Look at dem Lakers

It's been an exciting opener for fishing this year- fabulous weather combined with outstanding fishing. Our guests are getting good results in Indian Lake as well as all the surrounding lakes. John keeps busy emptying the barrels in the fish cleaning house and gets a good look at what's coming in.
Three gentlemen who stayed with us the second week of fishing hooked these Lakers on Indian.
On the top picture,left to right,it is Bob Brogan from Wisconsin, Lance Goetzman from Wisconsin and Jim Kellam from Florida.
They were mighty pleased as you can see from the photo.

They're Growing Fast

The sled dog puppies are now about three and a half weeks old and are they growing fast. Eat, sleep, poop- that's all they do. Leia, the female, is quiet and chubby from head to paw, wobbling her way around till she wears out and has to sit down again. Vader, the black male, is active and very vocal about everything. Joanna spends lots of time handling, loving, and socializing them to acclimate them to humans. They crawl on her, nuzzle in close, and after playing for awhile, they peacefully fall asleep. Puppies are lots of fun.

Road to North End of Kukukus Lake

We have been wanting to check out the road to the north end of Kukukus and the boat landing there, ever since we heard there was a bad wash out and campers actually got stranded last summer.

The MNR told us they did a repair job on the road last fall, so this spring John, Joanna and I loaded into our old, four wheel drive pickup and headed north on the 325 road.

The road was good for about 13 miles until we came to the repaired washout. It is quite an interesting repair job. The spillway is still open for water to flow through and the sides of the banks are packed with rocks about five to six inches in diameter. The banks are fairly steep making us wonder how in the world a person could ever pull a boat on a trailer through there without getting hung up. (In fact we did get hung up there on our way out with our plow frame pushing up logs and trees that had been packed in the dip for winter usage. We were sitting there in our truck in the middle of the spillway with water running under the truck. John and Joanna climbed onto the hood of the truck to get across without walking in the water and pulled the debris out of the way.)

We continued on down the road to the boat landing on Kukukus. There were several other tricky spots, one where the beaver dam alongside the road is about five feet higher than the road itself. One would hope that it never breaks open or the road would be under water for sure. The other spot was a creek crossing, but it was navigable with care.

The pictures give you a pretty good idea of what the difficult spots look like. We thought it might be of interest to those who like to fish Kukukus.

Joanna the Midwife

It all started the evening of April 27th. I had just returned from visiting my parents in North Carolina for about three weeks. Joanna said, "Mom, Tulsa is going to have her puppies tonight."
Tulsa is the best bred, most expensive sled dog in our kennel. Joanna had bred her to a male with excellent bloodlines in an effort to produce some fantastic racing dogs.
She had high hopes for these puppies. Earlier in the day, Joanna noticed that Tulsa had not eaten her supper which is an indication she would deliver soon. Joanna planned to stay up all night if necessary to offer Tulsa any needed assistance. John and I headed to bed about eleven o'clock, but we told Joanna to let us know if there were any problems.

From our downstairs bedroom, we could hear Joanna coming in at different times to put on warmer clothes since it was so cold. She stayed with her the whole time. Suddenly, at about 3:00 a.m. she came downstairs and tearfully explained that Tulsa had been in labor for quite a few hours and nothing was happening. Joanna has had a lot of experience helping puppies get delivered. She could feel the foot of a puppy that was stuck in breach position in the birth canal, but was unable to grab hold of it to help pull it out.
We called the vet in Dryden which was 2 hours away, waking him from a sound sleep. He kindly advised that the puppy in the birth canal was probably dead, but the ones left in the womb should still be okay for 12 hours. We planned to meet him at the clinic at 7:00 a.m.

We didn't want Tulsa to have to go through a C-section and all the complications that go with it. As John brought the Tahoe up to the dog yard and prepared to load Tulsa, Joanna thought she would check Tulsa one more time to see if there was any change. She cried out to the Lord for help. And He helped her. The puppy had moved down just a bit more so that Joanna could grab hold of one foot. She gently, but firmly pulled and the puppy came out ...ALIVE!!! We all shouted for joy. Then another one came soon after. In all, there were three puppies, however the last one died.

So, Tulsa has a male and a female, Vader and Leia (Star Wars theme). Both are healthy and growing fast with multiple choices for nourishment from Tulsa. What a smorgasbord!