Act2: Gone Mushing!

There is so much that could be said about mushing, but I will try to keep the difference between a blog and an encyclopedia entry. First of all, what is mushing? Mushing consist in being pulled on a sled by, in my case, 11 dogs that do it for a living. In Alaska, were horses can’t go to far and are difficult to be fed, dogs are the best way to reach isolated communities. Well, now you can fly, but by land, they are the most secure way. The dogs are not pet dogs, but working dog, and they are raised and breed for generations to pull sleds. They love pulling, it makes them happy. You would imagine that, being dogs, it would be easy to control them, but in reality all you can ask for from them is turn right (say “Gee”) or left (say “Haw”)… there is no word for start pulling, as they will try to pull all the time (as you walk them to the sled, as soon as they are attached to the sled…) and, some way, they do not understand the word “stop”. To stop you use an anchor (or two), hoping it would go deep enough to the ground.

Karin, a woman that took the chemistry class with me, took me mushing after class. The is a professional musher, her dogs have been running in the Iditarod (one of the most important mushing competition (check http://www.iditarod.com)), and she is training for another big race next week. She introduced me to the dogs, they are all very friendly or very shine, but the most important thing for them is not to be aggressive. I helped her to clean the poop from the kennel and to feed them. Next day we loaded them on a special truck and we went to a mushing trail. We first anchored the sled to a pole, then we start attaching the dogs to the line. We had some problems starting, as we could not release the anchor and with the dog pulling all the time trying to start it was very hard. The long wait upset the lead dog, that decided to turn around, with the rest of the pack behind her. At that point I was already inside the front basket, and as Karin ran to stop and re-direct the lead dog, my task was to flip the sled and hold to it to slow the dogs down. I felt so goofy, but finally we stopped the dogs (Karin did a belly flop on the sled too that was remarkable). So, we tried again, and this time the dogs were just running like crazy along the trail. From the basket you see very interesting things. The scenery was just astonishing. The dogs were unstoppable, they would sometimes bite snow as they were running (they get hot apparently) and they would also poop, holding their back legs up as they are still running with the front legs. I saw tress half bitten by beavers, and we also met a moose. It was very exciting for me, but for Karin it was very stressful, as they are famous for attaching sled dogs and killing them repeatedly stepping on them.

And finally my turn came, and with Karin in the basket, I got to led my own dog team across the wood! And i was also able to stop them!!! A great experience! Thanks Karin!!!