We’ve been making a concerted effort to take Wilma out running several times per week.  The snow is deep and impassible without snowshoes, which gets her some great excercise when we are out after hares (she sinks up to her chest and has to bound through it with the force of a freight train).  However, since early January we’ve had our Skidoos up here with us, and have also made great use of the back trails into secluded lakes.  She powers along the skidoo trails, which are generally packed down from use, running in excess of 5 kilometres each way (10k round trip).  She seems to love it almost as  much as finding birds.  On straightaways and across frozen lakes she speeds on at around 50km/h, not her top speed, but pretty damn fast for the terrain covered. She has figured out the game fairly quickly and can hardly wait to take off.  She keeps pace ahead of us, adjusting her speed to ours.

Apart from roading her off an atv when she has structurally matured in another year or so, this exercise for her is hard to beat. I look forward to when the lakes and snow thaw and we can swim and hunt/hike hard through the lakes and forest, but I’ll definitely be missing winter come spring time.

Even after we’ve stopped and are unpacking the sled to set up our fishing gear, she’ll zoom around the tracks we’ve made in the snow.