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Hi All,

Training Boot Camp style puts an emphasis on strengthening the pulling response, consistently and on command.  It also teaches us how to train a controlled, well-behaved team.  To seek out and solve behavior problems (like alligatoring) that can damage a musher's reputation on the trail rather than avoid them.  It doesn't focus on pace or speed for those reasons.  Last year at Boot Camp (April '02), my yearlings responded to a challenge especially well.....I immediately let them move faster.  Another musher asked 
Ann about that and she (knowingly) told them that I was training the dogs to consider MOVING FASTER as their REWARD.

Even though I run sprint with my Sibes, I "cross-train" when it comes to pace.  Large team training slow with heavy quad and lots of resistance, moving to less resistance and rewarding them with moving faster....then to the smaller quad and varying the resistance.  What I aim to train is that I SET THE PACE; I want the dogs to slow to a trot when I ask, stand and wait calmly while I work in the team AND to pick it up to a lope when I ask it.

In a given training run, I will vary the speed several times; the goal being that I can judge the conditions and guide the team appropriately and with control.  (This is basically "interval training".)  Then my job is to know how much to ask and when to ask it.  Depending on your planned distance, overall pace goals, terrain, temperatures, size and conditioning of team, etc. you will need to assess what is fair to ask.  
A six dog team is probably not going to lope for thirty miles; but you can alternate your pace between the trot and the lope if you have trained them to YOUR pace commands. If you are wanting the dogs to stay in a lope lope longer, stop them and rest them before they change to a trot.  Do this numerous times on a training run. Do this separately from a training run where you are focusing on varying your pace.  As the pace setting, their conditioning and their command response come together the distances 
between needed pace changes will increase as will YOUR control of the pace.  What I DON'T do is increase the speed by helping the dogs with the quad motor; motor equals resistance training, neutral equals speed.  I want the dogs pulling at speed, not just running at speed. 

We don't have it perfect, but we keep working on it!

(Written March '03)