Tourists

After dogs the biggest part of my job is keeping tourists happy. I make my money off tourists, they are what pays for everything. I never for a second forget that they are the reason why I can be here and living the way that I do.

The town I live in is a cruise ship port. People are all on vacation and they come off their cruise and then go into town and do their shopping thing/ other excursions. You can see the buses full for the tours going by to try gold panning or go to some sort of salmon bake. They go in and out of shops and there are shows that actors dress up in period costume for. After all this town was a bit of a rough place during the gold rush and people enjoy attempting to go back to that time period.

I have been on a cruise before, granted it was to Western Caribbean, but still they are all pretty much the same. In every port there are a series of excursions that you can do and there is usually a town that you can go shopping in. The towns have pretty much the same stores. I'll let you in on a little secret: when you're doing the cruise stops keep in mind that a lot of the shops are all owned by the same people in every port. So a company will have a shop in port #1, #2, #3... they will also have multiple shops in the same town attracting a different audience. The tourists come off the ship... walk around... and then get back on. There are thousands of tourists on each ship.

Now one would hope that if you were paying for an excursion you would be interested in the tour offered. Boy was I wrong! In an ideal world, yes this is what happens, but in the real world some people just look at the price tag and say 'well it's the most expensive it must be good.' and so that is how more people than I imagined get up to Dog Camp and are not actually be interested in dogs. Many people are, but then you have some who are more interested in the snowmobiles. It's very sad for the mushers when they would rather sit on the snowmobile and take pictures rather than pet a dog who is dying for attention. They also are the same people at the end of the tour who are not interested in puppies. I wonder if they have a soul....

Most tourists are nice but then every now and again you get the one or two that just don't get it. They treat you like you're less-than they don't accept 'no' as an answer. They pick on my sunglasses tan and don't listen when I tell them things. Yes I realize they are on vacation but when I say 'It's time to go towards the helicopter site' I don't actually mean 'please take 15 more pictures of puppies and take your gloves off, take pictures of you jumping with a dog team in the background, and go to the bathroom.' Funny how it seems that when I close the box full of puppies people seem to think that RIGHT THEN is the time to take more pictures... even though I've warned them it's going to be closed soon. Tourists do love their picture taking. Another thing they love is to ask the same questions 'When are you getting out of school?' 'Do you live here?' 'Do you have another shot of us?'

I take their action shot while they are sled, and it's moving. As I'm sure you can imagine this becomes quite challenging 'Everyone smile and wave! Now look at me! 3..2..1!' most of the time it turns out just fine. Then there are times when someones hand is in someones face. I will retake the photo if this is the case. However I will not take the photo if your own hand is in front of your face. I counted you down, I warned you, and then your musher told you too. Not my fault. Also the people who will keep their camera in front of their face I will not retake their picture, they will have some amazing video of me taking their picture and telling them to look at me. Then they ask why I have a picture with either their hand or a camera in their face. Tourists will often times take so many pictures that they do what we call the 'virtual tour' which means that they never taken their camera away from their face and just look around... with their eyes. They are constantly looking through the lens of their camera, rather than with their own eyes. You'd rather watch the tour instead of experience it.

Hundreds of tourists come and go and I've yet to have an unhappy tourist. The ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that do something incredibly stupid like ask 'so do you ever get cold up here?' or 'Do you helicopter the dogs in every day and out every night?' my personal favorite 'is this really your career?' or 'so what is your goal in life really?' Well it sure as f*ck isn't to take your picture lady, get back on the helicopter.

At the end of the day we all share our stories, after all we do need to vent about our day. But like I said we all keep in mind that without tourists our job wouldn't happen. With that said we all wake up again and paint on our happy faces to greet the next batch of tourists.