in fact, became incorporated with our doggy conglomeration after their original owner gave up on them and all the dogs in his kennel. He just walked away and abandoned them. I’d love to say this kind of thing isn’t common in Alaska, but a sad reality is it happens every few years. Caring for a kennel requires a tremendous dedication of time, energy, and financial resources, and a lot of people leap into owning or breeding lots of dogs before they have thoroughly researched all the hard work the commitment will entail. Some quickly find themselves in over their heads, and will try to adopt out a few dogs. Others, of less conscience, will cull their numbers or bring them to the pound. And then those with no scruples will abandon their kennel, leaving the dogs to either starve to death or fend for themselves.
It was this latter type of human (and I use the word generously in this case) that brought the brothers into our lives. Several mushers with moral fiber better than his banded together to take in as many of the abandoned dogs as they could. Some had gone weeks without food and clean water and were in such a severe state of emaciation, euthanasia was deemed the most humane course of action. Other neglectees reverted back to a more feral state, and acted dangerously aggressive to those there to help. Several of these dogs were also put down.
Perhaps saddest of all, a litter of puppies had been born in the interim. Already a couple months old and with no human contact, they had developed hair-triggers. Scared out of their wits by two-legged intruders to their world, these whelps sprinted at such breakneck speeds they couldn’t be caught by hand. Instead, landing nets, typically used for securing salmon, were required to capture the panic-stricken pups. Like the older dogs, some were deemed too feral to risk rehabilitating, but three little pups that curled into fetal balls from fear rather than attempting to snap and bite were granted the gift of their lives.
A rescuer who knew we had a track record of taking on huskies with tough or troubled backgrounds called, asking if we could take them. One pup, a coffee-colored female, was already spoken for by a young woman who assisted in the rescue, leaving two males. We agreed, sight unseen, to take them.
They arrived a few hours later, both with sunken brown eyes and thick matted coats as black and dirty as potting soil. The smaller one Cole named Boo—a nickname she called her little brother growing up. The other pup, slightly larger and with one floppy ear, I named Klaus—for no other reason than I liked the ring of the Germanic word.
After weeks of trust building, both came out of their shells, but entirely different personalities emerged. Boo exhibited affection and an eagerness to please. Off leash he tended to move in tandem with me, much like dogs that have gone through obedience class and stick to their owner’s calf, step for step. He picked up fetch quickly and ran on such high octane that he could spend an hour sprinting without growing weary of it. Once he started training in harness with the rest of the kennel, he displayed a total lack of fatigue. His pure, gut-driven power quickly led to a permanent promotion running with the core race dogs.
Klaus also warmed into being very soft-hearted and friendly, but when off leash would spend a lot more time interacting with other dogs than us. He also enjoyed pulling a sled, but wasn’t gifted with the same fitness and stamina as Boo. He never quit or ran with a slack line, but he fatigued earlier than the other dogs, struggled to keep up, and his body language at the end of a run epitomized a dog totally out of gas. We kept conditioning him for several years, but when it seemed he was just as happy spending time on the couch, we decided to retire him from running and gave him to Cole’s mom and dad. He now spends his days in Massachusetts where he roughhouses with their other dog, a German shepherd, who like Klaus has a zero-tolerance policy for squirrels in their yard.
One of our greatest successes with a dog adopted from the local animal shelter became apparent when the gutsy gal made it the furthest, literally and figuratively. At this point, when working on a story at the pound, I dropped all pretenses of leaving without a dog.
“What’ve you got for me this time?” I asked the shelter manager upon arriving.
“Funny you should ask,” he said with a sly smile, and led me to the back where a small female pup suspiciously eyed me at a safe distance from the front of the cage.
Wary and untrusting at first, my kissy noises and fingers waggling through the chain-link proved too much for her to resist. She leaned in broadside and let me scratch on her back. Her coat was thick and black with the exception of a white star on her chest, white toe tips, and a white wisp on her chin. Without protest I adopted her and unlike some pound spooks, this pup displayed an affectionate personality from the second she hopped in the cab of my pickup. She cuddled in my lap and nuzzled my beard the whole drive home.
This addition we named Arrow, like the dog in the Harry Nilsson song “Me and My Arrow.” I also secretly hoped she would one day fly straight and true down the trail for us, and a few years later—after growing into a strong, but lean and lanky-legged runner—she did.
Cole signed up for the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest, known as the “Toughest Sled Dog Race in the World,” an annual run between White-horse, Yukon Territory to Fairbanks, Alaska. It traverses some of the most pristine and last true wilderness areas in North America, following late 1800s Klondike gold rush routes and historic sled-dog-delivered mail trails. Teams must be self-reliant while navigating as much as 200-miles between some checkpoints, where challenges routinely include temperatures of forty below, savage winds smiting in excess of 100 miles per hour, soul-crushingly steep mountain ascents and descents, lonely and desolate labyrinths of winding frozen rivers and creeks, and all during a time of winter when nights are seventeen hours long.
Prior to this race, all the dogs had put in thousands of miles of rigorous training and conditioning, and Cole had won a few and done well in several 200- and 300-mile races around the state. However, all of these previous events had twelve-dog maximums, and the Quest allowed up to fourteen dogs. Cole knew starting with less than the required amount just meant more work for the other dogs on the team, so to have a full complement of fourteen she would need to take some unproven athletes. She decided on a yearling, Kawlijah, that had always been outstanding despite his young age, and Arrow, who had never raced before.
It was a tall task, but Arrow rose to the challenge. At every checkpoint, I’d be anxiously waiting, my bottom teeth raking my upper lip raw, fully expecting Cole to drop Arrow from fatigue, but each time she didn’t I’d be pleasantly disappointed. To be honest, Arrow did appear bone-deep tired upon arrival, but after lapping up a hot wet meal, and getting a few hours’ rest, she would leave with pep in her step.
In the end, Cole and the team finished twelfth out of twenty-nine teams that started the race, Arrow still there with her, still pulling, still contributing to the whole, and that was a truly noteworthy accomplishment. She had hauled a heavy load for 1,000 miles, something many dogs have tried, but not as many have succeeded at, and some that have succumbed to injury, illness, or exhaustion were dogs specifically bred for the task by some of the most recognizable names in the sport of mushing.
Sure, Arrow wasn’t on a first-place team, but she wasn’t on the last-place team either. Even if she had been, though, wouldn’t it still have been an amazing feat? To put it in human terms, isn’t the last person to cross the finish at the Boston Marathon or the Ironman World Championship triathlon still succeeding at an endeavor few people could achieve even if they dared try?
To me, it’s not that pound dogs don’t have worth, or to be more specific, inherent worth as sled dogs, it’s just that to succeed with them you have to be open to finding their very individualized skill sets, and that’s what we did with all of our rescues.
Pong, while she can’t sustain sprint speeds for very long, can break trail at slightly slower speeds for hours. Ping’s digestive processes move at a glacial pace, so much so that I think she could put on a few pounds from just a whiff of the food bucket, and this proved valuable when racing in deep-minus temperatures when dogs with higher metabolisms shiver off too much weight. Six, while small, can remember any trail after having only run it once, which I relied on whenever I grew disoriented or got lost from time to time. Rolo developed into an amazing gee-haw leader, turning left or right with precision whenever we gave the commands, which also helped all the dogs in line behind him learn the meaning of these words and the importance