked. Or, you can run the loop on one end through the end of another rope, and then sort of reciprocal that… but I bet you’ll want to look up a better explanation on line, because mine sucks. The point of this is that I can adjust the length of the total rope (the distance between me and Kevin) by unlooping and re-ordering or replacing a segment. I can adjust where there are loops on that long rope (I’m calling it the gang line because it’s what it reminds me of). If a piece breaks (hasn’t so far), I have extra segments in my pack (which is either on my back or on the sled), I can regain control of the situation, then replace it and continue or go home.
This is long enough for one blog, I think so I’ll continue in a part 2 soon. Here is another video cluster of Kevin and me using the first iteration of the Kick Ski Sled. Stay tuned for more improvements I made as I tested things out. https://youtu.be/i8H0RLu7PtQ
FixedByDoc 