BRAEBURN – Jess Sears of Whitehorse had “a pretty rough first run” contesting the YQ250, she told the Star over the weekend at Braeburn, before she headed back out on the trail.

“We dropped my main lead (Pippi), who is in heat but she also – freak accident – slipped and pulled her groin in the first 10, 20 miles, and we bagged a screaming demon for 75 miles,” Sears said.

“She was not happy because she thought she was perfectly fine. ‘Three legs. I can still pull. I’m good.’”

Sears said she expected things to get better – and more interesting.

“Now I’ll be running just my two (veteran) wheel dogs and all puppies. Now it’s a real puppy team led by puppies for puppies.”

She called it a family affair.

“I have five dogs from the same litter and a couple cousins. We raced seven puppies at the same time last year. It’s only fitting that we should be racing them.”

Sears said she was feeling pretty tired.

“It was a lot longer of a run than I expected, and it was pretty rough with a flailing, screaming dog,” she said.

“It should improve from here, and now it’s daylight and we’ll actually get to enjoy the scenery instead of just doing damage control.”

Sears described Pippi, her ailing lead dog, as “just a little girl, as strong as a horse, can do anything.

“No 45-pound dog ever caused more pull or havoc. Strong little girl and wicked smart leader.

“I don’t know what I would do without her, but I guess we’re gonna find out,” Sears said.

She’s trained the rest of her puppies to run lead.

“So here’s the big test, right? I said all my dogs can run lead. So we’re gonna do the big exam now.”

She usually switches her lead dogs every two hours.

“You can kind of tell when they start to get distracted following squirrels up a tree.”

Sears said the rest of her dogs have all been resting and eating really well.

“They were really hydrated when we came in.”

Her dogs were mostly mentally tired, she said.

“They’re taking the time to rest and recoup from that. There’s a little bit of soreness, but not much other than like what I feel right now too.

“Everyone had to pull a little bit of a heavier load (Saturday) than we were expecting, because we had a full load of our start line gear.

“I think they’re good. They’re all getting ready. They’re either sleeping or just chillin’.”

As for the rest of their journey, Sears said it could go one of two ways.

“Either have this female dog in heat out of my team and the team is able to focus and concentrate a little bit more and we just kind of take it one mile at a time.

“We’re on a puppy schedule. So you know, very equal rest to run and even if I wanted to go faster, I would be hesitant to do so because again, we’re just practising getting into the swing of the routine,” Sears said.

“Or they might be very distracted and say, ‘OK, Mom, we had our fun, we’ve ate our birthday cake.’ And I’m gonna go home and you know, if that happens then that happens, because I have the rest of their lives to race with them,” the musher said.

“So I don’t want it to be un-fun. Challenge is good, but no one wants to do the slog.”

Her dogs are “pretty bush-savvy,” she added.

“So we’ll just keep going. I’m sure they’re gonna continue to shock, awe and surprise me but we’ve done the training, so unless we have any more freak accidents, then they should be fine.”