Gabi and Merlot become restless waiting for the race start. They give no thought to conserving energy for the race. Behind them a black Labrador, Alfie, has joined the racing ranks.

Retriever sled dogs
making their mark

GABI, the Labrador retriever sled dog whose exploits we have followed in previous issues, is now getting close to attaining the title of Sled Dog from the New Zealand Sled Dog Association with which she is registered. Merlot, her racing companion and a golden retriever, is also registered with the association. Points are awarded for each placing achieved - 50 points are required for Sled Dog status.

Gabi (Semadar Gabriella) and Merlot's performances have just moved up another notch on a recent weekend with another first placing on the Saturday and third place on the Sunday. The races were 9.2km (41.09 minutes) on Saturday and 7.5km (31.09 minutes) on Sunday. The Sunday race had a hill in it that was pretty hard going. Gabi is as fast as a Husky and can run 5km (2.5miles) without panting. She is very fit.

One of Gabi's first races was in Berwick Forest in the South Island in June, 2000. Gabi and her musher, Murray, try a new and challenging sport.

Club members from the north just call Gabi and Merlot the 'yellow dogs'. They even held out a Siberian Husky team on both days, much to the disgust of the huskies' owners.

The word is getting out about the team and its performance is gaining Gabi and Merlot huge respect. But they are pretty laid-back and just lie around waiting to go, but when the harness goes on it is like hitting the switch. On the second day if the weekend owner Murray Friedrich says he had his normal 200kg of body building friends as handlers, holding them at the line, and Gabi was so excited she slipped her collar. So two more people had to try and hold her to put it back on. Murray said: "Whenever I go up to get my prizes I thank my handlers and apologise for my dogs' behaviour."

The Canterbury Labrador Club president visited the race venue for the races, and she took photographs for the club website. She said some of the other club members surf the net for information on mushing and the articles in K9 Perspective have been printed out and passed around.

Murray is currently looking for sponsorship of the team and is particularly hopeful after some negotiations.

Alfie, the Friedrichs' black Labrador in the pre-race photograph, achieved third place on Saturday and first place on Sunday in the single dog scooter races, so Murray assures us nobody can say the Gabi-Merlot team is a one-off for retrievers. Over the next couple of months his intention is to hook up Alfie with the team for a run. "That should be interesting. I might have to buy another dog for a foursome!"

The team is off to the Wanaka snow race starting on the 25th August for a week, so the recent weekend has been a good build-up. There will be a practice day on Sunday and then races on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Merlot's pedigree name is Hawkwood Scotty's Hero and he is two years old now. His father was Stanroph Super Scott imported from the UK and his mum was Hawkwood Brie from New Zealand.

In the 2003 racing season so far, Gabi and Merlot took first place in the two-dog rig class at Berwick Forest from a class of five traditional teams. The benefit of having retrievers came through in one of the races early on the Sunday morning, when a team of malamutes Gabi and Merlot had trained with, started two minutes ahead. Gabi picked up their scent and really got to work up a 1.2km hill and managed to catch them.

Gabi and Merlot also managed to catch a four-dog Sibord team (Siberian husky X Border collie ) and stayed with them for about 5km with the lead changing regularly. About 800meters from home the two other teams started their home run and Merlot kicked into gear ... and he and Gabi flew past them on the grass and finished 10 seconds ahead of them at a sprint.

Gabi was only able to attain fourth in the junior race this year due to the fact that a Samoyed jumped on her as she was passing.