Mushy-Love

Do you believe in love at first sight? And I don't mean with a person, I mean an idea--a passionate, exciting, life-challenging thrill of an idea. I want to be a dog musher. I am in an acute state of mushy-love.

Returning from the start of The Beargrease, Minnesota's biggest dog-sled race, I began daydreaming about howling dogs and snow-crusted trails. My oldest daughter Allison (a novice dog-handler), my son Kyle and I had VIP passes to the start of the race. But we were no where near the chute that would launch dog-teams every five minutes for over an hour. Nope, we were in the middle of the melee of dogs lining up to enter the chute.

It was a lot like when I was a child and went to the San Benito County Rodeo. I could have sat in the stands, eating popcorn and drinking soda, shaded from the summer sun of northern California. Instead I chose to be behind the bull pens, sitting on the wooden fences with seasoned cowboys, swallowing arena dust and inhaling the sour smells of manure. It seemed like the lesser choice, but to me--it was living the moment more than observing it.

So there I was at the Beargrease, grinning broadly along-side Allison at all the dogs, the handlers and slender sleds that would soon travel 400 miles in three days. The smells were similar to those childhood rodeo memories; this time it was the strong scent of dog urine on straw that seemed to be everywhere. Just like the trucks and horse-trailers that filled the space behind the rodeo grounds, the parking lots of a local Duluth school were packed with trucks sporting dog boxes.

Allison has long wanted to be a dog-musher and she boldly announced that in 5-10 years I would be taking photos of her at the starting line of the Beargrease. I could dig that. Yet, after a few days I realized that I had also fallen in love with the idea of dog-sledding.

So, when you want to be a dog-musher you need to start somewhere and having a team of dogs is a logical start. Many of the dogs at the Beargrease resembled the iconic Wild Fang, but most were sleek, sporty whip-tails that hinted at hound breeding. Since I live in a northern clime, rather than a polar one, it is not necessary to have expedition dogs, the big furry work-horses of the arctic. In fact, the upper Midwest summers would be hard for such gorgeous beasts to endure.

It didn't take long to realize that I had a coach and I had the start of a team. So I e-mailed Allison and told her I wanted to be a dog-musher, too and committed three of our German Short-haired Pointers to task. She informed me we would need to begin with training the dogs to harnesses. It will be to our advantage that we never taught our dogs to heel. Imagine that being an advantage!

Then there are the commands the team and I will need to learn. Allison says there are many more, but these are the basics she passed along:

Gee: go right!
Haw: go left!
Hike, Hike: let's go!
Whoa: maybe you should think about stopping...
Straight on: straight on a trail.
On by: leave that smelly thing alone and keep going!

Seasoned Minnesotan dog-mushers train their dogs year-round. In the summer, handlers will harness up the dogs in the cool morning pre-dawn hours and take two or three dogs at a time on a jog. The handler wears a skijoring belt, a broad leather strap around the waist. Dog leads are hooked up to the large o-ring mounted on the front of the belt. And, away they all go for a jog. Sometimes the dogs pull 4-wheelers for training. In the winter, of course, out comes the sled.

But we are no where near thinking about sleds at this juncture. Harnesses and commands will be the beginning of the dream. My neighbors may be puzzled upon hearing my shouts of "Gee!" and "Haw!" For now, it's "straight on" into mushy-love.