Last March, over spring break, Sylvia, then age 7, had her first chance to mush a two-dog team.
It would stand to reason that a child raised by mushers who talk about dogs, mushing, and dogsledding all the time had, unbeknownst to us, been listening, or at least absorbing our advice, beliefs, and theories about how to drive a team for the past seven years, and that her natural ability to drive a dog team far surpassed any of the handlers who had come through.
We told Sylvia not to let go, and she did not. She tipped over several times, but she clung to the handlebar like a pro. Her instincts for maneuvering the sled—how to lean, turn, brake etc.—were spot on. After several successful runs last spring, she was excited to go again this winter, and at our first opportunity, we did just that.
We have the bare minimum of snow necessary to run sleds from our kennel currently. It has been a cold December. Sometimes, on the really cold days, I talk myself out of training. But one evening, I could no longer avoid training even though the temperature was dipping below zero before I even left home. Twenty-seven miles later, despite the parka, hand warmers, and multiple layers of clothing, my toes were numb, and my mental state had succumbed to a chilly fate. I worked on a haiku while I rolled along out there, fine-tuning the syllable count after returning home:
Five below zero
ATV driver is numb
And regrets her choices
I think it was that next day that we pulled out the sleds. When we dragged them into the yard, the dogs recognized the change. They know when they are about to pull something more like a tin can than a cinder block through the woods, and their joy erupted.
Kendra, our handler, and I sandwiched Sylvia’s small team between each of ours. I was in front and tried not to get too far ahead of Sylvia. Each time Sylvia caught up, she struck up a conversation with me. “Mommy, did you see…” and then I would lose the rest of her sentence, and I could hear her talking her way down the trail. Each time she crept closer, she’d strike up the conversation again, seemingly oblivious to whether I was actually paying attention.
Sylvia is in her second year on the YMCA swim team, and has found herself to be quite a talented swimmer with an especially great backstroke (proud parent here). I asked Sylvia one day if she would rather attend a swim meet in early January or go with us to a dog race and do the kids’ race there.
“That isn’t even a question,” Sylvia replied. “Go to the dog race, of course.”
In January, we will head to Newberry, Mich., and Sylvia will participate in her first sled dog race, likely racing with her two favorite dogs, Itsy and Teddy. Right now, there are six other kids signed up, so it should be a good time watching the kids compete out there.
That first sled ride was okay with five dogs on my team. When we arrived home, I told Kendra that went pretty well, but “I wouldn’t want more than five dogs.”
“Oh God no,” she replied.
Later that week, it snowed two more inches, so I thought, “We should just take eight-dog teams.”
That’s what we did. We hitched up two eight-dog teams and left on the safer (maybe) of our two trails. For the first mile, I very much regretted my decision as I bounced off trees with my body, nearly overturned my sled, and careened through a creek at breakneck speed. The rest of the run wasn’t so bad, though sometimes I could feel the rocks and gravel in the trail, but then we had to do that final mile back into the kennel all over again.
“I don’t think I’ll do that again,” I told Kendra when we got home.
“Oh God no,” she said.
No more sleds for now; it’s back to the ATV.
Running dogs with the ATV is not why mushers mush, and I could—and probably have—expounded in other blogs about the cold. The miles take longer to run, and for us, the trails options are few and far between, so we just do the same out and backs over and over and over. My better runs are the days when it’s not quite so cold, and I have a good book in the headphones and nothing too crazy happens, like a tree across the trail that causes the front end to bunch up and a dog to jump on another dog and start a fight. Or, at our tight turn around, the second team decides, no, they won’t follow the first team; they will “cut them off at the head!” thereby causing a massive tangle, more fighting, and a gangline around the ATV tire. Or maybe the ATV just dies. And there you are with 14 dogs and a dead machine. But what would running dogs be without a story?
Most days, though, I’m pretty happy to have a smooth run with good sensation in all my digits. It’s a welcome sight on a cold evening to come back to the lit-up dog yard, fill their bellies, and then my own. That’s all in a day’s training, and the next day we will do it again.
