Amidst all of this barking, fighting, yelling and blinding snow, we lined the sleds up, roped each of them to a tree (to keep the dogs from pulling them away as we attached them to the leads) and began the process of placing the harnesses on each of the 23 dogs.

Jeff would pass them out to us and tell us which dog the harness went on and we would go to that dog, slip it over its head and help it get its feet through the harness.

The harnesses were in different colors - the big dogs got purple ones, the medium dogs got green ones, and the small dogs got leopard skin colored (imagine that!).