Colorado Central Articles From — January 2010

Story and Photos by Mike Rosso

As a native of Black Hawk, Colorado, Aaron Peyrouse has been playing in the mountains all his life. He learned to ski at Loveland Ski Area at a young age and eventually became a full-time ski patroller. It was during those years at Loveland that he learned about avalanche rescue dogs and became intrigued. The area had employed golden retrievers trained to seek out and hunt down the scent of skiers buried in avalanches.

Peyrouse began his own research into the training of rescue dogs by referencing the certification program offered through Search And Rescue Dogs Of Colorado (SARDOC) Colorado Rapid Avalanche Deployment (CRAD). Meanwhile, he ran into an old friend in Central City who had just arrived from Montana with a fresh litter of bird-dog puppies. Peyrouse got to choose the pick of the litter, a six-week-old black lab he named Üllr after the Norwegian god of snow and skiing. Read the rest of this article

by Elliot Jackson

The cover photo of my Siberian Husky, Sovay, was taken in early 2009 when, as a vigorous 13-year-old, she was still pacing pal Mike and me up mountain passes and breaking trail when we went snow-shoeing. Sovay, typical of her breed, is a highly energetic dog, easily bored and not all at all disinclined to let me know about it – that is, if baleful, pointed stares, imperious whoo-ings, and impatient tap-dance routines at the door can be taken as indication of a need and desire that we be off, now, on some quest for amusement or adventure. To see the antic gleam in her blue eyes, and observe her tongue-lolling, shark-toothed grin as she peered back over her shoulder just before dusting us on the trail, has made those days of back country ramblings a special delight for me; I believed I beheld my companion at one with her ideal environment.

To my regret, and I’m sure to hers, she and I were relative late-comers to the joys of snow-shoeing. Sovay had spent her puppyhood in urban Chicago; but even after moving from Chicago to the Colorado Western Slope, we didn’t get out into the back country nearly often enough for her tastes. Oh, to be sure, I would from time to time consider taking up cross-country skiing again, a sport I had pursued intermittently back in the flatlands of Michigan, and dream of skijoring with her, but I was married to a distinctly nonsporting partner, and it seemed like there was always something else to be doing on the weekends. But times change, people change, loves change, and by the time Sovay was accompanying me back and forth to Salida to see new friends, no winter weekend seemed complete without a snow-shoe trip. Read the rest of this article