Sled Dog Watchdog - Yukon Quest Running North book

'Running North' proved to be the most thoughtful and well-written book about the Yukon Quest and came
closest to describing the appeal, or should I say potential appeal of the event, to those interested in
competitive dog racing. Ann Mariah Cook and her husband, musher George Cook moved to the Fairbanks,
Alaska area in the fall of 1991 to train for the Yukon Quest. Their kennel had competed in
shorter-distance races in the 'Lower 48' and southern Canada in previous years. The author is to be
commended for her perspective on the hardships experienced by dogs and mushers during the race and
for her concern for the lives northern sled dogs endure after the race is over. It should be noted that the
author uses fictional names for some of the characters and mushers in her book, including the following
book excerpts.

[Some reasons why so few natives compete (or have ever competed) in the Yukon Quest]
My knowledge of sled dog history made me as reticent with the Natives as they were with me. Some of
the finest sled dog racers are Athabascans from Alaska and the Yukon, yet most of them can no longer
afford to compete in some of the top races. Keeping dogs is expensive, especially in the bush where
specialized food and veterinary supplies must be shipped in. Few can field a team without money from
sponsors, all of whom later use the musher's name and image to hawk such products as winter clothing,
lip balm, and dog food. The sponsors want their products to appeal to the average white consumer. They
want the repressed adventurer in that consumer to identify with the musher. Unfortunately, identification
runs along racial lines, so few Alaskan Natives are successful at finding sponsors, and the privilege falls to
white mushers. I often felt like a usurper, someone who took dogsledding - once a way of life for them -
made it a sport, and then shut them out of it.
(Page 13)

[Dog accommodations - owners and their 32 dogs move from New Hampshire to Alaska to
train for Quest]
Our dogs were as grateful as we were to be living a normal life again. Our yard had an established dog
lot, but most of the doghouses had fallen into ruin. We repaired what houses we could, built many more,
and drove rebar spikes into the ground near each house. We assembled thirty-two chains, with large rings
on one end of each to slip over the rebar. Two swivels, so the chain would not bind up on the dog, and
snaps fastened the dog's collar to the other end of the chain. Our dogs were used to being kenneled, but
kenneling was impractical at best and dangerous at worst in Alaska, due to the heavy snowfall. Snow
could build up in the kennels, allowing the dogs to escape over the fence or causing them to be crushed in
their own pens. Chaining dogs on stakes with mobile rings allowed the dogs and chains to adapt to the
level of snow. When eventually their houses became buried, the movement of their chains would actually
help clear tunnels to their doorways.
(Page 32)

[Alaska 'better for breeding']
Alaskans breed and keep many, many dogs. This enables them to choose a final team from a large
selection of candidates. Zoning laws rarely permit such extensive kennels in the lower forty-eight, even in
rural areas.
(Page 34)

[Quest winners are 'viewed as gods']
Despite our team's enormous disadvantages, George and I dreamed of running the Quest with our own
dogs. Even among Alaskan mushers, merely finishing the Yukon Quest is considered a great achievement.
Winners are viewed as gods. Perhaps the greatest motivation for our dream was the need to know what
competitors of that caliber know, to go where they have gone. Mixed with that excitement of such a great
challenge was fear. A specific and personal kind of fear: the fear that we would give the race our best shot
and yet would fail. The fear that we would disappoint ourselves and be ridiculed by the people we
admired.
(Page 35)

[Dogs plagued by insects in dog yard]
Blackflies, or some large gnats of boreal origin, took advantage of the relatively mild fall days and
descended on our dogs by the thousands that late September. Cold nights seemed to have no effect on
lowering their population. I was beginning to think that Alaska had year-round insects. Unable to bring
the thirty-two dogs into the house or shed, we watched helplessly as the dogs' ears, eye rims, and lips
were bitten raw. One morning, I noticed that our big gray dog Bandit's eyelids were very swollen. His
right eye was completely closed. Sticky yellow discharge flowed from the corner of his lid. [Ed. note - the
Cooks ended up having a cornea transplant performed on Bandit]
(Page 39)

[Bandit's veterinarian 'not used to happy endings' for his other Alaskan sled dog patients]
It was evident to me that Dr. Talbot was not used to happy endings when it came to dogs like Bandit.
Alaska has its harsh realities, and few people would burn a good eight hundred dollars on an old sled
dog. In fact, I was fairly certain that Talbot himself thought we were crazy to do so. While he was
genuinely interested in the medical facts of the case, a tone of incredulity crept into his voice. "Well, I
guess if he's your leader, he's worth it, "he said. I sensed he was mocking me, smiling to himself about
sentimental outsiders. We weren't tough Quest mushers after all, but people playing at mushing. When
our conversation ended, it ended on a pleasant note, everything upbeat, but as I hung up the receiver, I
swallowed hard.
(Page 44)

[A Quest musher's concern about running the larger Siberian Husky breed in race, is relayed
to the author]
"I liked my Siberians too," Therriault continued. "I thought they were wonderful, but I brought them up
here and I showed them to Henry and I asked him what he thought. He didn't tell me at first." It was
obvious by the way Therriault said "Henry" that he revered the man. Henry's opinion was very important.
"He said to me" - Therriault was practically whispering now, as if giving away a secret in a crowded room
- that I should shoot my dogs. That they were no good, they had no speed, and they were all shooters." I
looked away from Therriault. "So I shot them, every one," he said, and I got some new dogs from Henry
and now I'm going much faster. You should think about this."

"I try not to," I said flatly. I turned toward the door. "I have to go now, Mr. Therriault."

He winked at me. "Nice to see you," he said.

I left the store without the gallon of milk I'd gone there to buy. Although it was only 3:00 P.M., the sun
had set. I walked home in the darkness, alternately trying to forget Walter Therriault and trying to imagine
what series of thoughts or emotions could lead someone to kill his own sled dogs, dogs that he had
patted, fed, trained. Dogs who had trusted him, worked for him. How could he pull the trigger once, and
again, and again? Wouldn't the experience haunt a person forever? Wouldn't he see the eyes of those dogs
in his nightmares? The Big Dipper was huge in the sky above me. Vague fingers of northern lights
shimmered in the sky, hints of a more brilliant display that would come later in the night. The beauty of
Alaska was always visible, always breathtaking. But now I knew an ugly thing about this place too, and
even a view of the bright, clear sky could not chase it from my thoughts.
(Pages 80/81)

[Concerns about Pete, an injured dog]
What if Pete didn't recover? I wondered. How would we replace him at this late date? I felt suddenly
jealous of the Dave Rummels of the world who kept 150 dogs. They could discard a Pete or a Boomer as
weak and move on to the twenty other Petes and Boomers they owned. Our kennel was hanging by a
thread. We had narrowed our field to seventeen candidates for the team. Seventeen from which to choose
twelve. The margin of error was too slim.
(Page 94)

[Culling of dogs in Alaska subscribes to the "survival of the fittest" rule]
Common sense calls for the culling of dogs that cannot be placed and are no longer working. In Alaska,
where survival of the fittest is a rule instead of a theory, and usefulness is more valuable than sentiment,
culling takes place. George and I knew about culling. We'd practiced it. Not the vicious, wholesale culling
of a Walter Therriault, but a sensible sort of culling. If a new pup had no chance of a healthy life, or an
old dog suffered in pain, we'd had the vet euthanize it, but we had never put down an adult simply
because it failed to make our team. We'd worked at training such dogs and then looked diligently for new
homes where they could live out their lives as house pets. For kennels in the lower forty-eight, this is a
good solution, but in Alaska, there are more discard dogs than homes available and this creates a
dilemma for many mushers.
(Page 98)

[Dilemma of an older sled dog with hip dysplasia, and an allergy to anaesthesia drugs
needed in abortion, accidentally becoming pregnant in dog yard]
Sandy [Ed. note - the Cook's dog handler] was strangely hopeful. "Couldn't we just let her have this one
litter?" she asked. She was too new to kennel life to understand the heartache of raising a genetically
doomed litter. When I tried to tell her we simply could not have these pups, she sulked away.

"Drown 'em," Sten [Ed. note - mushing friend of the Cooks] said.

Sandy's jaw dropped. "You drowned puppies?"

"I sure did," Sten said. "One of my females got caught by one of my males. I didn't think he was good
enough to raise pups from, really. So, when the litter was born, I picked out the biggest one, hoping she'd
turn out to be something, and I dunked the rest of 'em. The one I saved, that's the one I call Neva."

"Sten, that's awful," Sandy said.

"Yeah, well..." for a moment Sten looked introspective."What are you gonna do? You can't keep 'em all."
[Ed. note - the Cooks did have the litter 'successfully' aborted]
(Pages 99/100)

[Sten relays that the boyfriend of the Cook's dog handler, a musher/dog handler, has a bad
reputation around town for dog cruelty]
Sandy looked up. "Jeffry's looking to buy a couple of dogs," she said. Sten winced, then he said in a low
growl, "Jeffry, huh? Well I wouldn't sell a dog to Jeffry if he was the last musher in Alaska."

"Why not?" Sandy asked defensively.

"You oughtta know - all you do-gooders from the lower forty-eight who don't want to kill anything for fur
and wouldn't cull a dog if it had three legs and one eye. Your Jeffry is about the cruelest bastard I ever
met. He was hammering on that little black-and-white leader right in front of the store. I thought to Christ
he was going to kill her! So that's your Jeffry."
(Page 107)

[Dog handlers 'not a very dependable breed']
"Aw, I don't know," [Sten] said. "I guess you can hire the best handler in the world and somehow they all
turn out to be assholes. Maybe it's the job or the kind of people who are attracted to the job. That guy
said he'd help me with my food drops [Ed. note - food caches that are delivered to Quest checkpoints],
but he always had some excuse when it was time to do them. I ended up packing my checkpoint bags the
day before they were due. I was up all night. I didn't even know what I'd put in 'em and what I hadn't put
in 'em. I was just a wreck."
(Page 163)

[George Cook speaks to wife/author before heading out on Eagle Summit, (to this day)
potentially dangerous for Quest mushers and their dogs]
..."The [Quest] radio operators have told us it's a whiteout on top of Eagle Summit. Some teams went
through a few hours earlier and they're caught in it..."
(Page 190)

[George Cook's hardship on Eagle Summit described]
Shortly after I'd left George at [Mile] 101 [checkpoint before Eagle Summit], there'd been a break in the
weather. The clouds had lifted and George saw stars in the sky. He packed his cooker, roused the dogs,
and prepared himself for a night run on the summit. Despite a fierce headwind, the team moved steadily
along with Minnie and Orah in the lead. The first hill they climbed was a concave, like a bowl. The trail
swooped up and around the bowl in a fashion that made George wonder if some trailbreaker wasn't
deliberately making the trek more difficult. He followed the markers to a reflecting tripod, then used his
headlamp to scan the hillside for more markers. He saw several that did not line up. Confused, he moved
the team to the closest marker, then gone to the next closest. Eventually, he was back at the tripod. The
team had gone in a circle.

There was no discernible trail. The wind had swept the markers off course. George brought the dogs to a
halt on the bare, rocky hill. While he scanned again for markers, Minnie grew impatient. She turned the
team away from the wind and led them down the fall line! George scolded her and jammed on his brake,
but the metal claw was useless on the frozen shale. He tried standing on his snow track, but gravity was
against him. His heavy sled began its rapid descent, nearly overrunning the dogs. In desperation, he
capsized the sled and threw himself on top of it. Team, sled, and all fell two hundred feet before coming
to a stop. "Minnie, stay!" George commanded. There was still a long way to slide if he lost control of the
team again.
(Pages 193/194)

[Author writes about Quest dog handler joking about marijuana use by Quest mushers]
If only George would arrive, I thought. I had really hoped to see him by noon, but what would his arrival
do except give me less time to deal with [the Cook's infant daughter]? It didn't matter. I wanted to see
him so I could get at least one worry off my mind.

"They are probably together," Dave said as he watched me watch the clock. "Does he have a sense of
humor?"

"Yes, why?'

Dave pretended to be smoking a joint. "Maybe they stopped for a little break."
(Page 206)

[At the Dawson City checkpoint, author learns of the town's dog control problems]
Over the main street of the town, a banner displayed the words WELCOME TO DAWSON CITY -
HALFWAY CHECKPOINT OF THE YUKON QUEST. I put the brakes on, not so much to look at the banner,
but to prevent the truck from rolling over three dogs who had positioned themselves under the banner.
One was a Malamutish pup, one some sort of yellow hound, another a ragged-looking collie. They were
not concerned that my vehicle had been moving down the road toward them. In fact, they never flinched.
They waited for me to drive around them. I got the impression that these three knew the significance of
the banner and had appointed themselves the canine welcoming committee. Still, loose dogs are not a
welcome sight to a musher. They often chase teams the way they chase cars, barking and challenging.
The team may perceive that the dog is attacking their pack and choose to defend themselves. At the least,
such confrontations may cause the team to become tangled in their traces. At worst, a dogfight could
ensue.

"They shouldn't let these dogs roam loose," I said angrily.

"Well, they can't do much about it," Dave said.

"Of course they can! Someone should insist that the owners tie them up or put them in kennels or bring
them in the houses."

"Not so easy in Dawson."

"Why not?"

"No one will enforce the leash laws. No one dares," Dave said. "Getting elected dog warden here is like a
death sentence. Seems people want to let their own dogs run loose, but they don't want their neighbors to
do the same, so everyone is always complaining about the dogs, but everyone adds to the problem. For
years, the laws said that loose dogs should be shot, you know - on account of the threat of rabies and all
that - but every time any warden shoots a dog somebody shoots him. So, after a while, the town officers
decided that the identity of the dog warden would be a secret. It's a small town, though. Word always gets
out, and the death threats begin. So right now, nobody will take the job. The dogs rule."
(Pages 255/256)

['Notorious stretch of trail' poses considerable hardship for dog teams]
In dry clothes and in good spirits, Jim and George turned their teams onto Scroggy Creek Road, a
notorious ninety-mile stretch of trail that has been the undoing of many a Quest team. The road is used to
access mining claims south of the Black Hills. Mushers must negotiate the narrow, winding road even
while "cat trains" - bulldozers or graders that push the snow aside for the following trucks or trailers - that
share the way.

If a musher escapes chance encounters with heavy equipment, he cannot escape the surface of the road,
which, constantly frozen and rebroken by huge plows, is carpeted with boulders, jagged ice cakes, sharp
rocks, and clods of frozen dirt. Passage is a jarring affair, leaving sled dogs bruised and mushers weak
from pushing, pulling, and walking behind the sled. Each year the Yukon Quest organizers attempt to
negotiate a brief cessation of activity on the road, but if weather permits, mining in the area stops for no
one.
(Page 278)

[Discussion along the trail about 'wrong way musher' in 1992 race]
"So did Hutchinson finish or what?"

"No, he turned around at [Lake] Laberge."

"But that's only seventy miles from the finish!"

"I know. Both Jim and I met him. He was real freaked out. We tried to convince him to come along with
us. He wouldn't go. He thought he didn't have enough food for his dogs. He was gonna scratch [Ed. Note
- drop out of the race] at Carmacks."

"But it's seventy miles back to Carmacks from Laberge. And anyway, he could have finished in less than a
day. Then he could feed his dogs at the finish!"

"I know. It's awful, huh?"

"I didn't realize he was going back for good. I didn't really know what he was doing. Maybe I should have
talked to him more. Talked him out of it."

"Naw, we tried, believe me."
(Page 298)