Just about the time of the summer solstice on June 20, we get a chance at one of the first big harvests of the warm season: salmon. Every year, the family helps set a small gillnet in Cook Inlet near the mouth of the Kasilof River to snare a few dozen sockeye salmon making their way to the river to spawn.

Sometimes you pull a net and get two fish, sometimes none, sometimes 50. It all depends. This year was very good to us. We were able to fish twice and got 12 salmon on one day and 18 the second day. I filleted and skinned the fish after we got home, and Bree sliced the meat into fingers, stuffed it into pint jars with a little salt and olive oil and put them in the pressure cooker.

Most people like fresh fish better, but we like to have the canned fish put away for winter. It makes an awesome salmon loaf and salmon salad sandwich. Later, in July, I’ll put a dip net in the river and hopefully haul out just a few more for the smoker.

What does all this have to do with dog mushing? A little. All the heads, guts, fins, spines and leftover meat isn’t going to waste. I slide all that good stuff into a used dog food bag and slip it into a chest freezer to harden up for a week or two. I typically chop of the resulting blocks with an ax and feed it to the dogs as a meal.

The net result is, every morsel of fish is used. Nothing is wasted.

If that seems repulsive, you’re not thinking like a dog.

If you watch brown bears (or other predators) in the wild, they typically go for the guts first, and in the case of overfed coastal bears eating fish, they munch on the heads and sometimes toss away the partially eaten remains. In other words, they go for the flavor and probably the source of highest nutrition.

Raw, frozen salmon (from this region, where diseases aren’t an issue) is excellent dog food, whether it is whole fish or filleted carcasses. It is abundant and inexpensive around here.