But the Urban Mushers don't need snow to have fun. They call it scootering, and each dog owner harnesses his or her dogs to a special scooter — a cross between a mountain bike and a heavy duty scooter — and then they take off down the trails, dogs running and owners calling out commands.
Zach and Dylan like going fast and, despite taking a few falls here and there, are not fazed by the trail ahead because they have confidence in their dogs.
"With all the energy all the dogs have inside them, they can run for like six miles," Zach said before they hit the trail.
Sheryl O'Rourke started scootering with her huskies in the fall. The Costa Mesa resident had previously gone sledding with the dogs, but she said that after just a few months of the extra training, the dogs performed better on the snow during a recent trip to her home in the Eastern Sierras.
"At first I thought, 'Well, that doesn't look stable,' but then I tried it, and it was great," O'Rourke said as she waited with her stepson Liam Maxwell, 12, for the group to get ready. "So I got a scooter, and it's been great…. It's a fun thing to do. It's fun for everybody."
Huskies have tremendous amounts of energy, especially as puppies, and many of the urban mushers said that the dogs get excited when they realize they're going to the park.
"As soon as we pull in and they see the other dogs, they just start howling," Rancho Santa Margarita resident Joan Tommarello said. "They just love being in a pack."
And it must be true. Even novice dogs that don't know any commands seem to do OK their first time, simply following their newfound friends along the path.
