The Year the Industry Started Watching Itself I had a handler here in February who arrived with a GPS tracking collar, a heart rate monitor, and a spreadsheet template for logging daily training load. She had never correctly fitted a harness in her life. The collar data was excellent. The dog was developing a pressure sore behind the left shoulder that she had not noticed for six days. This is 2026 in the working dog world. The technology is ahead of the knowledge. The accountability conversation is real and necessary and missing about half of what actually matters. The Mat-Su…
Author: Helen Corlew
Helen Corlew
Helen L. Corlew runs a team of Samoyeds, Alaskan malamutes and Alaskan huskies. I am a Tellington TTouch practitioner and use this mode of work with training and living with my dogs. Helen Corlew founded Prairie Isle Dog Trekking in Petersburg, North Dakota in 2010, and has spent the fifteen years since doing something most people only read about: teaching real dog sledding on real prairie terrain, at the edge of a landscape that doesn't apologize for being difficult. She is not a weekend enthusiast. She harnesses working dogs in January cold, trains handlers who have never touched a sled, and has built one of the only hands-on mushing education programs on the Northern Great Plains — from a single address on Highway 2, with no marketing budget and no shortcuts. Her writing on Prairie Isle Dog Trekking reflects the same philosophy. Whether she is covering trail safety across the Rockies, breed behavior in extreme conditions, or what it actually takes to trek with a dog in the Alps, Helen writes from the position of someone who has done the work before writing the sentence. She lives and runs dogs in Nelson County, North Dakota. Kindly follow me on Social Media!
The permit system for Dog Mountain went live at six in the morning on a Tuesday. By six-oh-three, weekend slots for the next month were gone. That is not a trail management success story. That is a reservation system doing the administrative work while the actual problem goes unaddressed. Dog Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge is a genuinely good trail. The U.S. Forest Service permit requirement during wildflower season is a reasonable response to real damage. What it does not address is why several thousand people with dogs are all trying to reach the same ridge on the same…
A two-year-old was bitten at a sled dog excursion in Alaska in May 2026. The child had been brought within contact distance of an adult working dog immediately after a run. The dog was not aggressive by any standard assessment. It was overstimulated, tired, and had nowhere to go. Working dogs are not aggressive by default. They are, however, large, strong, fast to react, and completely unpredictable to people who do not read them. A Malamute coming off a run at minus ten is not the same animal as a Malamute in a staged photo with a child in a…
The kennel smelled of hay and dog and the diesel tang of a generator running four days in minus-fifteen air. I was checking feet on my lead pair when the first news out of Mat-Su came through on my phone. I read the number twice before I believed it. Twenty-five dogs dead at a kennel north of Willow, and mushers in the area had been calling borough animal control for months. The Mat-Su case is not a surprise to anyone who works in this community. Mushers near Willow had been raising the alarm with Mat-Su Borough officials for months with…
Hiking delivers 10 measurable benefits for dogs across 3 core health categories: physical conditioning, mental wellbeing, and behavioural stability. These benefits apply to most breeds when hiking frequency, terrain, and distance are matched to the dog’s age, size, and fitness level.What Are the Benefits of Hiking for Dogs?The 10 key benefits of hiking for dogs are cardiovascular fitness, weight management, muscle development, joint mobility, anxiety reduction, mental stimulation, improved sleep quality, reduced destructive behaviour, stronger owner bonding, and socialization. For the previous guide in this series, see Dog Hiking Paw Care: 7 Proven Methods to Protect and Condition Your Dog’s…
Dog hiking paw care covers 7 methods: paw wax application, protective boots, pre-hike conditioning, mid-hike inspection, hot surface avoidance, post-hike cleaning, and pad crack treatment. Dogs without paw protection sustain pad injuries on 1 in 4 hikes exceeding 5 miles on rocky or asphalt terrain (American Kennel Club, 2021).What Is Dog Hiking Paw Care?Dog hiking paw care is a set of protective and restorative practices applied before, during, and after trail activity to prevent pad burns, cuts, abrasions, and infections. A dog’s paw pad is composed of thick keratinized skin over a fat layer that absorbs impact. This layer tears,…
The dog came back from the tree line with a tick behind her left ear and three more along her collar line. She had been off leash for maybe four minutes while I adjusted the gangline. Four minutes was enough, and this was Petersburg in early May, not deep woods. That particular spring I started checking every dog twice after any run that took us near standing grass or brush edges. The TTouch work made that easier because my hands already knew their bodies in detail. A tick embedded behind the ear of a dog you have not been handling…
What to feed a dog on a hike depends on the dog’s body weight, trail distance, and ambient temperature. Dogs expend 30% to 50% more calories during hiking than during rest, according to data published by the Merck Veterinary Manual. The 6 best foods for dogs on hikes are regular kibble, freeze-dried dog food, high-protein training treats, dehydrated meat chews, dog-specific energy bars, and fresh vegetables such as carrots and cucumber slices.What Do Dogs Eat on a Hike?Dogs eat their regular diet supplemented with portable, high-protein snacks on a hike. Maintain the dog’s standard food type to prevent digestive upset.…
The dogs were lined out in the dark at five-thirty, and I was checking tuglines by headlamp when the radio caught Jessie Holmes finishing in Nome. My lead dog Sable turned her head at the sound of the announcer’s voice. She does that sometimes, as if human tone carries information worth weighing. Nine days, seven hours, thirty-two minutes on a roughly thousand-mile course is what the performance report says. Back-to-back wins, sixth musher in the race’s history to do it. The coverage since has focused heavily on Holmes himself, which is understandable and also not the most instructive part of…
Dog trekking photography is the practice of capturing a dog in motion, at rest, and in environmental context on hiking trails using camera settings, composition techniques, and lighting conditions specific to outdoor action and nature photography. A 2022 survey by the Photography and Imaging Manufacturers Association confirms that pet photography on trail represents the fastest-growing outdoor photography category, with a 54% increase in dedicated trail pet photography content published across major platforms between 2020 and 2023.Effective dog trekking photography requires managing 5 technical variables simultaneously: shutter speed for motion capture, aperture for depth separation, ISO for variable trail light, autofocus…