This is a small outfit located just west of Fairbanks, Alaska. It comprises sled dogs and a couple of humans named Tucker and Samantha.
If you are here looking for the next aspiring champions of long-distance dog sled racing, you must look further. The main goals here are to have fun and make sure our dogs are happy and healthy. In between the time they get to spend on the couch, we consider our dogs to be working dogs. To us, that means they have the genetics/upbringing that give them a skill set and desire to pull a sled and do it well, even when the going gets tough. Us humans and dogs will race as we see fit, explore at our leisure, loaf around, and play.
Why the name Lost Sourdough? Check out the Blog to find out more!
Current news as of … May 2025
The snow has finally melted and we’re waiting for the wild chamomile to sprout. The back 40 is greening up and the dogs are taking advantage of us, chaperoning their own walks beyond whistle range if we don’t keep a close eye on them. Charlotte tried to befriend her first porcupine of the season, bringing her total lifetime standings to: 3 emergency vet visits and 8 times being put under general anesthesia. In the first week of June we are planning to get 8 sled dogs from Ryne Olson which will coincide with our girl Cooper bringing the first official Sourdough Litter into the world – when it rains here, it pours dogs.
So, we’re getting ready. For the puppies we’ve re-purposed the back deck. It comes fully furnished with a whelping box, a carpet of spruce shavings, a kiddie pool, and safety measures to ensure no one plummets to his/her early demise. On top of that, we’ve made a 100sq/ft “pen” that connects to the cabin (with the intention that it becomes our future garden’s dog defense system). We cut and peeled the logs ourselves for the posts and put those suckers in crooked and askew as all hell. Since they weren’t really straight to begin with it actually doesn’t look too bad. We’re fans of the ol’ eye-ball level around these parts.
For the 8 adult dogs we’ve made about a million trips to Ryne’s place in Two Rivers (1hr20 one way). Ryne has her dogs on deck board platforms that keep her dogs up and out of the mud when the seasons transition. Platforms also keep the dogs from digging holes to China, which they will incessantly try to do. And finally, deck board platforms in a dog yard just look better (our opinion). So on top of giving us 8 dogs and a bunch of mushing wisdom, Ryne has let us take one of her 30x90ft platforms, which fits 16 souls. You ever tear down a 30x90 deck that has been pooped and peed on for almost a decade? It’s pretty fun stuff. So fun that Ryne even helped us break a lot of it down because she didn’t want to miss out on the joy of it. If it wasn’t already clear, we owe Ryne a lot.
Once we get the platforms set up, ooo mami, that backyard is gonna be hot stuff. It’s crunch time baby. Nothing like the spurs of procrastination to get kicked into gear. As for the humans, Tucker had his own birthing. It was a boy, a little painful hernia, which we’ve forgotten the name of. He’s spent the last month or so recovering from surgery, being generally useless, and asking Sam to do a lot of things for him while he’s at work where he is learning how to be a pencil pusher again. He’s not very good at it, he gets his zeros and O’s mixed up. He looks forward to joining back up with his Hotshot crew in late June. Meanwhile, Sam has been applying for jobs, riding her bike, getting interviewed by podcasts (Mushing Alaska Podcast!), doing all of the dog chores, and acquiring all of the lumber, tools and supplies to make sure these projects get done while the getting is good.
Most often, the first thing most people say when they learn about a dog kennel is something like, “Wow that’s a lot of money in dog food.” And ya, it kind of is. But the real costs are the time, energy, and material that it takes to make a dog yard, keep it maintained, and get porcupine quills pulled at the vet. If we only had to buy a pallet of dog food a couple of times a year, no biggie. But buy the wood to build a dog house, buy a metal post for the swivel, buy a swivel, buy a chain for the swivel, go back to the store because you forgot the dumb plastic piece for the swivel, buy some s-links to connect the chain to the swivel, buy an s-link tool thingy that costs way too fricken much… You get the idea. So… if you want to become a FOUNDER, now’s the time where you can really make a difference.
Stay tuned for 8 more dog bios, coming your way!
Hey, do you want to name a puppy? Click on this link
We warmly welcome donations big and small to help fund projects for the kennel! Click on the "Support Us" link to view options.
