Skiing With Kasey: Oh Yeah!

I love cross country skiing. It’s exhilarating, it tests your balance and skill, and it’s fun.

Sharing my life with my guide dogs is all inclusive. It doesn’t begin when the harness goes on and it doesn’t end when the harness comes off.

Put those two things together and the next step becomes inevitable. Skiing with my dog.

It’s not complicated but it’s not easy.

Kasey is trained to guide me. When we ski together, she is not guiding me. She is not harnessed. When not wearing her harness, she considers herself off duty. Her rules of behavior change. And she’s young, energetic, and eager to interact with the world around her. I need to, at least somewhat, tame that eagerness without squelching her enthusiasm.

I started by skiing on our road. We live on a private, unpaved, dead-end road. When it snows, there’s always a layer of snow on the road, even after it’s plowed. My goal was to get her to stay on my left side and run along with me. Since she’s trained to pull out in harness, she naturally moves out ahead of me. I just needed to teach her not to pull too hard.

With skis on, poles in hand, and the loop of her long leash grasped around my left ski pole, we began.

At first, Kasey trotted nicely along on my left side. Then, it was like a light went on in her head. “Hey, we’re trotting down this road, I’m not wearing my harness, yahoo, let’s go!” Angling my right ski to slow down, I gave the command, “Steady,” and pulled back on her leash. When she stopped pulling, I praised her. We continued down the road as I repeated the process.

During our third trip down the road, I had her trotting nicely along on my left side. It was time to try skiing together for real.

We went to a local forest reserve with nicely groomed trails. And off we went. Occasionally, Kasey spun in a circle or two. But it didn’t interrupt our progress so I just laughed at her exuberance.

Then we came to the first hill.

What a thrill! I picked up speed. We flew down the trail together. She ran straight and true and my skis stayed nicely in the groomed tracks. Knees slightly flexed and leaning forward, I adjusted to each change and bend in the trail as it came. Then the trail leveled out. I praised Kasey effusively and we continued.

Another hill. We flew together with Kasey pulling a bit harder. “Steady,” I instructed. She eased her pull. The trail leveled out. And we continued. I kept up a running dialog with Kasey, ensuring her engagement in this new activity.

At the half-way point, we took a break. Taking off my mittens, I crouched before her, held her face gently in my hands, and told her what a good girl she was.

After two hours, we cruised down the last hill and skied out of the forest. We had done it!