Browsing: Sled Dogs & Mushing Culture

The call came through on a Wednesday, second week of February, and the temperature out here had been sitting at minus eighteen for three days straight. I w

The tug line went slack mid-run and I knew before I looked that Fenwick had pulled up lame. Dropped out of his harness rhythm so quietly that the other dog

The piece I read about this Montana town ran four paragraphs before it mentioned the dogs were working. Not performing. Not posing for a video someone woul

What Good Looks Like Sable came to me from a kennel in Minnesota that had just shut down. Eighteen months old, never raced, never worked a real run. The wo

What Alaska Doesn’t Own The harness had been outside since Tuesday. When I picked it up Thursday morning the frozen nylon smell hit me before I’d even gott

The letter arrived in February, on the kind of day where the cold had settled in for good and even the dogs were running quieter than usual, that flat prai

Birch quit on me seventeen miles out, just sat down in the traces like she’d made up her mind, because she had. Not injured. Not tangled. Done. I unclipped

Flat Country The Pembina County start line smelled like diesel and dog and something else I can never name, that particular cold that comes off the Red Riv

What the Race Already Is She was twenty-four and she’d run the Yukon Quest the previous year and she knew things I hadn’t figured out until I was past thir

What Gets Kept The boy couldn’t tie a bowline. That wasn’t the surprise. Most adults who come through here can’t tie a bowline either, and I’ve stopped exp