Always have fun at the Copper Dog! Very pleasant weather though the trail was the worst I have seen it in three years of coming to the race. They had gotten rain, then it froze, so the trail was 4-8 inches of chewed up sugar snow with ice chunks in it. Glad I wore my goggles as I kept getting hit in the face with big chunks! The closer we got to Eagle Harbor the better the trail got thankfully:) I ran 9 dogs the first leg placing 8th, had a yearling that was sore after the run so ran 9 dogs again on the 2nd leg placing 5th, moving up to 6th place overall and only 4 seconds from 5th place overall!! A couple of the dogs picked up the virus that was going around at the race and had some that were sore also so was down to only 7 dogs for the 3rd leg. It was a long, slow, tough run into Calumet placing 12th that day. I was so thankful we were still able to place 7th overall after that horrible run!!! Wew!! It was really neat to get to see a fox zip across the trail in front of us shortly after leaving the Copper Harbor checkpoint! Man they are so fast! A huge thank you to our amazing host family (they host us every year!) who go over the top in hospitality! Just amazing, wonderful people who have become dear friends that we look forward to seeing each year!!! A perk this year was picking up the two pups we had bought from Jake Golten, they were so little and cute and just made everything so fun! We really enjoyed having those little tykes with us during the race, they are so friendly and social everyone just loved them:) The awards banquet for this race was over the top in entertainment! Todd Brassard, one of the organizers of the race, truly put on an exciting show, playing music as each person went up to receive their award. All that was missing was lights and smoke lol:) You won't find a more exciting and entertaining, fun banquet anywhere!! We loved it! So sad its my last race of the year but looking forward to next year already!