Robert Forto

Dreamchaser Leadership

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Late September Dogs

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The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Late September Dogs

Shifter is the tan dog in lead

As I was lying in bed the other night, between the moment of slumber and rest I could hear all of the dogs around me at the kennels in the neighborhood. There are at lest four of them within a 1/4 mile or so. I soon realized that this is what I came here for. I am here to run sled dogs. Not attempt to take over the world like Stewie on Family Guy but to follow my dreams and follow my heart and discover the passion again that has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Soon I will have dogs of my own and begin to build the team that will take me into the future.

As I lay there, unable to go back to sleep i thought of a song by Melissa Etheridge called Late September Dogs. The first stanza is:

Just outside my window I hear the late September dogs

And I understand their warning and I understand their song

For about a month now I have been running sled dogs with a few of the people in the neighborhood and I will admit that I have learned a lot. I have kept an open mind and I am allowing it all to soak in. I have so much to learn and just around the corner there is years of experience in all of the areas that I want to accomplish.

Just the other day on a cold wet morning I decided to bring over my dog, Shifter to put into the nine dog team that I was running that morning. I was told that he was on several Yukon Quest teams and an Iditarod team or two. So I wanted to see how he ran with these dogs that day. About halfway though I put Shifter in lead and he turned on a dime when I barked out the commands, GEE, HAW and WHOA.  Could this dog be my leader in the team that I will be building? Could Shifter be the dog that gets me to Nome in few years?

As I was battling the rain and slopping through the mud I sat back and let the dogs do their job and thought about the song again:

Come on let it rain

Let it rain down on me

Let the rain touch my hands

Let the rain set me free

Let it rain down on me

Now, people run dogs for myriad reasons but I am almost sure we do it because we love the connection that it brings to the two species that are so in tune with one another. At least that is why I do…

I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.

Robert Forto | Team Ineka | Alaska Dog Works | Mushing Radio | Denver Dog Works

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Robert Forto is the host of The Dog Works Radio Show and is the training director of Alaska Dog Works. Robert Forto can be reached through his website at www.alaskadogworks.com

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: 31 Days of Horror

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The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: 31 Days of Horror

Every family has some sort of tradition. That is what makes us unique from the rest of middle-class suburbia in the middle of Americana with hot apple pie and the mini van in the driveway. Some of us go all out decorating our houses like Clark Wilhelm “Sparky” Griswold, Jr. and others have a spread on Thanksgiving that could feed a small country in Africa.

But at the Forto household we do something a little bit different. Every October we have what we call the 31 Days of Horror! it is a virtual fright fest every night of the month. Every night we watch a horror movie on the ole’ idiot box. Sure we could be doing other things like chores and homework and nightly sit-in’s around the old Emerson Radio listening to Little Orphan Annie.. but nooooooo we watch HORROR!

This all started when I was a kid and my dad (my parents were divorced at the time, I wonder why…) would take my brother and I to all the scary movies of the day: Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Friday the 13th Part 1 to 1000! and when we would stay over we would watch Creature Feature on the tube. Oh I used to love those sleep-overs!

Some of the classics we watch every year like…

Dracula

Frankenstein

The Creature From the Black Lagoon

Halloween of course (both John Carpenter and Rob Zombie’s version). I will say that I think that Zombie’s version of the tale is some of the best the horror genre has to offer.

I watch my all time favorite The Exorcist and even named our new pup after the main character (Reagan)

We watch our share of Stephen King: Cujo and The Shinning

and we always end the month with one of the greatest horror flicks of all time…

I encourage you to start this tradition in your house. If you like to be scared and enjoy a good flick this is it!

Follow me on Facebook and Twitter and each night I will post the movie of the evening and you share yours as well.

Day 1 Movie: Trick ‘r Treat

Day 2 Movie: The Exorcist

Day 3 Movie: Nosferatu

Day 4 Movie: White Zombie

Day 5 Movie: The Serpent and the Rainbow

Day 6 Movie: Creepshow 2

Day 7 Movie: The House of 1000 Corpses

Day 8 Movie: The Blob

Day 9 Movie: The Devils Rejects

Day 10 Movie: The Shinning

Day 11 Movie: The Omen

Day 12 Movie: The Thing

Day 13 Movie: Embrace of the Vampire

Day 14 Movie: (Stephen King’s) Desperation

Day 15 Movie: Dracula (1931)

Day 16 Movie: The Wolfman (1941)

Day 17 Movie: The Amityville Horror

Day 18 Movie: Frankenstein (1931)

Day 19 Movie:  Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Day 20 Movie: Halloween (1978)

Day 21 Movie: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Day 22 Movie: The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Day 23 Movie: ‘Salem’s Lot

Day 24: Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007)

Day 25 Movie: Dracula (1992)

Day 26 Movie: Stephen King’s Needful Things

Day 27 Movie: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Day 28 Movie: Rob Zombie’s Halloween II

Day 29 Movie: Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Day 30 Movie: Friday the 13th

 

I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.

Robert Forto | Team Ineka | Alaska Dog Works | Mushing Radio |

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Robert Forto is the host of The Dog Works Radio Show and is the training director of Alaska Dog Works. Robert Forto can be reached through his website at www.alaskadogworks.com

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: We’re Not in Kansas Anymore…

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The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: We’re Not in Kansas Anymore…

This past weekend I attended a symposium put on by the Willow (Alaska) Dog Mushers Association and lets just say I got schooled! I have called myself a musher for the better part of two decades and after hearing these guys talk I soon realized that everything I have done up to this point was mere child’s play.

In the morning we had short breakout sessions and I learned how to use a GPS in the woods where life just might matter in the case of an emergency. While I was in the Boy Scouts (and earned the Second Class badge, I might add), I must have skipped the map reading and compass orientation session at camp. I soon learned that a compass does not point to the same North as on a map and must be calibrated to do so.

The next session was about outdoor survival. While it was all great information about Cabela’s boots and Smart Wool socks the thing that coming up over and over from the ladies in the groups was how they had such a difficult time when nature called. I had never really thought about that but hey, even at 50 below zero I might think twice about Free Willy.

In the afternoon, Mary Shields, the first woman to ever finish the Iditarod spoke. What inspiration! Ms. Sheilds told stories about the beginning of the Iditarod and how things have changed over the years.

The sessions continued with a segment on how to stretch your kennel dollar–did you know that most mushers spend about a dollar a day per dog on food. Some mushers have a hundred dogs that is 3000 bucks a month!

Later in the afternoon there was great panel discussion on training lead dogs. The panel was a virtual who’s who of some of the greatest mushing names in the sport: Redington, Jonrowe, and Seavey among others.

The evening concluded with an honest to goodness home cooked ham dinner with the local 5th graders acting as servers. It was cute but I bet I got asked if I wanted a refill on water at least a thousand times. We then watched a film on Mary Shields and her run of the Yukon Quest. It was called Season of the Sled Dog.

I have been to a lot of conferences, seminars and talks but I will have to say this is one of the best ones I have ever been to. Who would have thought in a town of just a couple thousand people they could put on such an event. I guess thats why I love this place!

I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.

Robert Forto | Team Ineka | Alaska Dog Works | Mushing Radio |

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Robert Forto is the host of The Dog Works Radio Show and is the training director of Alaska Dog Works. Robert Forto can be reached through his website at www.alaskadogworks.com

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Lynyrd Skynard vs. Barry Manilow

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The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Lynyrd Skynard vs. Barry Manilow

A lot can be said about Balance. The Yin and the Yang. The Black and the White. Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker.  The cool side of the pillow… but I am reading a book by Mitch Seavey: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: Unconventional Sled Dog Secrets of an Alaskan Iditarod Champion, and he sums it up best. Lynyrd Skynyrd vs. Barry Manilow. Yep, thats right, you either rock your socks off to the Van Zant’s or sway to the groves of Copacabana.

In the book Mitch is talking about training leaders and positive versus negative training. I have been a dog trainer for a very long time. Maybe longer than some of my rabid readers have been alive and one thing I have learned over the years is you don’t train dogs just to fit in and do what everybody else is doing.

My Rabid Readers

Sure it might be the “in” thing to do to train with clickers and cute little kissing sounds. But your dogs (at least the ones that I train) have no idea what you are talking about. They understand balance. A dog has no idea its Sunday and they don’t understand shades of gray no matter how hard you want them to. Dogs understand leadership and routine.

In the sled dog world it is much the same. In working these past few weeks with a long distance mushing team I am beginning to see what Mitch is talking about. These dogs are born and bred to pull. That is all they want to do. Sure they want to please the Big Dog (it should always be the musher, by the way) and they enjoy a pat on the head.

But what I am trying to get across friends and neighbors is for years I was going through the motions with trying to train sled dogs. I didn’t quite have a finger on the pulse of the dog’s psychology. Lets just say I was a….

POSER!

I was attempted to use the conventional methods of dog training to try and build a team of sled dogs and I always wondered why they would quit on me in the middle of the trail. Why GEE never seemed to mean Right and HAW was some show on Saturday nights when I was a kid (HEE-HAW of course).

Now I see what I was doing wrong and I am quickly learning that I am a mere infant among men (what is the saying: Boys amongst Men). I have a lot to learn and if I ever plan to run the Iditarod in two and a half years I had better be an A student.

I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.

Robert Forto | Team Ineka | Alaska Dog Works | Mushing Radio |

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Robert Forto is the host of The Dog Works Radio Show and is the training director of Alaska Dog Works. Robert Forto can be reached through his website at www.alaskadogworks.com

The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Sippin the Apple Juice and the Video World

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Beam Me Up Scotty

Okay, okay, all of my rabid readers, friends and fans know by now you know I am a geek. I am the first to jump on the newest technology. Some could even call me a slave! Just last week I had to sip the Apple juice again and get the new iPhone 4. While I like all the new features and the screen display is awesome, it really is just like the old iPhone 3 if you download the latest operating system (except for the front facing camera). I still have not figured out why so many people like to take pictures of their oversized head with a cellphone…

About a week ago I sent my wife a little “surprise” in the mail. No, it wasn’t a box a chocolates or flowers. I am not a mushy guy like that. Instead I sent her a web-cam!

 

Last night we hooked them up and made our first call. It has been about a month since we have seen each other and both of us have a case of ‘I miss you blues’ so we thought this would be a good way to connect.

While I am using my built in camera on my Macbook, Michele is using a Walmart special, $44.00 plug and play model. While it was cool to see each other. I am amiss to think how could the goons from Star Trek have such cooler technology? Heck that was made in the 1970s and the could beam themselves up with the magic touch from Scotty.

Anyhow, it was cool to see my sweetie and we hope to do it again soon. What did they say? By 1999 Robots would be taking over the earth?

They got a long way to go baby…

I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please comment below.

Robert Forto | Team Ineka | Alaska Dog Works | Mushing Radio |

___________________

Robert Forto is the host of The Dog Works Radio Show and is the training director of Alaska Dog Works. Robert Forto can be reached through his website at www.alaskadogworks.com