My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian

by Brian Patrick O'Donoghue

  Within moments, I was wearing the number 3 bib and testing my balance on the thin sled runners. Diana coached me on the dogs’ names. Ray held them back.

  “Three! Two! One!” The sled jerked forward, and we were off.

  I wobbled around the opening turn, precariously maintaining my balance. Then I nearly fell off trying to imitate a real sled-dog racer, kicking my heel backward to spur on the dogs. I didn’t dare shout “Gee” or “Haw,” uncertain which of those fundamental commands meant right and which meant left. Instead I yelled “Hike, hike, hike,” a mushing term for “go.”

  Tongues flapped. Paws flew. Aside from my idiotic cries, the only sound was the panting of the dogs and the whisper of sled runners slicing through the snow.

  “Now this is Alaska!” I cried, feeling exultant.

  I covered the looping 3-mile trail in 12 minutes, 7 seconds. Good enough for thirteenth place. Better yet, it was 2 minutes faster than Mowry. In the story that resulted, Tim compared his defeat at the hands of this “tall, skinny political reporter” to “a cowboy losing a bull-riding contest to an accountant.”

  “A dark day for the sportswriters around this country indeed,” he wrote.

  That had been four years ago. Driving dogs leased from Joe Redington, Sr., the founder of the Iditarod, the Mowth had gone on to race in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest and two Iditarods, winning the “Most Improved Musher” award for a twenty-seventh-place showing in his second trip to Nome. I’d reported on more big races than Mowry had, but I hadn’t mushed dogs more than a handful of times. It was madness to even consider running the Iditarod. But if I didn’t try, the missed opportunity would torment me forever. Aware that I was taking action more significant than anything likely to occur on the Senate floor, I signed the application, listing myself as “driver” for a dog team I didn’t yet possess.

  Those who live in dog country dissect the Iditarod’s entry list like the Yankees’ batting order on opening day. So I wasn’t surprised by the question that greeted me as I entered Blackie’s Goose Bay Bar in Knik on the return trip from Juneau. “Brian, whose dogs are you using?” yelled Marcie, who was working the bar.

  Drawing a brew, she quizzed me about my plans. We talked about budgets, places to train, and who might have extra dogs to sell or lease. Messages were waiting when I got back to Fairbanks late that night. Marcie had a deal. A whole team was for sale. Twenty-eight dogs. Excellent bloodlines. Many were related, she said, to a dog named Elvis from Swenson’s kennel, a claim that later proved untrue. Bottom line: $4,000 cash.

  The dogs belonged to a young Knik musher named Spencer Mayer. He was what Marcie called a “dream musher”—a guy who put together a good team, trained the dogs to perfection—but never quite got it together to enter races.

  Spencer was married, with a young child. He’d landed a construction job in Dutch Harbor, a booming port in the distant Aleutians. It fell on his father, Herman Mayer, to tend the dogs. Spencer’s father had a four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicle he wasn’t using. Marcie and Kevin needed one for training their dogs in the off season. Just watching that fine machine sitting there rusting was more than Marcie could stand.

  “Herman,” she said. “sell me the four-wheeler.”

  “I’m not selling my damn four-wheeler,” he said.

  “Herman, you’re not riding it! Give it to me!”

  “Well,” Mayer said, “I tell you what. You sell my son’s dog team, and I’ll give it to you.”

  Marcie always got her way.

  Mowry wanted to close the deal without delay. Old Joe Redington had repossessed his dogs, and Tim didn’t want us to miss out on these affordable replacements. I wasn’t so eager to buy an entire yard of sled dogs. I had planned to ease into mushing, lining up lease deals for training in, say, October. But Mowry had it worked out: He would buy the kennel and rent me a team for $4,000. He had already talked to his father about a loan. The Old Man was agreeable. It was the sort of livestock investment that made sense to his folks back at Mowacres Dairy in New York.

  The deal landed me a team for the race at a price within my budget, and it provided me with a coach and kennel partner. The Mowth wouldn’t be racing this year, but he owned his own sled dogs at last.

  When she felt like it, Raven was our kennel’s speed queen. Refreshed by a full belly and a four-hour nap, she was having fun on the return trip from Skwentna as we made tracks toward the Klondike finish line. Bounding gaily, the princess and Rainy set a blistering pace down the hard-packed river trail. It was a windless, balmy night. Sipping chicken-noodle soup, I danced aboard the sled runners, keeping time to a Stevie Ray Vaughan tape wailing through my Walkman. The river here was about 100 yards across. The ice was concealed under a rolling white avenue. Steep banks rose on either side. Old trees leaned inward at the high-water mark, dark silhouettes against the deep blue sky.

  The party ended 10 miles from Yentna Roadhouse. Beast was stumbling. The young female kept tripping on the lines and falling with a glazed look in her eyes. The fun gone, Raven began balking, drawing back against the neckline connecting her to Rainy and searching for any escape.

  “It’s OK, princess,” I whispered, stroking the trembling girl between the ears. “You did just fine tonight.”

  I switched Raven back and placed White Rat in lead. An extremely intelligent female, she remained my personal favorite despite a tendency to slack off at every opportunity. Rat was on her best behavior tonight, but Gnat, a meek unseasoned male, seized every pause, dip, or tangle to sit down.

  We’d covered 120 miles in less than 24 hours, and both Gnat and Beast verged on surrender. Mowry had warned me about this: “The thing with young dogs is they have to get past that point where they think they’re going to die.”

  I took a long break and gave the team a snack. The breather refreshed everybody. Afterward Gnat and the Beast shared the work, holding their lines tight as the team hauled my sled up the steep bank fronting Yentna Station, Dawn was breaking through a mist of sprinkling rain.

  Other racers were discussing the wisdom of laying over at the checkpoint, delaying their final push until the cool evening hours. It was unseasonably hot—30 degrees. Too hot for sled dogs. But I wasn’t listening. Rummy with lack of sleep, I had a raging case of finish-line fever. We were running in the top ten. Who knows how high we could go?

  I made arrangements to drop Gnat and Beast at the checkpoint. Had I stayed and rested through the day, I could have taken them with me. But I was no longer treating the Klondike as a mere qualifier, with added benefits as a training run: I had shifted into racing mentality. While the other dogs rested, I went over my sled, dumping every ounce of unnecessary weight. In the process, I set aside the sac holding the team’s snacks. I planned to put it back absolutely last so that it would remain within easy reach.

  Five hours after our arrival at Yentna Station, I pulled the hook, sending my dogs charging over the bank. Sunshine had burned away the clouds. Over the next hours, it baked us. My Fairbanks-conditioned dogs were reduced to plodding.

  It was sundown by the time we finally reached the junction of the Yentna and the Big Su. This kind of passage always scared me. The broad river’s uneven surface hinted at unseen forces that might suddenly break loose, leaving unlucky travelers swimming or clinging to teetering chunks of ice. But soon I was treated to a view that brushed fears aside. The sinking sun was firing a rosy salute along Mount Susitna’s curves. From the west, a headlike ridge rose to a mountainous shoulder, dipped, then expanded to a hip, which descended in a leggy sprawl. Or maybe Susitna was resting on her back, showing off her bosomlike ridge. From either perspective, it was easy to see why locals called the formation Sleeping Lady.

  The wind rose as we passed through Susitna Station, a largely abandoned turn-of-the-century settlement and one-time Dena’ina Indian community. My dogs were due for a break, but I pushed them onward into the forest. I wanted to reach the entrance of the frozen marsh before stopping, so as to position the t
eam for a strong march to the finish line.

  I was fooled by the trees and didn’t see the marsh coming. We were 20 yards out on the icy flats before I managed to stop. The wind here was fierce, gusting maybe 40 miles per hour across the exposed, barren ice. It was a terrible place to stop, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I dug into the sled bag for my beef treats. The snack sac was missing. Appalled, I remembered placing it in the snow outside the roadhouse.

  Belatedly, I tried to get the team moving. But the dogs, seeing no snacks forthcoming, were too tired to pay any more attention to me. Their survival instincts had taken over. Curled in tight balls, backs to the wind, they slept on the ice. The dogs had crashed on me.

  My snowmachine suit was soaked from rain and exertion. On a colder day, the situation might have been grave. Today the weather was too balmy to pose any danger. I gave the dogs half an hour, then dished out globs of a pre-prepared meal from the cooler. A fellow racer caught up while I was feeding.

  “Everything all right?” he shouted over the wind, no doubt puzzled to see me stopped in this miserable spot.

  I pretended everything was under control.

  After the meal, the dogs shook themselves and stretched. My athletes looked ready to go. I gave the word. Root, one of my most dependable dogs, was having trouble with her hind legs. She tried to run but couldn’t keep up. Jamming the hook into the ice, I unclipped her, figuring I’d pack her in the sled until we reached a more sheltered spot. I had my right hand on her collar and was reaching for the sled with the other—when the team bolted.

  With a flying lunge, I grabbed hold of a rear stanchion. The dogs dragged me a good hundred yards on my knees, along with Root, before they finally stopped. Staggering to my feet, clutching a shoulder that felt half torn from the socket, I stuffed Root in the sled and ordered my mischievous friends onward. Amazing what a little rest could do for them.

  Intense wind and sleet met us at Flat Horn Lake. The trail was awful. Raven and Harley kept punching through the thin crust and sinking into the powder underneath. The tracks ahead of us abruptly ended in the middle of the lake. Scanning the horizon, I saw the lights from two other teams inching along the distant rim. It was Plettner and her browbeaten disciple, Lenthar. Raven, always prone to go where she pleased, had skipped a turn. Thankful to have someone pointing the way, I swung my team around.

  In the last 15 miles of the race the dogs slowed to a crawl. The heat was getting to Harley. The big dog kept dragging his buddies off the trail to munch snow. I could sympathize. Hills I had hardly noticed a day ago had mushroomed into mountains. My legs were cramping. I considered stopping to camp, but the alcohol for the cooker had somehow spilled. I couldn’t even make broth for the dogs, and further delay might even hurt the team.

  The dogs and I emerged from a slough onto Big Lake in a near rout. Loaded in the basket were Root, who seemed shell-shocked, and Denali. The weary young male had been having trouble keeping his feet on the icy homestretch. After his third stumble, I let him ride the rest of the way.

  Marcie and a few friends cheered when I crossed the finish line in twelfth place, shortly after midnight. The race had taken 38 hours. Stepping off the sled, I couldn’t get my legs to work. My feet were concrete blocks.

  The dogs saw the truck and hauled the sled to it like champs. They didn’t even look winded as I left them, chained around the truck, and went in search of hot water to soak their food. I’d already given each dog a frozen whitefish. Their gnawing could be heard 50 feet away.

  Baron was still celebrating his victory when I climbed the monstrous staircase to the inn. Fidaa Daily smiled nervously. She was waiting for news of her husband. Marcie, who’d slipped to seventh in the final miles, declared that her next outing was a shopping trip to Nordstrom.

  “I need to remind myself I’m a woman.”

  The 200-mile ordeal snuffed any interest Marcie might have had in running the Iditarod. “I’d rather go to an Iraqi torture camp,” she declared, loud enough for the entire bar to hear.

  Sitting in the warm lodge with fellow Klondike mushers, I felt humbled and apprehensive. I’d earned my right to compete in the big race. For the first time, absolutely nothing stood in the way. That was sobering, because my 35-year-old body was a wreck after just 200 miles on a sled. What was Iditarod, more than five times as long, going to do to me?

  Grabbing the food bucket, I headed back down to the dogs.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ready or Not

  Only three weeks were left. Self-doubts and potential threats to the team’s well-being dominated my every waking moment. Even the home trails felt sinister. Blizzards had buried my landmarks, and I was driving the dogs longer and longer distances, getting lost for hours at a time.

  It was warm out, 3 degrees above zero. I set out for Mike Madden’s house with an eleven-dog team, intending to make a quick turnaround. The entire 50-mile trip should have taken about 7 hours, including snack breaks, simulating the travel time between average Iditarod checkpoints.

  I was using Chad in single lead. That was the Coach’s new strategy for handling our temperamental wonder dog. Chad, a quick blond male, trotted with one hip swung sideways. It was an odd gait and often caused him to bump his coleader. Mowry hoped that Chad might be one of those rare dogs who preferred to lead alone. All through the fall Chad was our unquestioned top dog. He was strong, smart, and fast. Having Chad up front amounted to having power steering. Whisper “Gee,” or “Haw,” and turns were immediate.

  One winter day Chad quit on me leaving the lot. He did a complete nose plant, causing half the team to tumble over him. I assumed that he was injured, but we never found anything physically wrong. It was Golden Dog’s spirit that needed nursing thereafter. And the Coach’s new approach appeared to be working.

  About 15 miles out, I wasn’t paying close attention when Chad lunged onto a side trail. I stopped and turned the team around. Next, emerging from a winding slough, I wasn’t sure which direction to take on the Chena River. Which way to Madman’s house? Upstream? Downstream? Everything looked so different covered by the recent dumps of snow.

  Chad glanced back, impatient. “Haw,” I said.

  I mushed 10 miles along the river, searching for the familiar trail crossing until it was unmistakably clear that I’d guessed wrong. Sighing, I again turned the team around. The snow was soft and deep. The dogs sank and thrashed about in the powder. I waded to the front of the team, then sank to my armpits pulling Chad back toward the trail. A fight broke out between Bo and the normally unflappable Skidders. Back on the hard-packed trail, I separated the two scrappers. Bo was in a surly mood. So I paired Raven with Chad in lead and ran the big troublemaker alone. After stopping for a snack, we backtracked along the river, chasing the setting sun. By nightfall I was lost again, but tried to hide it from the dogs.

  At a loss, I directed Chad and Raven up a side trail. We soon neared a dog lot illuminated by blinding outdoor lights. Normally, I would have retreated; people tend to defend their privacy aggressively in Alaska. But I was ready to beg for directions. Our arrival set the dogs chained outside the cabin barking furiously. The cabin door swung open and, to my utter amazement, out stepped Mike Madden.

  “Madman, this is your house?”

  “Whose backyard did you think you were in, O’D?”

  We’d been on the trail five hours. I should have camped and given the dogs a real meal, followed by several hours of rest, before returning home. But I was on a schedule. So I snacked the dogs and then started them back.

  The river was braided with snowmachine trails. Raven and Chad weren’t meshing. When they weren’t bumping each other, the leaders were wrestling through their neckline, trying to pull each other along different threads of the interwoven trail.

  Even so, we were making decent time when I blundered yet again by ordering the team down a side trail. Within a mile I realized the mistake and halted the team for another turnaround. That was strike three for Chad. His confidence i
n me was shot. Golden Dog buried his head in the snow and wouldn’t budge. I dragged him forward several times, roughly standing him on his feet. He cooperated that far. But when I shouted, “All right,” the cue to move out—Chad sat down.

  I tried Raven in single lead. No way. Her tail drooped, and the little princess tried to hide underneath the swing dogs, creating an immediate tangle. I tried using Gnat and Cricket together. The litter mates cowered. No one wanted the wheel on this doomed ship—not with me in charge.

  In training sled dogs, you want to steer them into doing the right thing, while minimizing confusion and discouragement. Building stamina isn’t nearly as crucial as instilling confidence through repetition and positive reinforcement, teaching dogs that they can do whatever you, the musher, ask. By building on each success, gradually asking the team to go farther and faster, the dogs develop faith in their all-knowing driver. That was the theory. From the first August night we took our dogs out on a cart—and Chad dug up a yellow jackets’ nest in the staging area—training seldom went smoothly.

  My reversals had undermined the confidence of every dog out here, and it was the wrong night for a leadership crisis. Rainy, Rat, Casey, and Harley, any one of whom might have bailed me out, were sitting at home. Hitched to this gang line I had Chad, Raven, Cricket, and Gnat: our resident head case and three happy trotters—good for leading so long as it was fun, which it wasn’t tonight.

  I placed Chad back in lead, thinking he might cooperate after a reasonable break. He was, after all, still Deadline Dog Farm’s main dog.

  So we sat.

  Twenty minutes later, a headlamp appeared.

  “How’s training going,” said Scott, a local musher preparing for the Quest.

  “Fine until tonight,” I said, a dark edge to my voice.

  Chad loves to chase. He perked up and followed Scott to the Winter Trail, a heavily traveled mushing and snowmachine highway, up to five feet wide in places, cutting through the forest northeast of Fairbanks. With the familiar alley in view, I bid the other musher good-bye. Crying “Haw,” I sent Chad into a hard left turn. We were home free.