Sled Dog Watchdog - Yukon Quest White Silence book

One of the Yukon traditions that has arisen along with the Quest is that of idealistic young journalism
school grads who move up to the Yukon and instantly become obsessed about the glories of the Yukon
Quest. The author of this book worked as a dog handler for a 'well respected' (as they say) Yukon Quest
musher. Mr. Killick makes no attempt to hide his obvious fawning respect for the musher, or mushers in
general. In the book, Mr. Killick writes that it is anthropomorphic (attributing human motivation,
characteristics, or behaviour to, in this case, animals) for animal rights proponents to say that it is cruel to
run sled dogs for hundreds of miles. Much of the book is dedicated to imputing and defending the
assertions of the extreme mushing community and its supporters - that sled dogs love running long
distances in extreme conditions, without regard for their own health, simply to please their masters.

[Origin of the Quest]
The Yukon Quest was born from a dissatisfaction with that corporate thirst [Ed. Note - of Alaska's Iditarod
race], and from a few too many beers at a bar near Fairbanks.
(Page 12)

[The lonely trail]
There are only eight checkpoints en route, which means that, on average, the distance the teams traverse
between those checkpoint villages is equivalent to the breadth of Ireland. Most of those checkpoints, it's
worth noting, are optional.
(Page 7)

[Race day]
For these [Yukon Quest] dogs, it is the day they have been waiting for, the day they were promised.
(Page 18)

[The Quest prides itself on dog care]
Dog care is paramount, and any indication that dogs have been pushed too hard or too far is dealt with
harshly by the race marshal and the veterinarians on the trail. A veterinarian may ask a team to stay
longer at a checkpoint, and, if a musher is obviously negligent [Ed. Note - bold italics mine] toward his
dogs by, say not treating injuries properly or not feeding them enough, he can be disqualified.
(Pages 19/20)

['Lifelong friend']
At the end of that Quest, I was exhausted, smelled of stale urine and dog dander, and was badly in need
of some vitamin C. I came out of it with a lifelong friend in Frank Turner, fourteen new furry buddies, and
a burgeoning addiction to mushing.
(Page 32)

[A new musher is born]
Eventually, [Hugh] Neff found work in the dog yards of Curtis Erhart, a top Alaskan sprint-musher raised
in the village of Tanana in the central part of the state. Ramy Brooks, another native musher, who would
go on to win the Yukon Quest in 1999, also offered him work cleaning up his dog yard. Instead of making
money, he was paid in dogs. Within a year, he had thirty.
(Page 49)

['Smiling dogs']
Two dogs roll over, legs straight up, wriggling their backs against the hard packed trail, then sit back up,
expectantly. The temperature is more than twenty degrees below zero. The team has just travelled 172
kilometers [Ed. Note - 107 miles] in less than half a day, but you wouldn't guess it by looking at them.
They seem to be smiling.
(Page 63)

[About musher Bill Pinkham]
He went to Montana in 1998 and bought ten adults and two puppies. The dogs started breeding. Within a
year, he had thirty dogs, then forty-six, and his neighbours were starting to get annoyed. He bought out a
nearby kennel, raising his total number of dogs to eighty-two, which is comparable to the size of Frank
Turner's kennel. But where Turner employs two people to help care for the dogs over the winter, Pinkham
does it all by himself. He operates a tour business of his own. The Quest is only his fifth race ever, and
certainly the longest.
(Page 64)

[About musher William Kleedehn]
He went back to the family and asked them if they had any more dogs they didn't want. "I got mostly
dogs with mental problems, but those are the best dogs with which to learn. Problem dogs." In 1990,
Kleedehn decided to enter the Yukon Quest. He'd never been to the Yukon before, but he knew it was the
centre of the sled dog universe. He'd watched a video of the race, and once, in Idaho, met a musher who
had competed in the Quest.
(Page 72)

[Dogs should consider it a privilege to pull a sled for a thousand miles]
Depriving a sled dog of the privilege of pulling a sled for hundreds of kilometers is like depriving your
Labrador retriever the opportunity to chase a stick. It takes only one trip to a dog yard to understand this,
one listen to the cacophony of excited barks when a sled is hauled out and, perhaps more telling, the
morose howls of the dogs left behind after the chosen team has left.
(Page 73)

[Mushers are experts at experimental dog breeding]
There is no such thing as a purebred Alaskan husky. The traits possessed by the breed - strength, speed,
and endurance - come from years of experimental crossbreeding with other types of dogs.
(Page 74)

[Dogs living outside in extreme temperatures]
The test of the dog was never what it looked like, but how it performed, which also meant how well it ate
and drank, and whether it could handle living outside in the extreme temperatures of Alaska and the
Yukon.
(Page 74)

[Sled dogs are athletes - anybody who disagrees is being 'anthropomorphic']
These dogs are athletes, the canine equivalent of the Kenyan or Ethiopian marathon runners. Fast, strong,
and endowed with such a natural set of gifts that they make running 160 kilometers [Ed. Note - 100
miles] a day seem effortless. Indeed, if you fear that running sled dogs such great distances is cruel, you
are being anthropomorphic.
(Page 75)

[Another 'necessary trait' of a Quest sled dog]
Running a race like the Yukon Quest, however, which lasts almost two weeks, means that the dogs must
be able to digest and defecate [Ed. Note - italics mine] while running 16 kilometers [Ed. Note - 10 miles]
an hour. [Ed. Note - it pays to be a 'lead dog,' in this regard]
(Page 79)

[About musher Andrew Lesh's dog injuries]
Twenty kilometers into the race, Nitro, an eight-year-old leader, tore his Achilles tendon and couldn't even
walk. Lesh had to carry him the rest of the way to Braeburn Lodge, where he was treated by a
veterinarian. (Before the end of the race two more of his dogs would suffer muscle tears, which are very
unusual. Eventually, he would track the cause down to an antibiotic they were taking that weakened the
muscles.)
(Page 101)

[Keep those damn sled dogs out of the house!]
Certainly, when a sled dog is brought inside a house, it might pee on the floor. And it will try to get up on
the counter - that's where the food is, after all. But sled dogs are rarely inside houses. [Ed. Note - this
statement is a disservice to sled dogs. I have volunteered at our local animal shelter for
several years and know that many dogs, including sled dogs, who have been tied outside
and have lived in shabby plywood doghouses for their entire lives, love nothing better than
to spend some time as 'couch potatoes' and can make wonderful, loving pets.]
(Page 119)

[Please DO NOT spay or neuter your (sled) dog]
Mushers rarely spay or neuter their dogs - it wouldn't do much for their breeding programs.
(Page 13)

[Let the orgy begin!/Valentine's Day on the Quest Trail]
One dog in heat is a manageable problem. Two dogs in heat is a real challenge. Three dogs is a
nightmare. Four dogs, well, you might as well sit back and let the orgy begin, because you're not doing
much else...

If the musher catches dogs in the foreplay stage, he or she can get them apart. Frank [Turner] missed the
foreplay while swearing at me. When he did see, it was too late. Amorous intent had turned into intense
passion. It is potentially physically harmful to the female - not to mention impolite - to pry mating dogs
apart. And, after all, it was Valentine's Day.
(Page 131)

[Conversation between author/dog handler Adam Killick and musher Frank Turner]
Turner: Look at these guys. They're done. They won't get up. It's a long way to Dawson from here.
[Killick narrates] The team did look depressed. In an oversight, the night before he hadn't laid out the
blue foam camping mats he carried with him in the sled. The dogs had been lying on bare snow and ice,
and there were body-shaped depressions where their heat had melted the snow underneath them.
Killick: My cell phone doesn't work out here. Come on Frank, Don't quit. These guys love you. They'll be
fine. Everybody gets down sometimes, and they're cold. They'll go.
[Killick again] I felt silly, trying to dispense encouragement and advice to the most experienced Yukon
Quest musher around. I expected him to get annoyed with me, to tell me that I didn't know what I was
talking about, which was pretty much true. I did know however, that if he scratched [Ed. Note - dropped
out of race], he would regret it later.
(Page 138)

[On evacuating 'dropped dogs']
To go in a plane, most dogs are put into a burlap or canvas bag that covers their legs and leaves just their
heads exposed, which prevents them from moving around in a small plane and potentially creating havoc.
One pilot recalls two dogs who actually got in a fight while being flown to a checkpoint. "They were
barking and snapping, and I couldn't reach back to pull them away from each other." So he let gravity - or
lack thereof - do it for him, dropping into a steep dive. The dogs were so startled by the effect of the dive
that they forgot about antagonizing each other and were quiet for the rest of the trip.
(Page 141)

[About musher David Sawatzky's dog, Jack, dying]
While coming over King Solomon's dome, Jack, a three-year-old dog Sawatzky had raised from a puppy,
had begun vomiting, probably from some kind of bacterial infection he'd picked up. By the time Sawatzky
arrived [in Dawson City], his dogs had missed three meals in weather that hadn't seen the warmer side of
thirty-five degrees below zero. They looked skinny and tired as they came around the corner in front of
the visitor reception centre.
(Pages 153/154)

[Chivalry on the Quest Trail]
Back at Scroggie Creek, Bill Pinkham was hungry. He had stopped to snack his dogs on the trail in when a
team came up behind him. Instead of stopping, or simply passing him, the lead dogs had lurched up
beside his sled and, seeing an open bag containing Pinkham's personal food, attacked it, tearing the bag
to shreds and consuming everything he had to eat for the next 200 kilometers. The dogs belonged to Kyla
Boivin, an eighteen-year-old musher from Dawson City who was running her first long-distance race.
"Sorry," she said, sheepishly. "I have a bit of a hard time controlling them sometimes." Where Boivin's
dogs were concerned, however, Joran Freeman was not so lucky as Pinkham. When she arrived at
Scroggie Creek, Boivin's dogs yanked her across the yard, and tore into Freeman's open sled basket.
Freeman, who was off getting some water, couldn't get there in time to stop her dogs from eating his
dogs' food.

Boivin felt horrible, he saw, and she offered him some of her own food, as much as she could spare. But it
was nowhere near enough. Freeman would have to run the last 160 kilometers into Dawson with hardly
any food for his dogs. He might have asked her for more food; it was, after all, her mistake. However, the
code of the trail seemed to take a back seat to chivalry in this case. Boivin, pretty and exuberant with a
tough-talking exterior and a noticeable nose-ring, was about the only musher in the race who could have
gotten away with it.
(Pages 154/155)

[On musher Hugh Neff, who on more than one occasion has been criticized by Quest officials
for his poor dog care; in the 2005 Quest, Mr. Neff was again criticized (not disqualified,
however) for running his dogs for fourteen hours straight with little rest. Mr. Neff, according
to a local Whitehorse newspaper, called it 'tough love' - a Quest official described the team
as being "pretty much trashed."]
The day after Neff arrived, Joe May, a former Quest and Iditarod champion who was a race official in this
year's Quest, approached him. Known for his gruff, straightforward demeanour, May pointed out a cut on
the foot of Gracie, one of his fastest dogs. "I don't like the look of your team at all," he said. Neff stomped
off, furious. He disagreed with May about his team, and the cut in his dog's foot, he thought, was only a
centimeter wide and not terribly serious. Most mushers would drop such a dog without question, but Neff
was annoyed at the suggestion. She had been running fine, he said later, resenting that a race judge could
look at his team and pass judgment so quickly. "After all," he added, "we are in seventh place."
(Page 158)

[The Quest is tough on dogs and mushers]
The race is often as brutal for the mushers as for the dogs. Consider what happens to a musher's hands
along the trail. [Ed. Note - at least the author recognizes the race is 'more brutal' on the dogs.
Consider other maladies, such as penile frostbite which is one of the afflictions suffered by
dogs (presumably not by the mushers) in the Quest and Iditarod.]
(Page 167)

[Dawson City summer workers - and the Yukon's deplorable animal protection legislation]
The worst of the summer residents buy or get dogs, and then, when they pack up to leave in the fall,
abandon them to the dirt streets. Every year, canine control officers are forced to kill dozens of loose and
uncontrolled dogs.
(Page 161)
[Ed. Note - it has often been suspected by animal welfare sources that some of these
unfortunate animals are surplus dogs from irresponsible mushers and 'dog hoarders' who do
not really care to whom the dogs are sold or given. In the spring of 2005, I talked to the
operator of a sled dog rescue organization based in Alaska. The man related to me that, in
Alaska, a 'responsible musher' is one who does not export his or her surplus dogs onto the
greater society, by say, dropping surplus dogs off at overburdened animal shelters. Sadly,
the reality is that surplus dogs (including puppies) may be killed, often by gunshot to the
head - what happens in the dog yard usually STAYS in the dog yard. Irresponsible mushers
are those who give their dogs the bare minimum of care and burden the rest of society with
cast-off or neglected dogs (dogs who are often seized in Alaska, if their existence is known
about at all). Primitive as they are, Alaska actually has more effective animal control laws
than the Yukon. It is fair to say that, the Yukon reality for sled dogs is not much different
from Alaska's, other than our proportionately smaller population of mushers and dogs.

In early November of 2005, I heard a radio advertisement by a local realtor on one of our
local Whitehorse commercial radio stations. She was looking for a rural property on behalf
of a sled dog enthusiast wishing to move here from out of territory. The realtor went on to
shamelessly lavish praise on the Quest and say how proud all of us Yukoners are of the race.
It appears the word is out that the Yukon is growing more attractive to dog mushers for its
complete lack of animal welfare regulations outside the boundaries of the City of
Whitehorse, where it is basically 'the wild west' for all domestic animals.]

[Statistically speaking, more cross country skiers die than sled dogs]
Less than one percent of sled dogs die while training or racing, a statistic that compares favourably with
pretty much every other animal or human sport. Proportionately, many more people die cross country
skiing than dogs die in harness. But it does happen - over the years, an average of about one dog has
died per Yukon Quest. The cause of death, however, is rarely something within the musher's control. It is
almost always a pre-existing, undiagnosable condition.
(Pages 176/177)

['Plumb difficult' to know when a dog may 'up and die' on you!]
Long-distance sled dogs, through selective breeding, are naturally very tough and love to run so much
that they won't show signs of myopathy [Ed. Note - sudden-death syndrome] until they are in real trouble.
Fortunately, dog deaths like that are very rare, and most mushers know their dogs so well that even the
slightest change in their gait or demeanour signals trouble to them. However, add disease or infection -
always possible, given the number of dogs in close quarters - and the issue becomes more complicated.
Dogs might already have difficulty maintaining their metabolism because they are stressed, and might
behave differently than when they are at home in the dog yard. This makes it harder for mushers to see
that a dog is in any kind of mortal trouble.
(Page 178)

[More about musher David Sawatzky's three-year-old dog, Jack, dying in the 2001
Quest/sled dogs treated like 'champion athletes']
As it turned out, a necropsy performed at the University of Fairbanks (where any dog that dies in harness
is sent for study) determined that Jack did not die from myopathy. Rather, the dog had, at some time
several days earlier, vomited, and as occasionally happens, inhaled the vomit into his lungs and sinuses.
He died, in fact, from a respiratory infection that Sawatzky couldn't have known about. The cause of his
death might have been planted when he was sick coming over King Solomon's Dome, but it was likely
more recent than that. Coming toward Fortymile, he was worried too, about what the media would think.
Over the years, there has been intense pressure from animal rights groups to ban sled dog racing as an
inhuman and ethically repugnant sport.

The positive result of this attention has been that today, mushers who are cruel to their dogs - and there
are bad mushers, just as there are those who flout the rules in any sport [Ed. Note - it is always humans
who flout the rules - not the animals forced to be involved in the 'sport.'] - are weeded out, and treated
judiciously. [Ed. Note - except in the Quest, where a sled dog's worst nightmare, musher
Hugh Neff, is signed up, according to the Yukon Quest web site, to race again in 2006] The
days of Jack London's hooded musher, inching down the trail in a forty below blizzard, flicking a
gangline-long whip against the tails of his whimpering team are long gone. Today's sled dogs are treated
like champion athletes.
(Pages 178/179)

[Musher David Sawatzky philosophizing about racing dogs]
"If you think you're going to stick-drive your dogs from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, it's not going to work.
Dogs are not that stupid. They're going to do what they're doing because they like to do it, and they might
be forced to do it for a short period of time, but you're not going to force them to do it over a thousand
miles. They're going to lie down, and they're going to quit. And, you can beat them to death
[Ed. Note - You can?], and they're not going to get up and do it. When the going gets tough and the
dog is afraid of you, it's going to get worse. "When the going gets tough and the dog loves you, it's going
to pull through for you."
(Pages 179/180)

[Word spreads among mushers about dead sled dog]
Eighty kilometers east of Eagle, where the Fortymile River crosses the Taylor Highway and the trail turns
from river to road, Joran Freeman, Cim Smyth, Hugh Neff, John Schandelmeier, and Andrew Lesh
stopped to camp. The discussion was somber - news had passed back along the trail that David Sawatzky
had lost a dog. Although the word was that the death was an accident and couldn't have been prevented,
mushers knew that when they arrived in Eagle, the vets would be closely examining teams to make sure
they didn't miss any potentially sick dogs. Freeman was worried that, because of the condition of his dogs
in Dawson, he would be forced to spend extra time in Eagle allowing his dogs more rest. Worse, what he
didn't know was that, behind him, a second dog had died on the way to Eagle.
(Page 194)

[Don't let the media see the dead sled dog]
As Sawatzky made the final descent from American Summit into Eagle, the point where the road was
ploughed, he noticed a pickup truck was parked there. It carried Mark Lindstrom, a race official, and Allan
Hallman, a veterinarian. They had been told about Jack by the Dawson checkpoint and had come to take
the dog from Sawatzky, so he wouldn't have to unload it in front of the full media entourage.
(Page 209)

[On Musher Carrie Farr's 'dog problems']
He [Sawatzky] didn't learn that Carrie Farr had lost a dog until he got home. Farr, a forty-four-year-old
fisherwoman and hunting guide from Nenana, Alaska, had been having trouble even before the race
started. While she was at a pre-race banquet, two of her dogs got into a fight back at her billet's house
just outside of Whitehorse.

When dogs fight for real, it's not at all like the jostling and wrestling, or even nipping, one sees in the
off-leash section of a public park. Dogs don't fight for fun. And they don't fight half-heartedly, to beat
each other up to prove a point. They fight to kill. I once, at a race, came across a dog fight that had
started when a musher fell off her sled. The team had carried on alone, left the trail, and were running
along the side of the highway. The team got tangled up, and two of the dogs, twisted together, got into a
fight. One dog bit down on another's thigh, cutting clean through the muscle, locking its jaw on the bone.
Its mouth had to be pried off the other dog's leg. The bitten dog ultimately died from its injuries.

Farr came back from the banquet to find one of her dogs lying dead in a pool of its own blood, its neck
broken. As mushers often do, she had brought more than fourteen dogs, so she was still able to start with
a fresh team. Then, as she left Fortymile, on her way to Eagle, Igor, a two-and-a-half-year-old male,
started to wobble as he ran. She picked him up and carried him in the sled until, when he seemed fine
and in good spirits and eager to run, she tried him back in the team. In less than five minutes, he
collapsed and died. [Quest official] Margy Terhar said there was no evidence it was Farr's fault. Although
Igor had been treated for mild tracheo-bronchitis in Dawson City, he seemed fine. His death seemed to
feature hallmark symptoms of sled-dog myopathy.

The owner of a fishing camp in rural, mostly aboriginal Alaska, Farr's attitude to the loss of the dog was
philosophical. She hadn't had him terribly long, she said, and wasn't terribly attached to him, although,
she added, like any death, it was disconcerting. "I'm just trying to stay focused and positive for the rest of
the race," she said.
(Pages 210/211)

[Musher Hugh Neff, in trouble again]
Between Dawson City and Eagle, Neff dropped seven places, and he arrived at Eagle the morning after the
leaders. Unlike Joran Freeman's, his dogs did not look any better. They looked worse. As they had with
Freeman's, several veterinarians examined Neff's team, and, although the dogs' weights were acceptable,
the condition of a number of his dogs' feet was not. This time, the vets got up frowning, and not smiling.
[Race officials] Doug Harris and [Margy] Terhar told him he should rest his team for at least a full
twenty-four hours, and that they would evaluate the team later.

Neff was carrying the bare minimum number of [nylon dog] booties, so he had no choice but to reuse
them, drying them out where possible and picking up other mushers' lost booties on the trail. Most
mushers carry a sufficient supply of new booties to replace those that get so torn and damaged that they
can't do their job. Neff had few spares, and his booties were in terrible shape. Frank Turner had recalled
seeing him at Fortymile, getting ready to leave. Seeing the condition of his booties, he thought he had just
arrived. Hugh Neff, in his wish to race frugally, hadn't packed enough booties to protect his dogs' feet,
and, apparently, he wasn't carrying any foot ointment to help abraded feet heal.

Grumbling, Neff acquiesced to the vets' suggestion - he had little choice; if he disregarded their rules, he
would be disqualified - but he believed the standards of the race were too high. When I talked to him later
about the rules, he expressed a startling view of dog mushing, one that is not the norm among modern
dog drivers. "We're harder on dogs, and I believe in it, to tell you the truth," he said. "I see nothing wrong
with pushing dogs as hard as I push myself. That's the big dichotomy with what's going on with PETA,"
he said, referring to the radical animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "Are you
going to please them, or are you going to let us live the lives that we live every day? I mean, I've run
these dogs down a river that had a foot of overflow [Ed. Note - water that sits on top of ice on a river or
lake] for close to twenty miles man, and it was below zero [Fahrenheit] then. And they did well."

[Musher Hugh Neff doesn't know the meaning of 'No']
[Ed. Note - Neff was officially disqualified from the race after refusing to wait for his dogs' feet to heal.]
Neff packed up his gear, took some of the leftover food offered him by race officials, and readied to leave.
Recognizing that he lacked the resources to fly himself or his team out of Eagle, race officials provided
him with booties, ointment and antibiotics to mitigate possible infections, using extras left behind by other
teams. He was given enough to get to Circle (Alaska), the next checkpoint and the closest road access to
the trail. When a musher is disqualified, he cannot be banned from the trail, which runs over public
property, and the race has no control over him. Neff would be allowed to access his food drop bags at
checkpoints and, if he liked, could carry on as usual. But, officially, at least, his race was over.
(Pages 212-215)

[Mistake by Quest race officials and volunteers endangers mushers and dogs]
As he does every year [Eagle, Alaska resident] [Mike] Sager went out to the cabin to heat it up a couple of
days before the first teams were likely to arrive. But this year, none showed up. The original Quest trail
had been blazed on the left side of the river, near the cabin. But, several days before the race, when the
trail markers were put in, the trail-breakers evidently missed that part of the trail and routed mushers to
the far side of the river, a kilometer away. Among the massive jumbles and slabs of ice, there was no way
to guide a team safely across the river to Sager's cabin, so that the teams planning to stop there were
forced to camp on the exposed river itself.

"That was a big screw-up on the part of the Quest. I knew damn well where the cabin was. I could see it.
But you couldn't get there. The ice was so bad you couldn't get there," David Sawatzky later said.
Sawatzky, leading the race, kept going for about an hour past Trout Creek, hoping to find a sheltered
bend in the river, or even an ice chunk big enough to provide some respite from the wind. The wind kept
pummelling, however, and no shelter seemed likely.
(Page 218)

[Musher David Sawatzky 'needs a break']
When he [musher William Kleedehn] caught up to Sawatzky, he asked the other musher why he had
stopped in such a windy, cold spot. "I'm physically exhausted," Sawatzky replied. "I've had it. I can no
longer stay on this sled. I need a break. I don't care if the dogs need a break, but I need a
break."
(Page 220)

[Hallucinations of Quest musher]
Bill Stewart, a Whitehorse psychologist, was running in third place near the end of the 1996 Quest. After
going without food for twenty-four hours, and without sleep for almost twice that long, he ran into an
imaginary musher who told him he was going the wrong way. So he duly turned his team around and
started retracing his tracks, even though he had been merely sixty kilometers from the finish.

Four hours later, he ran into a real musher, who corrected his course. Stewart turned his team around
again.

Several hours later, he bumped into yet another imaginary musher who told him there was a hotel just off
the trail. So Stewart pulled his sled into a meadow and lay down to sleep on what he believed was a bed.
The temperature was minus twenty-five.

Luckily, the same, real musher who had corrected him the first time found Stewart lying asleep in the
snow and roused him. As a result, Stewart managed to end the race, rather than his life. After he crossed
the finish line, he retired from long-distance sled dog racing.
(Page 243)

[Sawatzky's dogs give up on Eagle Summit]
Banjo decided he had had enough of the Yukon Quest [Ed. Note - three cheers for
anthropomorphism!], and, in particular, he had had enough of pulling a dogsled up the side of some
ridiculous mountain. He wanted to go home, and he had decided that home was not in the direction he
was going. He turned around. Then Blackie and Kodiak turned around. Like dominoes, the other seven
dogs in harness turned as well, and Sawatzky had just enough time to jump on the sled's runners as it
spun around and started heading back down the mountain. Driving a dog team down a steep, extended
pitch is one of the most dangerous aspects of mushing. If Sawatzky hadn't managed to jump on the
runners, the sled, with ninety kilograms of gear inside, would, within seconds, have overrun the team,
quite possibly killing the wheel dogs and several others as it bore down on them, dragging the team into a
hopeless and life-threatening tangle.
(Page 249)

['Wise rule change' by Yukon Quest officials]
Although the cases are rare, there have been incidents in which teams crossed the line with dogs so badly
parched that they required intravenous hydration. A musher once finished with a dead dog, counting it
among the bare minimum he required in harness to finish. The rule was changed the following year
to clarify that dogs in harness need to actually be breathing. [Ed. Note - italics mine]
(Page 258)

[Welcome to Fairbanks, Alaska - Mushing Capital of the World]
Foremost, however, it is the dog-mushing capital of the world. There are reputed to be more than 10,000
sled dogs in the Fairbanks area. In winter, you can't drive more than a few blocks without seeing a dog
truck.
(Page 265)

[Author 'choked up' over the end of the Quest]
And now it was over, the group was being broken up, as other, unfamiliar faces joined the entourage and
got between us. People who didn't get the inside jokes, the nods or the winks that had come to bind us
together. As we climbed into the truck to head to the finish line in Fairbanks, I had a knot growing in my
stomach. For the past ten days, this event had consumed me in every waking and sleeping hour. I didn't
want it to end.
(Page 261)

['A perfect world' - musher Bill Pinkham talks to the author]
"It's neat out there, because it's one of the few places where you can really just be yourself, in front of the
dogs, and there's nobody looking at you and judging you. It's a perfect world, really."
(Page 273)