Meet The Dogs PUPPIES! May 2017 Litter SHOWS WEIGHT PULL NEWS! FUN WORKING EXTENDED FAMILY LINKS Nicolet 2010 ~OUR PAST~ |
Tol Istari Alaskan Malamutes |
John & Helen Schultz Spring Green WI Contact US Members, AMCA, TSAMC, AMCW |
Welcome to Tol Istari This story begins with a dog in 1974 and ends when our ashes are mixed with those of our dogs and spread along a snowy wooded trail. They say the average person stays in dogs for 5 years. How sad for them. What a wealth of friendships and experiences we would have missed if we had not been insane enough to have been caught up in all the many ways to enjoy our challenging breed. After surviving our first dog, Gandalf, it is hard to believe we continued to get more deeply involved but we live the advice we have passed on to many others -- "Nobody has just one." Some malamute people have come back to us in later years and told us that with that warning phrase "IT" is officially "all our fault". One dog (Gandalf) led to another (Avalanche) which led to a dogsled. They hauled wood to heat our home and hauled us down snow bound roads. We had some success at weight pulling, showing, and bred our next generations to increase the team with a goal towards keeping the work ethic we had found in our original dogs. Two dogs led to seven, which led to ten. Ten seemed the magic number after which came, "What's one more?" and I don't believe we've seen less than 20 since. For a time, John ran mid distance and freight races with mixed teams of Malamutes and Alaskans or sometimes all Alaskans and we were at well over 30 dogs but now we have come back to our roots and have only Alaskan Malamutes. |