에피소드 11: 5회 Iditarod 챔피언 Dallas Seavey

kennels we lived five hours apart and um i now have won the iditarod five times which just tied the record for the most ever wins i was also the youngest person ever to win the iditarod which was my initial goal when i started my own kennel was to not just win it but uh try to become the youngest person to do so i've raced internationally i've won the yukon quest which is a thousand mile race between white horse canada and fairbanks alaska the iditarod takes place sold in alaska and then i've also raced in scandinavia the longest race in europe and the way far north of norway norway so sled dog yeah they've given me the opportunity to see the world and have a lot of challenges and experiences so i'm a dog musher wow wow wow five times and there is only one person and that was like what like early 90s or something right and then and then you basically won the the i can't remember the guy's name but you you did compete with against him right yeah rick was the the was the only five time champion of the race until i recently joined him in that very small group and he won his first iditarod i think his first win was in the the late 70s i think it was the fifth ever iditarod that he won and it was a different event back then you know as more of an expedition there weren't so many people that were competitively racing that's not to say it was less difficult it was just difficult in a different way now we have refined things more back then races would be won in you know 14 15 days when my grandfather competed in the first iditarod it took him 21 days and he finished in third place um my my fastest time on the normal route i think is eight days six hours or something so we have the event has changed and evolved but the core of it has stayed the same and that is traveling with a team of dogs and doing it well and if you can travel well you'll have success in races but it's about really focusing on the basics what causes a team to succeed and thrive and if you can do that they take care of the the racing portion of it you know if they feel good they run well right yeah anyway um swenson uh he won his last iditarod i think in 1990 so between 78 i want to say and 90 was kind of his his range and then post rick swenson there have been a number of mushers that have reached the four four time wins you know very famous mushers susan butcher um doug swingley martin boozer jeff king lance mackie but all of these stars of the sport seem to have the curse of four where they hit their fourth win and just could not get that fifth so i remember very vividly when i was

in route to my fifth win just trying so hard not to let i mean playing it safe at every turn right you know just waiting for some bad luck to hit to strike me down and and the curse of four to kick in so when we finally got that one in the books it was a a big release how how much luck plays part of of the competition there's luck is an interesting factor because it's certainly something we work with right and i view it as variables there are things that we do not have control over so the better grasp you have on the things you can control the less the variables affect you so it's trying to control chaos basically and the better innate dogmen that you are um the more that those variables actually play to your favor everybody out there is going to have good luck they're going to have bad luck and at the end of the day whoever handles those challenges best is oftentimes the one who wins the race and when you're trying to figure out what is the right way to handle this situation whether it be maybe maybe there's a flu bug going through your team or maybe it's weather that's causing the the challenge or maybe it's sleds that break or equipment breakage the better all-around dog person you are the better you are at addressing those challenges and i think as with anybody in a sport lifestyle you have to look at this thing in the very long term and i think that's what separates multiple time iditarod champions from people who are able to do it once you can win the race once with luck if you're already one of the best dog drivers in the world but to do it again and again and again means you have to be able to win the race when it's a fast race a record-breaking pace you also have to be able to win the race when it's a you know slow pace just slugging it out with mother nature so i think that is what separates those four time iditarod champions five time iditarod champions from the people who have been able to do it once when they had the magic carpet ride as we say where everything went well but can you do it when things don't go well that's the real challenge for you it's the chess game of competition when i started my kennel the goal was not well yes the goal was to win the race but bigger than that the goal was to be in the top five every year consistency we want to you know at that point in racing you know i grew up studying this sport watching my dad watching all the competition and i was always a student of the sport and it always baffled me how very good dog drivers were not capable of being in the top five of the race more than three years in a row it really was

a thing they could be you know in the top five three years in a row but the fourth was almost never happening in fact since the from 1990 on i think only um two mushers were able to be in the top five more than three times in a row and both of them only hit four times and this year i think was my seventh time in a row of seventh or eighth time in a row of top five and so we're trying to again it comes down to handling those variables so assessing what is it that causes very good dog drivers to have a bad run and it's it's not that there's something wrong with them we just need to learn from their mistakes because i am prone to making those same mistakes so it's more about consistency i think and can repeatedly training good teams which that means handling all different types of dogs as well they're very unique and individual so so here is the question the immediate question that i have i'm trying to make some mathematics in my head because i know that there is a working working lifespan of the dog and for you to win five times how many like how how often let's start with what is the average working lifespan of of a dog on your team and how often do you have to add and how how does that go um they're gonna first try out for the main racing team at three years old so a three-year-old dog and even when i say three-year-old they're actually most of them are born in the spring and summer and the race starts in march so most of them are going to be turning four shortly after the iditarod so they're an old three right so from three to seven would be probably your prime um and three-year-olds the faster we go in the race the more i see that three-year-olds are what two-year-olds used to be as the race gets harder you're going to see the age range of really their peak narrow just a little bit but i regularly have three-year-olds on my team this year out of my 14 dogs i had three three-year-olds on the team um on the other end of the spectrum you know seven-year-olds are i think that's one of their best years they're definitely mature especially in the lead dogs i love seven-year-olds my two main lead dogs this year were half brothers and they were both seven turning eight right after the iditarod um last in 2021 when i won my fifth race um my oldest dog was eight about to turn nine right after the iditarod and that's that's an exceptional dog and he was the he was the mvp in that race so i mean he did incredibly well his knowledge is more valuable than his athletic ability at that point he was still

very athletic obviously he won the iditarod in a record time but his strength to the team was his brain not the engine behind him i've got plenty of four and five and six-year-olds that can provide power i need him to provide smarts wow that's that's that's very very interesting that's getting already very interesting to me i guess the the working lifespan is not much different which surprising me to to the protection sports that i'm involved with and even pretty much any any dog sports i think that's kind of very very normal you can have a for sure a three-year-old it's just that you have the energy you have the exuberance but prone to more mistakes to where the seasoned dog obviously knows how to make things efficiently right so um i guess the way you say seven-year-old it's a that's i have a dog right now that i compete in igp in that uh shoots home sport and um he's seven he's turning seven just turned seven or no he actually will be seven in august next month and um i i really same thing i i really think it is his best year right now so there is um at least here we have some similarities um how how do you select like when you have a breeding program what is uh what are we looking i'm sure different trainers different breeders look different things but you specifically what like if you how do you go what do you do well first of all yes different mushers very much have what they select for and i think that's sometimes a mistake because mushers as an individual get very good at working with one type of dog they do really well with speed dogs or they do really good really well with dogs that have a lot of staying power and can travel slowly for long periods of time and these are what i see as mushers that are like one directional where they have one strong suit but when the race doesn't favor that strong suit they become vulnerable so if they have a really good slow what we would call a marching team you know they can march for hours and hours and hours they don't have the top end speed but they have good staying power they do great when it's deep snow slow trail keep them out there you know it's going to be a 10-day race instead of an eight-day race those teams do better other teams have speed you know they have great top end speed and if it's an icy fast trail and it's going to be a record breaker they're tough to beat i've always shot for versatility and this goes back to what we were saying before trying to be top five every year i don't want to go through everything it takes to train a team or prepare a team and then get to the starting line and say oh it's a

it's going to be a bad weather year we don't even have a shot i want to have a team that we can compete and be viable in any conditions so to answer your question directly the number one most valuable trade is drive they have to love what they do and that's what i pick above almost anything else is that desire to travel just like any working dog they have you know maybe if it's a bite work dog what they live for is that attack that bite if it's a herding dog their whole existence is about collecting and herding and pushing together a sled dog it's all about traveling and these are all naturally occurring traits if you took a wolf they would if you view it as a pie chart with this wolf there would be a wedge of herding yes they need to push the caribou together there would be a wedge that is that getting in there and actually taking down the caribou there is that pack instinct that's overarching and then they travel they travel more than any mammal out there so we as dog mushers have taken that traveling portion and bred it selectively until that encompasses pretty much their entire pie chart these dogs don't care about herding they don't care about attacking the same with a herding dog you bred them to where their entire existence is about herding they don't want to jump in and bite it they just want to push it together right yeah so for me that drive is number one most important i've always felt that if the dog wants to do it i can i can train them i can work with a dog that has that desire but that desire is the one thing you can't put into them now that being said you can always make it unfun for a dog you can take a dog with tons of desire and push them to the point that it's not fun for them they're still vulnerable they're still you know they're still a being you have to always keep it fun for them so even when they're eight years old and we've been out here for eight or nine days on the trail and we take just a three hour rest and it's time to go again i'm asking that dog one very simple question and and that is do you want to go running right now and the answer always has to be yes they have to want to do it so it's about managing their psychology as much as the physiology of the dog and that being said of course they have to actually have the vehicle to to you know to back up what their brain is saying their brain says go go go and their body has to be able to do it so yes you have to have the lungs and the heart and the structure that can hold up to thousands of miles of training and racing but the number one most important trait is that desire that drive yeah that

genetic makeup to to go to travel as you say it's a good way to describe it to travel so how how soon how soon do you know i mean would would you be able to say at eight weeks old hey you're gonna be good or does it take six months old or or how things change you know my perception of that has changed over the years i used to think you know when i was younger i used to really pinpoint like oh this is a great athlete and you can see structurally the dog has a great build um it is a smooth traveler but the part of it is what i like doing i like training dogs that have quirks have uniqueness those are the challenges right as a coach which we are it's not about picking the best athletes and letting them do their thing it's about raising each athlete to their highest potential and if you can do that then you can consistently be good and that's one of the things that caused and that i identified that caused mushers to have those ups and downs in their career was anybody can do great when you have a great group of dogs you know you have two or three litters of puppies and they're just phenomenal you can't hardly screw it up but can you still do well when you have two or three litters that are pretty good but they're not superstars you know can you raise them up to the level to still compete that's the challenge that's the fun part that gets me excited so i have learned um it's really hard to count out dogs right i've had you know dogs and in fact the first time i won the iditarod my mvp lead dog was a little female that i purchased um in fact my entire team was purchased from other kennels it was the first time that a iditarod winning team had entirely been purchased from other kennels because i was just starting my own kennel so every single dog that i had was different they were unique and every single one of them had a flaw that's why they had been sold nobody's selling their best dogs right they're they're keeping the best two or three out of the litter and selling the worst two or three out of the litter and that was what my entire team was so this particular female guinness she was sold to me solely as a breeding dog because she was too small to race but i only had 16 dogs total and it takes 16 dogs to you know to start the iditarod at least at that time since then the numbers have changed but um so it wasn't a question of who are going to be the 16 dogs on my team it completely changed the mindset and instead of training 30 dogs and selecting the best athletes my entire focus was about how do i get these 16 as good as possible by race day

and it i think that really set me off on the right foot when i started my own kennel and just focusing on the right aspect that little female not only did she make my team four years but uh on her fourth one was my main lead dog when i won the iditarod and that's one thing that we do have different in a team they don't have to be the best all around they have to be good at one thing and add value to the team so when you say a little give me an idea what are we talking how many pounds about 40 pounds that is little 40 pounds for that one yeah that's that's on the smaller end i mean she was 40 pounds on a heavy day most of my dogs are in the 55 to 60 range uh the largest that i had hero actually incidentally her son who was also a superstar leader for me and won the iditarod with me later uh he was the heaviest dog i've ever raced at about 74 pounds so again here's the same genetics that the smallest one was a superstar and the biggest one again the goal is to learn how do i train you as a big dog to do well how do i train you as a little dog to be do well and provide value to the team and what are you good at and how do i protect you from your weaknesses and build you up on your strengths how do you keep them like injuries i mean that's uh always for dog trainer any dog trainer that's like the nightmare and i'm assuming sled dogs are just as reckless as any other dogs that are genetically made to do something right to have a purpose so what what do you do like i want to i want to get some ideas because i'm sure i'm gonna walk out of this podcast with some really good ideas from you well what we do um injuries is always a factor right and it's about there's so many things that goes into this and my brain's going all over right now it's like trying to see which angle best to hit it from but um you know last year i think we did over 4 000 miles of training between september and march and then another thousand miles in the iditarod and i don't think i had any injuries that caused the dog to be out of training for more than two weeks right and so when you look at two weeks you're not looking at at um tendon ruptures or ligament strains or anything like that for two weeks you're looking at minor muscular breakdown and a lot of this as i get better as a musher we have a better crystal ball we can see into the future we can see i can see this dog now and i see where this trajectory takes them two weeks from now and the earlier you make a correction the smaller the correction has to be right and if you wait till the dog actually has an injury now you're six months

off dealing with major issues if you notice when it's a minor thing it's okay three or four weeks we can bring them back if as you get better and better you make smaller and smaller adjustments and you can see where this you know trajectory is leading and part of it for me is training the dogs to calm down so a lot of our early season training is bringing the tempo down you know we're doing a little bit longer runs stretching them out getting them into what is a casual traveling pace that they can do indefinitely and this whole the whole sport's about sustainability right yeah on the other end of it i've gone very far down the rabbit holes of you know rehab basically for dogs we do a lot of cold laser therapy with these guys tons of massage all sorts of essential oils and half of it seems like witchcraft but it works um the supplements and nutrition is huge and so as you become a better all-around musher on these things you know we learn and then finally i would say um not only do we learn a dog over its lifespan but one of the values or advantages i have to raising dogs and being in these same bloodlines for so long is i've trained this dog's parent i've trained his grandparent i've trained his great grandparent i've trained his great great grandparent i had a dog in my team this year titan he was a three-year-old on my team his first race his father prophet was also in the team he was one of the seven-year-olds prophets father reef won the 2014 15 16 iditarods with me that dog's father payton was a puppy when i was working at my dad's kennel and i trained that dog and ran the iditarod with them and that dog's father i trained when he was on my dad's winning team so i have generations of knowledge and that helps me to guide this dog's training program but also we have to remember that this dog is an individual completely his own being separate from what his parents were you don't want to pigeonhole them and assume that they're going to be the same as their ancestors were very true very true wow yeah i i totally can relate on all that because i i also i don't even know how many like i've i've been breeding them since 89 malinois so it's a long time for sure and and it's the same as just as you say like in some ways the puppy is born and you're like oh i i really know you you have no idea but i know exactly where you're going but at the same time just as you say you have to respect that as as its own i was gonna say its own person which is normal for us to say it that way right um then then what is uh the most common you said

injury what what what it would be i mean we're gonna see the the hind legs where they're providing a lot of power i have some dogs that actually use their front legs it seems more their their back end it seems a little bit higher and they're more built in the front end and they're more pulling than they are pushing um so there's there's differences in each line on that as well but um it's usually the muscular groups right and just like if you were to go do uh you know a 15 mile run as a human you would probably have some sore muscles you'd go to sit down your chair and be like oh that i can feel that right and that is the level that you want to deal with right anything beyond there you're legitimately in an injury so we have to separate out what is you know um soreness like muscular soreness versus an injury and one advantage i think that we have over some of these other sporting dogs is we have less explosive power you know we're doing less jumping hard landing you know those impact type things what we have is more continuous breakdown where this dog is running at nine and a half miles an hour for six hours straight resting for three or four hours and doing it again and again and they're not just casually jogging along they're also carrying the weight of the sled and the person behind them so it's it i feel like we have the we're fortunate in that what we do happens slower yeah right so as you're traveling and you start to see that the dog is number one thing you're going to see is they start to change their gait so for that we have to know what their normal gait is how do they normally look traveling at 9.2 miles an hour and this trail condition and if they're usually trotting and we now see them trotting or maybe starting to do a trot a rope where they add a little back arch each step you know okay why are they doing that is it because they're starting to feel a little bit of fatigue in a muscle so they're adjusting how they run to compensate for that these are the things that we're adjusting for and then we say okay afterwards we do a lot of flexation you know full range of motion legs forward backwards and again here you have to know what is the normal flexibility for this dog oh it seems like they're tight a little bit you know an inch and a half before where they normally are then we're doing massage and laser and heat and cold treatment and this is where they get a week off right so that's the level of injury we should be dealing with now if we ignore that the dog goes from doing a trot

to a full-on lope and pretty soon when they're loping they're leading let's say now with their left leg and their right leg can pretty much be doing the motion but not actually carrying weight and we can let things advance to where it actually is an injury and there's now actually a muscular tear and now they need three or four weeks off of recovery and then build back and everything else and if you're ignorant to even that it can get worse and worse and this is the one danger you have when you drive what i call a really high drive dog is that they don't care right they're sometimes just they don't care about their body they want to go go go go and so they let things get worse and worse so you really have to watch out for those dogs and protect them because they won't protect themselves yeah wow that really really makes sense with the the just the the recklessness of any other dog sports now that i'm thinking it's just this stop and go and explosiveness and and yeah with the sled dogs it's it's much more of a this steadiness trance like committed movement which is a very very interesting um um how how um i'm like you like i just so many questions i i i'm afraid that i'm gonna miss something you know like tell me a little bit about styles of training are they is there very different styles like like for example with the way we train sport protection dogs and stuff there's quite a few different styles and some are very you know like you can call it force free you can call some pretty old school with a lot of pressure um to me ultimately it's somewhere in between to to have a good report and good training but i'm curious with sled dogs how how is it how style wise training styles there's there are a wide variety of styles let's suppose and a lot of it goes back to a lot of it goes back to obviously the human you know the human kind of sets the tempo in a lot of these environments and you see dogs or teams and that's just to take a step back real quick when we're working with a dog we don't really work with a dog we're always working in a group or pack environment and so it really benefits to observe constantly and that's a big part of what i do is you're always just watching and not judgmentally just observing you don't want to see something you want to see honestly truthfully what is in front of you and then assess and i see so many mushers they put the blinders on they want to see that their team is doing well so they only look at the dogs that are doing well and it gives them a false image of their team

and causes them to make mistakes we want honest information so that we can make the best decision from there but you see some mushers that um i think their dogs get confused sometimes because they the person themselves fluctuates too much with the good and the bad and they are very happy and outgoing and bubbly and yay when everything is good and when things get bad the musher is panicky and scared and maybe even angry or upset or you know whatever and that's not a stable leader i think the dogs look at that and they never know what to expect from you they don't know is the happy bubbly person going to show up today or is the frustrated you know upset person going to show up today and whatever else you have going on in life and work and training maybe maybe the dog did horribly today and the competition went very badly or whatever you still have to be steady you have to be understandable to the dogs you have to look at everything how do they see this situation now me with my human brain i can understand all the peripheral stuff but the dog can't you either show up consistent or you show up all over the place and i think to get a really closeness with the dog they have to reliably know who you are not you know if they don't know if you're going to show up from over here over here as far as um aura or mentality or you know severity or anything else they're always going to keep a little bit of distance the more steady and consistent and i think grounded you can be the the closer the dog's going to be so i see some people that it's um very varied you know as far as their interaction with the individual dog and i think there's less security and sled dogs particularly and i think most dogs really thrive on security more than comfort honestly uh humans we we value comfort we like to sit on the couch and watch a movie and eat popcorn right the dogs they need security especially what i work with is a pretty primitive dog i think they're very similar to what wolves were you know years and years ago so they want to know that this pack is stable and secure and this pack handles adversity well and it can be a blizzard and it can be you know chaos and mayhem but if i show up exactly the same we're steady i'm going to give you clear easy to follow directions and we're going to take it one step at a time and we're going to get out the other side just fine if they know that then they are relaxed they're free they can they're just happy go lucky like like i want them to be they're not nervous but um i think there is a wide range of how people train them like a true definition of team right yeah

yeah tactically i see a bigger variation because you know i i really focus on training the whole dog and what i mean by that is the athletic side of the dog is only one portion of our competition if you look at what our competition is we are going to take off you know now it is a 14 dog race it used to be a 16 dog race but we're going to take off with 14 dogs and one human we're going to travel a thousand miles when we leave the starting line the clock starts and it doesn't stop until we reach the finish line we are going to be running yes of course but we also are going to be eating on the trail sleeping on the trail doing all the vet care on the trail observing i need them to freely give information back i don't want my dogs to be afraid to show weakness because i need to see if there is weakness so i can adjust our pace or i can move them in the team i can disconnect their back line so they can't actually pull and now they're just trotting along with the team basically connected only by the caller this will allow them to you know release or lower the amount of strain on them and they can actually recover while doing that if i start to sense um you know muscular fatigue so i need to understand the whole dog so my training emulates that most of my training happens in three to five days of running and resting and living on the trail so when we stop it doesn't matter if they're tired or not they have a habit they have a routine we curl up and we go to sleep because they know that in a few hours we're going to get up and do it again other mushers put a much bigger emphasis on training the athletic side of the dog and when i started racing it was not uncommon for mushers to show up at the start of the race and have never actually camped on the trail with their dogs all year in training you know they would train they go 70 80 miles in the day and the dogs always ate back at their dog house the dogs always slept in their dog house they were most importantly they were always very rested they were always coming off a 12 or 24 hour rest period before they went on a run so the dog didn't know how to properly pace themselves whereas my guys were used to coming off of a four hour rest and then you're gonna you know only get another four hour rest and do it again so they learned how to bring down the speed and maintain a sustainable pace so that sort of tactical training we see a huge variation interesting and dogs definitely they they start for for that kind of the day they want to know they want they don't like a surprise like why are we not sleeping at home right now

and and it's it's a big deal for them one of the biggest issues when i was studying why do great mushers not finish in the top five of the iditarod which was like my big question at the head of the piece of paper like all right why can't they do this these are awesome mushers it's not because they don't understand dogs so trying to pinpoint their flaws because i'm a human and i'm prone to making the exact same mistakes they make if i don't study it and i felt like that was one of the the big factors was that the dogs didn't understand the other half of the sport they knew how to run but the life on the trail was difficult for them and these sled dogs are burning between 12 and 14 000 calories a day on the iditarod this is more a race of about food than it is of sleep so it was we put more of an emphasis on what causes dogs not to eat well on the iditarod right so let's make that a habit for them the eating routine me knowing exactly how much food needs to go in and they might be running perfectly looking perfectly all excited physically healthy but i can tell if they're not bringing in enough calories this is not a sustainable trajectory so i might adjust my pace based off of the calories that are going in more than any other factor and those are the sorts of things that you need to be aware of and this is why i love ultra long distance racing because if you don't see these things at the very very beginning it has time to develop into a problem right if you were doing 300 mile races versus a thousand mile races the race is short enough that you can get away with making mistakes you don't have time for the calories to catch up with them if you don't notice a small little nick in a pad or something in a 300 mile race you know the the finish line saves you right in a thousand mile race every problem has time to mature into a real problem so it's all about again observing everything and being completely understanding of the dog like understanding every aspect of this dog mentally physically you know digestively everything yeah so we are getting to the point where we need to talk a little bit about food because that's another very interesting to me topic and before before we go to diets peak eaters finicky eaters can they ever be a a good good team player or or probably no i i'm just guessing if a dog is not a good eater what happens because he needs it needs the energy obviously right yeah they have to have the energy without without the fuel it doesn't matter how good the car is if the gas

tank is empty you could have the best car in the world and it's not going anywhere right it all comes down to the fuel and yes once it's fueled up the car also has to be good if you want to race but you have to have fuel in the gas tank so there's a few things you can do there we we focus on that i mean all the way back to the breeding phase right dogs that hold body weight well is really really important to us um a few dogs i have neutered them because they don't hold weight well enough and obviously you don't want to perpetuate that line if they have a flaw so hero a dog i mentioned earlier the biggest dog i'd ever you know raced successfully and won the iditarod with he was neutered at two and a half or three years old um because he was always just then and he was a huge dog and i think that's one of the things that allowed him to be great um you know in hindsight you're like man i wish i could have read this dog but do i really want to perpetuate that you know smaller you know that not holding the body weight so i guess i'm saving myself from my future self but um it starts with breeding breeding good eaters breeding dogs that hold body weight well because you might have dogs that eat really well but they just can't hold body weight or as soon as they have one ounce of fat on them they don't feel hungry anymore right um the next phase is puppyhood i keep these puppies together as long as they get along well in a pen um usually it's somewhere between six months at about six months i'll separate out males and females just to make sure we don't have any you know accidents obviously we have the separate pens where females and season go but um they'll usually stay together until nine months or even a year depending on when they actually move to i have zip lines so the dog has about a 35 foot zip line run um that's when they're tied up you know as adults um anyway all through that puppy time starting when they start maybe when they're when they're done nursing you know there's that phase between when they're eating solid food but they're still nursing when they're done nursing they're all fed together and it's really the art of building their relationship with food let's look at this at human terms we all have a relationship with food there's some people that you know eat more than they should there's some people that have an unhealthy relationship with food because they don't eat as much as they should right there's all these different relationships with food so i basically am playing god in my dog yard

because we're trying to build this relationship with food and it's really that fine line between of course you always want them to be secure and happy and healthy and my goal is to have as much body fat on them as possible but they need to have a little bit of a mentality of scarcity where food is not always just readily available and they can free feed whenever they want because a lot of times on the races the question isn't am i hungry because maybe they don't feel hungry right i need them to eat no matter what so as they're growing up i'll put one pan of food in there and the slow eater doesn't get as much as the one that sits there you know wolf sit down and generally what i do is i'm going to be in there with them when i'm feeding them i want them to get used to eating with me there that's one thing with this really pack oriented dog if you're a strong leader sometimes they don't feel comfortable eating before the pack leader does if you will it's a very strange environment i want them to feel very comfortable and relaxed eating so i'm going to be in there with them um if one of them attacks their sibling when they're eating i'm going to grab them and pull them out probably put them on the back you know that's not okay and this is a six or eight week old puppy and it's not a violent thing it's just nope that's not allowed you know okay when you've calmed down and you can play well with the others you can go back to the food and at this age we teach them that just fighting is not a thing and it prevents us from having to you know be more aggressive or forceful when they're adults because we teach them when they're puppies and then when they start to slow down on eating when their bellies are you know this big and they start slowing down i'll just take away the food so they get plenty they're going to be chubby and they're gonna be fat but their relationship with food is attack it when it's there and we start with that at a young age and i like having fat puppies because i think it builds in their mind let's say if i'm if i'm normally carrying 20 pounds of extra body fat on me which i'm not but if i were if i got down to only 10 pounds i would feel hungry i would feel thin right if you always are skinny if you gain even a pound of body fat you feel sluggish and slow so i'm trying to build their barometric norm as i carry body weight right i'm always i've always just been a little bit chubby that's where i want to keep them their whole life so that if they do start getting down to where it's a

little bit thin they feel like they're scrawny right so they're used to being a little bit on the chubby side interesting and what about skipping meals like purposefully skipping a day or anything like that do you guys do anything yes absolutely um and not just not just with a problem dog or something but go back to the wolf a wolf is not a grazer they don't eat constantly all day every day like a caribou might you know a caribou walks it eats lichen and grass and whatever the heck caribou eat and they're constantly grazing a canine is a binge eater by nature so this is something i have nine eight or nine people that are here that live on site training dogs with me my my handlers is the term we use um they live here and i'm and they're you know they're becoming mushers as well many of them have run the iditarod or are in the process of becoming qualified to compete in the iditarod down the road so i'm always telling them look at the food as a weekly thing don't look at it as two meals a day or this individual meal broaden your mindset they need this many calories per week you should only plan on feeding them let's say if it's a week um feed them 11 times in a week right or 10 times in a week right as long as it's the right amount of calories it doesn't really matter and i do like having some we have this balance between habit habit and regular normality and also uncertainty i don't want the dogs to look at their food and say uh i'll wait eight hours till dinner comes to eat they need to in their mind know that it could be 24 hours till food comes or the next meal might just be a little piece of fish instead of a meal and so i want to keep them a little bit not on edge but the the mindset needs to be when there's food in front of you you eat it because the next meal could be a ways down the road yeah yeah interesting and how how how often like the old like not the old dogs but the you know four five six years old dogs do they eat similar amount or how many times per day do you feed um generally i guess it depends a little bit on the season like in the summertime they usually eat once a day um and then we do have you know our we'll go out and feed the skinny dogs right so we have the the running list of dogs that need to have an extra meal or maybe it's the yearlings that are growing and it's like 16 year old boys that you can feed them as much as you possibly want and it's it's hard to keep to keep weight on them right uh but also one of the big factors in the summer is that you can feed

them more at one time and they can actually process it and digest it because they're not doing the same physical work in the winter time they're working a lot more so they don't have the time to process and digest the food as well so we do feed them more often in the winter time usually twice a day in the winter once a day in the summer except for the dogs that need more you know if it's the if it's the 10 year old retired dog that's sleeping on the couch you know they eat once a day and we have a different food for them that's lower calorie more volume so they feel full but they don't need to be eating the super high fat high performance food that the racing dogs are because they would blow up like a balloon on on that food yes yeah it's double yes usually usually twice a day in the winter and we do regularly skip you know skip a meal or two meals and that's always you're just watching again it goes back to observing when you go down and we feed usually as a soup it's going to be you know beef chicken um beef fat usually in there and that's going to be thawed out into a broth into a soup and then we add their dry kibble into that bucket we mix it up and then you're ladling they're usually eating about a quart and a half to two quarts per feeding so when you go down the row of dogs and you're feeding them you're watching you're observing when you come up to them are they you know bouncing all over the place excited for food or do they like oh i guess i'll come out of my dog house if i see a dog that's not real excited i'll just pass over them on that feeding and then you know the next one they'll eat but if i look back at the line and they took longer to eat than they generally do i'll be like all right i'm gonna use one of my skip one of my skip meals tomorrow morning and we're just going to pass on that meal so you're just you're constantly adjusting reacting temperature has a huge bearing on them if it's 40 below out they need a lot more calories than if it's 20 above um so we're always adjusting also for the actual training that we're doing at that time and as it gets colder they they tend to um not not eat as much am i getting that right or no no they eat a lot more when it's cold because they do live outside right they're an outdoor dog they will burn more calories if it's very cold you know that's one of the nice things about this high metabolism dog is they do produce a lot of heat you know burning that many calories produces heat and they're very efficient at consuming calories and

instantly or very quickly using that for immediate energy or to switch and store that as stored body fat or then to switch and use stored body fat for energy they're very good at bouncing between those things much better than humans you know if you're humans we burn sugars you know right that's our main blood sugar that drives us and when marathoners bonk at 20 miles it's because they've run out of blood sugar and they're now having to convert body fat to energy and humans aren't very good at that dogs are very good at that and it's aided by the fact that their system primarily drives off of fats rather than blood sugars right they don't eat a carbohydrate based diet they eat a protein and fat based diet so that that's one of the many things that makes them the world's premier endurance athlete is their their system is already set up for that right they're already set up to burn fats which is a much more stable energy source so then then what do you like if you are and i'm sure you you have to at some point in time kind of give some power bar so to speak what what would be a supplement what would you give when when you feel that dog really needs a little extra something right now what is that your go-to tool well this will partially depend on temperature it will partially depend on their stools and it'll partially depend on what their previous meal was so i do snack the dogs a lot while we're running so if we're out there doing a three or four hundred mile training series where we'll run and rest in the same proportions as we will on the iditarod and it's just training but we're still going to be out there for four days um three to four days and they're probably going to do six to eight runs that are approximately 50 miles long you know there'll be variation in there during let's say a 50 mile run um they're going to get probably one or two snacks later in the races uh when we're at mile seven eight nine hundred i might be snacking them every hour in that process and i'm going to vary between beef you know we buy the beef probably like many you know bigger kennels do or i don't know if this is so common with you guys but we get 50 pound boxes of beef and it's in 10 pound tubes and i slice it like a loaf of bread um i just use a chop saw you know and slice it so it's about maybe the width of my pinky and it will be a disc about yay big i'll then cut that in half so it looks like half a slice of wonder bread maybe a little bit thinner so even if it's cold it's very easy for the dog to break it up right you don't want to

hand them a frozen baseball how are they going to gnaw on that so it needs to be something thin they can break up so the beef is a pretty common one one of the things the beef also does is it gets hydration into the dogs because it has a high higher water content the the beef that we have so if it's warm out i'm going to be feeding them a little more beef maybe salmon is another one they love the salmon um if you do have a dog that's maybe not you know they look at the beef and it's like a lot of times they will eat salmon and and i hate doing that because now i'm kind of babying them but in a racing situation you kind of the tables turn we spend you know six seven months out of the year where i'm kind of a hard ass and you eat the food when it's available if not you're going to learn and you're going to be hungry and next time when the food's there you're definitely going to eat it on the race that as we get closer to the end the tables turn a little bit um at least if you didn't do the right first part of the race correctly and yeah that gets into a whole nother world but beef's the main one chicken skins i little feed a lot of chicken skins for a fattier food i will feed straight beef fat um this uh this i did a lot i had a lot of uh pork bellies it's you know pork belly what you would make bacon out of but it's uncured and i just got that at the local butcher and you know they actually cut it into about eighth of a pound pieces i think so it's i don't know a strip about yay long and it was again maybe a little bit skinnier than my pinky on the flat direction um and the pork bellies was something different i like having a few unique things for the race that they haven't really eaten much before just a little bit i want to know that it you know know how their body reacts to it but i want it to be kind of unique and special for the race just in case i need to you know have something special for them if they're eating everything normally then i may not even bust it out part of the strategies right it is crazy so you mentioned something about um uh how how few of the dogs you mentioned you had to neuter like how how how often is uh how common and how does it affect like intact dogs versus dogs that are spayed and neutered like as far as i mean obviously like my my guess is that there's got to be some impact on hormones testosterone you need all that to to for power right um do you do you see how how how different they can be yeah i i don't neuter a lot of my dogs i only neuter them if i if there's a reason

to which is pretty much exclusively because of body weight um spaying them i don't really spay any of them until like the older females i will spam when they're kind of getting near retirement time um mostly just to prevent any uterine cancers or anything like that and again that kind of depends on the dog but um the impact so i don't have as much experience on that as some mushers but the ones that i have had i would say it does calm them down but the dogs that generally need to be neutered are usually really really high drive high adrenaline dogs and that's why they're thin in the first place so by neutering them i almost think that it may extend their career i think they do come down just a notch as far as the high-end super high rpm stuff which i've seen many newer dogs in my dogs and also in my dad's dogs where it seems like they have an abnormally long career because they do manage their their adrenaline a little bit or not necessarily just adrenaline but they are calmed down a little bit so if you already have a really calm dog you might see it take them down into the negative range but if you have a dog that's too high strong it probably brings them down to the right range so i would i would guess that that would depend on the individual in my cases i don't think i've ever seen one that i neutered that it didn't help them but only because we are neutering the dogs that were the really high strong high energy dogs that had you know had trouble holding body weight so then so like that's uh another interesting thing for me with when you have intact dogs running next to each other you obviously have to be very smart how to i mean you have to team up make the whole team very strategically and and on top of everything else you need to make sure that they get along at least uh right so so how how do you go about that you know that's that is sometimes a challenge um some dogs have that big boisterous personality we see it more in you know the the two and three and four year old males that can be a little bit aggressive and it's not even aggressive it's almost like they when they're really excited right you're hooking up the team you're getting ready to go they're slamming on the lines just barking and screaming uh one of the challenges we have is they want to bite the lines and chew on it because they're just they don't know how to handle all their energy right as soon as you pull the snow hook and you go down the trail there's like no more problems all the problems happen when you're

getting ready to go um and some of those dogs also you know instead of biting the line they bite their brother and that's that's the problem now they don't really seem when these guys fight it's not generally like uh i want to kill you sort of fight it's more of just like hyper i mean you can all it says all it takes is a hey and then oh oh sorry yeah we know that's not allowed right it's very rare that you actually get them committed to where man they're they're really kind of go after each other um and again it's body language if you can nip it in the bud as soon as you see them look over at their brother with that you know you see what's in their eye if you pinpoint it then it's no big deal if you let them get into locked in mortal combat then you're gonna have to physically get in there and separate the two dogs and um whatnot but i don't have as many problems as i think some teams do partially because we keep them working together and that's something i'm really focused on again with the handlers is reminding them don't avoid problems right if you always take this one dog that's a little bit aggressive um and you always put them next to a female and what you're doing is you're allowing this habit to form and now the dog is three years old and the dog has this habit of if he's next to a male he's going to attack it it's so much easier to break these bad habits before they start so when he's a you know a puppy a year old going out mushing for the first time and he's excited and he doesn't even know what he's excited for he's never been mushing before but the instincts tell him oh we're we're going right when they jump on their brother then you know separate them put them all on their back you know you're in charge you're the the big dog here and as long as i'm around fighting's not allowed you stand them up and they might try it again break them up do it again this is the time to teach them don't wait until it's three years old and now it's a habit because that's a lot harder to break one of the things that helps with the young dogs is putting them next to an old bigger dog i have ace and yak were two of the dogs on my team last year and those poor boys they're so happy jolly outgoing but they never will start a fight so they always get put next to the worst dog in the team because nobody messes with them you know the other dog might be obnoxious and you know nipping at their face and they don't you know react in a negative way so using the right dog once they can run with ace and they're they're used to that then i put them next to a little bit less patient dog a little

bit less patient dog until they're next to another dog just like them and now their habit is oh we don't fight with the neighbor that's not part of it so part of it's training and part of it is intentionally forming the right habits but you're right that's very cool like i when you said um mostly if there will be problems it's always as you're hooking them up and as you're getting ready because it's crazy like i still remember the very first time i saw sled dogs they were just totally chilled like just totally chilled and then it was time to go and they lost their minds i mean they lost their minds and and and it's it's just uh it's so cool to see it but that's clearly that would be the time where they have to somehow manage themselves and and uh learn how to deal with that moment because that it really that excitement that they they just light up like it's it's insane and the moment they go then everything is trance-like and it's cool now they're happy yep it's complete once you're going it's completely silent it goes from being obnoxious just you know pandemonium right and as soon as you start moving just dead quiet because now they're focused on their job and they got what they wanted right that's the reward as they go i would also say the other times that you see issues two other times uh one is when something's going wrong right um let's say usually a dog team is very linear or stretched out you have the lead dogs and pairs of dogs coming back all the way to the sled oftentimes they're training with 12 to 16 dogs in a team so it's a fairly long thing and it's very easy to keep things structured when they're next to one dog that you intentionally put them next to right they're next to the patient dog but what happens when um you know maybe there's a tree branch sticking out and hooks onto a line in the toe line and the whole team gets bunched into a ball or you're trying to break through trail and your leaders get you know down into a deep drift of snow and they get stopped and the next two dogs kind of almost run over the top of them and the other are beside them and it's it's now a ball this is a really uncertain time right they're all they're still very excited we've stopped moving but now we're all in this big big ball and that's where it's very important that you have a well-trained team because that could be a very bad situation if one of the dogs bites another one and then you know how dogs are oh it's gone down they get the other ones getting in there and so another habit i want them to learn is when i'm around when we're around other dogs their

eyes need to be on me right if you're walking a dog past another dog that's tied up and you see the dog that's tied up with that fixation they're you know looking like they're about to pounce no you look at me when i'm walking by you with a dog your eyes better be on me so i'll be there you know up to my waist in a ball of dogs with you know 14 dogs in an area the size of a kitchen table and every single one of them needs to be looking at me and i can kind of calm them down and we're going to stay and i'm going to untangle all these ropes that might be wrapped around your leg or you might be stuck on your on your side if you know something is tangled or the dog fell down or whatever hooked the line in the first place and so again don't avoid those situations yes it's not a good situation but you want to see that in training you don't want to have the first time that you've ever had a bad situation be with a big team on a race so we do a lot of training on trails that are very windy and twisty and there might be a spruce tree that's fallen across the trail and by the time i get around the corner we're all bunched up right do this when it's a manageable group with one or two new dogs in the team so i know that these six are solid old war horses they're going to do their job and these two over here might be a little bit nervous this is a strange environment but they're going to do two things one they're going to look at me and say does the boss think this is worth freaking out about if the boss is still calm if the captain doesn't think that this is a big deal then it must not be a big deal they don't know and they're also going to look at the other dogs in the pack if the other dogs say yeah we do this all the time don't worry about it then they're going to morph to what the team is now inversely if you took two of my old dogs that are used to everything being calm and normal and you put them with six other dogs and a different musher and the musher is freaking out and the other dogs are trying to pick at each other they're also going to morph to that pack right they're going to adjust to the pack oftentimes so you want to set them up in a situation where it's always you know we can be teaching them a good habit not teaching them a bad habit so if you've got a team of 10 puppies and they're crazy don't go on the bad trail but that's you know go where you're not going to have those issues because that's not going to be a good experience but also don't always avoid the difficult stuff you have to put them in a situation where they

see strange things but do it in a manner where you can handle the situation you can handle it it can be a positive learning experience and then the other time is if the dogs are ever scared or frightened that's a time where you know i'll see mushers that their dogs are all happy and fluffy and then they're halfway through the iditarod and the musher is sleep deprived and scared and worried and nervous and the dogs start picking up on that as well and that's when they start having little little scraps and stuff because again they've lost their security and now they're trying to re-establish a pack order because they don't trust the boss anymore because the boss is the boss doesn't handle sleep deprivation well is usually what it comes down to so interesting because you you guys get to experience that side of of true pack dynamics that almost nobody else well i shouldn't say that they're like uh i mean a lot of the the hunting dogs the hound dogs you know they they they have to deal with that too and they have different triggers and different selections of course um but that's that's really cool um what do you like what is the what what breeds like what is the breed like everybody i think i think people that are not in the sport they don't really they we we all think it's all they're all either huskies or or whatever but i don't think that's the case right i mean well yes and no they're not i'll tell you what they're not first of all they're not the malamute which is your iconic big fluffy you know 120 pound dog that looks like a wolf basically so if you've ever seen the movies eight below um or something like that you know they're going to use the big iconic fluffy alaskan husky these are draft horses there is they are sled dogs yes they they pull sleds they're a draft animal uh but they are not an endurance animal right or well let me let me rephrase that they're not a speed dog so again you're not going to see a draft horse in the kentucky derby that doesn't mean the draft horse isn't a good working animal it can pull a lot of weight it has its place and it's way better than a than a thoroughbred at pulling a plow there's no doubt about that but um there has never been a team of malamutes that have finished the iditarod malamutes also do well in um expedition type setting you know that's what they're made for their metabolism is a lot lower they can run on very little food they have the great big hair coat they can be out in 40 50 below temperatures and not care no so they have their place but racing is not really where they thrive siberian huskies are the other kind of you

you know purebred husky dog or pulling dog and the siberian huskies obviously derived from siberia they tend to be a little bit smaller than than malamutes there's a lot wide variety i've seen siberians that are close to 100 pounds i've seen siberians that are 35 pounds right and they are again kind of the show dogs that's what you're going to see in the movies they have the beautiful you know markings on their face and the fluffy hair and the curly tail and all that good stuff there have been siberians who have finished the iditarod but never competitively right they're never in the in the top of the race it's more of like um some mushers just like running siberians they look pretty and they're there seems to be their own little click if you will like you know as though it's a superior thing i know exactly what you're talking i'm sure that's everywhere in sports right if you're it's like my my thinking is okay maybe you are a better dog person but why would you handle that or give yourself that handicap right off the bat right um so ultimately what races and wins the iditarod and the main competing dogs are what we call alaskan huskies it is a mixed breed dog it is not an akc registered anything its definition is basically a mutt but where the mutt came from is in the early 1900s the late 1800s there was the gold rush in the yukon territory and then subsequently in alaska and dogs were incredibly valuable sled dogs were the best way to move materials for most of the year up here in alaska you know from fall till spring that's how everything moved we have records of one dog being sold for three thousand dollars in 1908 which gold was worth 20 an ounce at the time right so these dogs were incredibly valuable maybe you've read uh jack london's you know uh book call of the wild right that's that's how i started with dogs that book is what got me into dogs very cool all right so it's it's a fictional story but it is true to the era right dogs were stolen taken to alaska to be sled dogs now these dogs could be anything they could be newfoundlands they could be you know wolfhounds they did prefer working dogs because they had a work ethic even if their work ethic was focused towards herding it was easier to transition that to pulling than just you know some random dog that had no work ethic but what we saw was these dogs came to alaska of all varieties except chihuahuas i don't think any chihuahuas came up here but everything else and those were crossed with malamutes and siberians which were the native pulling dogs

and the resulting butt was just generically called the alaskan husky now if you read call the wild you also know um it was not a polite or kind or soft era so the dogs that survived the gold rush were a hardy tough dog and they were mixed but they had the right traits right so it's some very very harsh selective you know breeding if you will there was lots of puppies but the ones that were still around and let's say 1925 which was kind of the the end of of sled dogs in many ways the ones that were still around at that point um were a tough hardy you know mixed breed dog that was just generically again called the alaskan husky now since then we have done a lot of selective breeding and if you go to jeff king's kennel or my kennel or martin muser's kennel or lance mackey's kennel you're going to see very distinct lines of these dogs and you can pick them out by their facial structures so they're very selectively bred you know i've i know of sled dogs that have been sold for as much as twenty thousand dollars for genetics right so it is a specific line i've got my big my big book of pedigrees breeding is very important but the base is originally a mutt so how come the american kennel club never put their hands into it which is very good that they didn't but even though we're saying they're mixed and they're mutts they're clearly selected for a very long time and there is types that i mean obviously like a dog that i would see and i would just walk by and say that's a mutt you will say no that's not a mutt correct yeah no that you could definitely pick out a sled dog and my sled dogs are you know all different colors because we've never cared about what color they are right they're gray they're orange they're black i have a lot of black and tan dogs you know primarily black with maybe tan or white legs and little dots above their eyes i've got other ones that have the very stereotypical husky look um i've got a lot that are just all white so that part has never been important but if you look a little bit deeper you see the huge chest cavity right you see the certain structure of the legs and the back and the facial structure you're like all right that is a sled dog um so i don't know why the you know american kennel club or anything hasn't ever messed with it i'm honestly very unaware of them because they're not involved with sled dogs so i don't know as an organization anything about it i don't know on that one it's never been important to me yes that's perfect that they are not and speaking of this it's not

like really i mean the moment the moment this is proven over and over again the moment it becomes a thing and it becomes a kennel club regulated the breed is close to the end of it this is a very very similar in some ways the the malinois the dogs that i breed um well what is interesting they have two different types now you have the show types but you have the working type of malinois that you you're really looking at it exactly how you describe it it has to it has to be able to move it has to have endurance it has to have um agility and all the gripping behavior and all this stuff now if the one year is floppy if there is a little more white if there is these are all they are not even compromises they are just part of how it goes because ultimately that the workability is what matters and and in belgium the belgian ring sport is what keeps the breed even today it became very very popular i mean so many movies and you know how movies can damage the breeds right i mean sled dogs is super example of it i and uh but yeah that's a it's very good that basically what i'm trying to say it's really cool that you're out of the show type of dogs and you focus on what's important because it's the only way to have healthy dogs that enjoy life because they have a purpose there is no like it's just such a it's almost very hard to even debate with people that are trying like how right now it was last year they um here in florida in in tampa we had a racetrack and they closed it because it's inhumane because whatever and you end up with dogs that are bred to run and enjoy and eventually they're gonna have to live a life on a flexi lead walking walking around the block for the rest of their lives it sucks to be that dog it's not very fulfilling to them no there is it's really like it's like i i think purpose in life is it's critical and and we don't know very few people outside the people that actually train in like like sled dogs for example you know um they don't understand the joy of of having a purpose it's like no this is who i am this is what i do i i and and and and then i don't know how every once in a while we hear how you know the animal rights activists and i mean they're putting a lot of pressure on you guys right now too i mean they've been doing it for quite some time but hopefully hopefully it's not gonna ever end up to to the point to where they will stop the races because that that i don't know how what what do you think first of all humans have a very bad habit in general of

telling and not listening right we say we want to impose our perception of the world onto every animal every being and every other person usually right so i guess what i mean by that is if you look at this dog racing and the person says oh i wouldn't want to do that they assume that the dog wouldn't want to do that they never ask the question what does the dog want to do right and like you mentioned before when you see a team of dogs and they're a very calm you know friendly fluffy nice dog but as soon as the harness comes out and it's time to work you know they go from being just down here mellow to up here just crazy hyper that's what they love that's what they live for so just because the human wants to sit on a couch and be inside doesn't mean that that's what the dog wants to do so sometimes we need to ask not tell what what then you know what what do you want to do and a dog that is bred for a job needs to have a job though one of the worst things i see is when somebody has a dog that's bred for a very specific purpose whether it be a herding dog or a malinois or a sled dog and they like it because it looks in a certain way or they saw in a movie that a malinois you know took down osama bin laden now they want to be cool and have a malinois and now they have a malinois on a 600 square foot apartment and they wonder why the dog is is misbehaving and bad it's like you know what is going on in your head this dog has a job and this dog is only happy if it is allowed to and able to do its job you know on some regular basis so as far as the the animal rights thing i i have a split opinion on that um and i guess what i mean is i feel like there's multiple levels on one level i think you have people that actually honestly have compassion and they care about animals they care about people and they think that they are doing a good thing they think that they are donating to a good cause they think that you know if you read the the pita propaganda propaganda on pretty much probably any working dog and if you believed it that would sound really cruel right right and so they think that they are they're doing the right thing then you have the other level which is the one that's writing the propaganda and they can turn a blind eye to every fact and information and just flatly make up stories um and i think on that side but i think it's a big con quite frankly they are preying on people's compassion they know that people are compassionate or many of them are they know that they're willing to donate and so they tell them a big sob story and they also know that the

people won't ever actually fact check any of this stuff and those people i don't appreciate in the least to put it very mildly um because they're they're preying on on compassion which i think is one of the most valuable you know traits that you can have and so that's the part that frustrates me so when i see somebody you know protesting something like like mushing what i first wonder is is this a good person that's been misled or my first reaction isn't oh this is a bad person because i think many of them are good people that have been misled so i i in turn have compassion for them you know does that make sense yes absolutely so i feel like what we need to do better it's it's easy to be frustrated and and hate somebody say oh man why do they do this but the real question comes down to what are you going to do about it right um you can be frustrated all you want but if you don't do anything about it it's not going to change anything so i think we need to do more um to inform people you know if if we care what they think then you should do more to inform and the more that you do like this that people see behind the scenes and see that you know okay this is what racing the iditarod about is about i would be doing the same thing i'm doing right now even if there was no iditarod i have chosen to spend my life surrounded by animals not because i hate animals and i want to abuse them no because i love animals more than most anybody on the planet i suspect and i have chosen to spend my life working with dogs because i like dogs not because i dislike dogs the races give me and the dogs a sense of purpose and something to work towards and a reason to become better at what we do a reason to be more attentive to learn more about the dogs and understand the dogs and i think understanding is caring right so the more i understand my dog the more compassion i have the more depth of knowledge about them i have the more i can help them to be better and we create a positive spiral where the team gets better and better and better and if you do all those things right then the races win themselves right if you can do all the basic things right so the the biggest advice i have for for mushers that want to improve when they ask how do i do better in the race the first step is forget about the race the question you need to be asking is how do i become a better dog person because if you do that you will become better in the race without trying and yes there's some blatantly bad tactical things you can do on the race but that's a very small portion the root of it is being a great dog person and being

really good at traveling with dogs and understanding them and if you do that then again you know the results will take care of themselves very well very well put yeah that's uh wow i don't even know what to say to that one that's really good and you i mean you you speak quite a bit you you you have some speaking engagements you do you do a lot of good stuff for the for the for the dogs and the sport and is a like this year i think something they did a little bit something different to where it like they used maybe more social media like the whole editorot like the the the people the organizers like it was i think they touched more people in a good way or was it just somehow i stumbled upon it i don't know i don't know i'm generally pretty busy during the iditarod so i don't get to see a lot of the the media they do um i have been involved with that a little bit in 2020 i didn't i didn't race and so i did commentary for a race in russia for a race in norway for a race in minnesota and also the iditarod that year i was kind of doing commentary type stuff and that was really fun to help bring the sport and instead of just seeing it on the surface if you can understand what's happening below the surface it gets so much more understanding and gives people a depth of knowledge but uh i think there's a lot we can do better as a sport one of the things that's difficult about the iditarod is that it's it's known around the world it's a big event if you will but how should i say this um the event is not as big as it appears so it's known it has a big name but if you look behind the curtain it's a small grassroots volunteer run primarily event and yes there's employees and whatnot but it's a pretty small operation and if we go back in the you know staying in line with the the pita narrative here the pita's kind of interaction with it what happened to the iditarod is in the 80s the iditarod was still a bunch of guys who loved having dogs you know some of the the last or i shouldn't say the last but there were fewer and fewer teams in the native villages as they'd been replaced by snowmobiles and airplanes and the reason we started the iditarod was to keep the culture and the history of sled dogs alive to keep the breed alive by giving them a purpose because dog teams no longer had the male carrying contract they were no longer the the best way to haul freight in alaska airplanes and snow machines took that job so it was a way to keep the breed alive as it was going extinct and this was a fun small town or you know small state activity nobody knew about the iditarod until libby riddles

and susan butcher you know the two women that won the iditarod um won the iditarod and this was right during you know everything else that was going on in our country at the time so all of a sudden the iditarod was thrust upon a nation that had no history or knowledge or understanding it became a spectator sport but the race itself never became a big organization it's not nascar it's not kentucky derby it's not major league baseball or nba or you know nfl or anything like that there's not a big you know media machine if you will now we're doing good if we have one person that's less than 70 years old doing a facebook post on occasion right so what that does though is it makes us a really easy target for pita i've always joked that if the iditarod wasn't going to run because of finances pita would sponsor the iditarod because we have to be one of their biggest fundraising events every year i think they use it as a fundraising thing right they need this big visual thing we can't really fight back we're just a podunk little little operation you know you never hear about pita picking on bull riding i'm sure they do but it's not it's not effective right but they can tug on the heartstrings we can't mount a a real defense if you will so it's a big image with a small core that actually runs it and it's a really easy target so they can go to california and new york and florida and wherever else and raise money off people that are told this information they have no other information to counter it and it's a fundraising opportunity so honestly i don't think pita would ever want to see the iditarod go away because they need the iditarod wow that's a whole different twist to look at it ada yeah no it totally makes sense you know it really does so so okay i know we are with this like i don't even know how long we've been talking or you've been talking because i'm just like a little sponge here yeah i apologize i get running on a topic i like talking about dog no i totally i totally i totally enjoy it and i'm sure all all my the audience will love this but like i i know this is going to be such an interesting podcast and i think that's a that that is something that we need to do as dog community with different like learn about each other's like i'm so interested and i literally can listen to all the things and there's a lot of it that you're saying is on one side so fresh and so new and on the other side it's still we're still talking dogs to you know when the level of two dog people talking dogs and it's it's just

it's really really cool and uh i uh you mentioned that you know like you did you went to russia you went to norway how how are they different with with their training with their dogs like yeah um there's definitely differences right so i would say alaska is really kind of the the place that sled dogs blossomed and sled dogs and humans you know grew together for thousands of years you know there's there's some debate about how long people have been you know working in conjunction with sled dogs in alaska but it's somewhere between four and ten thousand years depending on which scientists you listen to right so for a very long time people have been evolving with dogs and you could make a very strong case that human habitation of alaska would not have been possible or certainly not as convenient without the aid of of dogs as both transportation and hunting and companionship and protection those were kind of the main things and obviously if you look back even a thousand years populations of people along the yukon river and many other places in alaska but largely along the rivers uh had these populations of dogs and it was hard to scrape out a living for one human a thousand years ago in alaska so obviously they deemed it necessary or prudent to harvest enough fish and meat and you know sustenance to keep six dogs alive throughout the year as well because they were that valuable to them obviously you know that's the truest uh proof in something is that they did it and they needed to do it this was not a time that it was a luxury item it was because it was from necessity so here in alaska we have grown with dogs and i think the relationship with dogs is about a mutual dependency right we need each other to accomplish the task and the reason i say that is because that's one thing that i think at the very very core of the culture with dogs is different when you go to norway for example norway's history with dogs is different there i mean they've had some phenomenal dog mushers don't get me wrong um you know leonard seppla probably for first and foremost amongst them um you know they have a a history with them but it's more about expedition and dogs were a useful tool in many places in a more modernized time and place so when they went to um let's say antarctica right they took sled dogs and instead of snow machines and and ponies which sled dogs proved to be you know the best method when they were racing to the south pole even in that trip the sled dogs were never supposed to return from that trip you know the

sled dogs were hauling freight on the way out and did not return and i don't want to say that that's how it is now but there's this very subtle slight difference that manifests a little different as we're 100 150 years you know i forgive my uh my lack of historical knowledge here but i think about 100 years later um and it's slightly different i feel like it's viewed just a little bit different but one of the things i love about long distance racing is the style of racing that i utilize where it's more about maintaining a really high performance team and not so much about racing it's not about pushing a team it's about building a team and i think that's a major mind shift that we've had even in the iditarod in the last 20 years um is twofold one it is the quickest way to reach the finish line if i don't worry about making my team go faster if they're not going fast enough it's because they don't feel well enough they don't have enough calories you know if so if i can address the root causes i let them worry about the speed i pretty much never ask for speed i'm going to make sure that they are brought up and if they are up here they're going to run up here if they're feeling down here they're going to run down here it's very easy i if i artificially increase the speed it's only going to exacerbate the issue that caused them to be slower in the first place so if they're not feeling well and i start talking to them and you know whistling it up and making fun noises and getting their adrenaline up yes they will go faster but then tomorrow they're going to be even more depleted and you know in your you're on a negative trajectory that that math just doesn't work right so if they're feeling down if anything i need to bring them down farther and that way that we're taking less energy out of them on this run i need to give them a longer rest on the next break i need to address if there's any other underlying issues and when their base health comes up and they're feeling rested and you you know really rejuvenated they'll take care of the speed and so i guess all that to say when you have a sport that is correctly formulated to where doing the sport correctly produces the best results it's not like you can do things wrong and get better results and then you have this debate of oh well maybe they're doing it unethically and that's why they're they're winning no i really honestly think in ultra long distance racing as we do the best way to do well in the sport is to do the sport correctly not you know pushing a you know um unnaturally hard or anything like that

yeah yeah so in in norway i would say that's that's a shift that's happened as well i think they were more in a marching mindset much slower teams i don't think they ever expected to have the high-end speed and we've started to see that change i think recently um russia you know they've had all sorts of other issues um and challenges in life so mushing as a sport is very young over there it's very new and i think you have well-meaning people um trying to do it well and what i saw there was mostly a lack of knowledge but i also saw a hunger for knowledge so it's not a fault of the people participating in the sport i was i was blown away by how much they wanted to learn and absorb and they just they don't have the history that we have that have has allowed me to grow up in this sport that i grew up in it's just a very different sport over there so that was really fun when i was over there um it was in the middle of a race commentating and whatnot and there was like a 24-hour stop down and we did an impromptu symposium you know i had another iditarod finisher that we came over there to help do it and so we just you know pulled them all together had a couple you know random people that could kind of translate and we did a two-hour symposium and the people were so great that was one of the warmest places that i've ever been the people were super super nice um so i think that's a growing one but i just don't know if economically at least the region that we were in i'm sure it's different everywhere but economically you know it you have to clear a lot of hurdles to be able to maintain a dog team but what i saw is people that really wanted to do it right and then finally in minnesota i would say it was more of a recreational mindset you know the knowledge base again is much less than what we have in alaska um just because it's a it's a longer sport we have more of a community right and to do well in a sport it's nice to have a strong community that pushes you to be better and when you have questions you have so much knowledge to help build it there so again it's not a lack of the people it's just a lack of you know the history if you will super interesting how how much how much judging like you i mean obviously there is some referees that have to follow make sure that you are within the rules but like like the sport i'm in a a lot a lot is left to the interpretation of a specific judge and i have the feeling that you you are a little bit more lucky in that regards to where you have a finish line bottom bottom line right tangible measurable objective right so it there's

not a whole lot that's left to the interpretation now yes you have to stay within the rules of course so how do you get this qualified from the editorot well i'm sure there's a lot of ways thankfully i've never never had to find out on any of them is it even a thing yes yeah absolutely um you know if any mistreatment of dogs is obviously you know you're out right so that's that's a pretty obvious one um they oftentimes you know i'm thinking of a few occasions or occurrences where people have had time penalties you know in in one race like the yukon quest um you know they do a good job of enforce or used to the race is no more but you know if you forgot some of your mandatory equipment you know they had a preset all right if you forgot your axe that's a 30 minute time penalty right so very tangible measurable because there are mandatory items you have to have with you um on the iditarod you know there is a much sure that the the rules changed and it was legitimately an honest mistake but you were only allowed to have two dogs abreast you know side by side and he left the starting line with three dogs side by side and it was a it was a two-hour penalty you know that one is debated i mean it was an honest mistake it's not like he was trying to get away with something or being sneaky it's not like he was out in the middle of nowhere and somebody saw him right and there is no real benefit from doing that correct or or is there no no he was he was intending to put some of you know the dog that he had three wide once he left the starting line he was going to put it in the sled to carry it because we can also do that you can carry a dog in the sled so oftentimes you don't need 14 dogs worth of power so if you can give a dog a break i use that very selectively if there's a dog that isn't having a good day maybe they were they overworked themselves a little bit yesterday when we got to the camp they didn't eat as much as they should have and now we're going out on the next run and if i let that dog you know ride for the first two hours i just took and made a go from a four-hour break to a six-hour break um he had more time to digest food get more calories into them and they bounced back and now they're back on their a-game right so you can use that as a tool so he was intending to do that and so started with less toe line and just had you know two sets of dogs three abreast or something like that but again it was honest mistake but there's a time penalty for that this year we had a really unique situation where you're not allowed to take dogs indoors during the race

and there are shelter cabins many of the checkpoints are native villages along the way and so people are traveling between those villages on snowmobile primarily and it might be 40 miles between the village and halfway in between at 20 miles they'll put what they call a shelter cabin because if you get caught out in those elements and your snow machine breaks down you know you can be in a real pickle so if it's you know 40 miles between the check or between the villages and halfway between there you have a shelter cabin if your snow machine breaks down it's not possible to be more than 10 miles away from you know either back to the town or to the shelter cabin and so and that's a walkable distance and uh anyway so there were some bad storms and whatnot and there were some teams that took their dogs inside of a shelter cabin which is against the rules you're not allowed to to do that um and that was a i think perhaps a poorly handled thing there was a time penalty and then reversed and it was it was a little bit convoluted but that is not allowed the point is we are supposed to be arctic travelers we need to have the proper gear and equipment to travel the distance now yes absolutely if you feel that it is in if your life is in danger or your dog's life is in danger then absolutely you know first and most important thing is survive right the race is just a game we just do it for fun so go inside be safe but also you should expect that if you're no longer playing within the rules or you're accepting an advantage there should be a time penalty um that comes with it right and you see this in mushing where people try to maybe um cut weight by carrying you know lighter dog jackets or not carrying enough emergency food which will help you in you know most times until it doesn't so when you run those risks you have to be prepared to handle the consequences and so if you say all right i'm going to go really light but if a storm comes up i'm going to have to get inside a shelter cabin you know to to be safe then that's going to hurt you on those occasions so i guess it's just accepting the rules that there are so yeah it's beautiful it's yes for sure you have no idea like i i wish somehow our sport can be this way but it's not so we we deal with something tell me before we before we go tell me about uh i i know you have uh like your actual what you do for living is you you have all the cool tours that you do your people come and tell me a little bit about this i'm i am sure that i will be visiting you like i have no doubt that i'm gonna be visiting you

but uh i i also know that a lot of the people that listen want to know and and sure you know that's probably the honestly the best way that we expose our sport to the greater population is by letting people come firsthand see you can read this article you can read that article and come up with whatever opinion you want you can see a movie or a documentary or a show those are all great too but until you actually see it with your own eyes and you know experience dog sleds and the sled dogs more importantly it's hard to really you know form a and nothing is better for forming an opinion or understanding an event than just seeing it so what we do is here where i am now i'm in alkeaton alaska this is my home i have 100 acres here and about uh we have a total of about 100 sled dogs which is a lot of dogs ranging in age from little puppies up to i think beetle's the oldest dog in the kennel right now and he's i think he's almost 17 years old and uh he's pretty awesome little dog he still romps around and for about an hour maybe two hours a day he acts the same as he was when he was two but the rest of the day he spends sleeping on the couch so the amount of active time is just less but um anyway so we do tours here in the winter time people are driving their own small team of dogs um we have about six miles of trail that are on the property you know they're built just for you know novice mushers to learn how to do it so it's very simple very straightforward um i also have about depending on the season you know in the summertime we have about 23 people that are you know working here with me in the winter time it goes down to about eight or nine people that are here working with me and i think sometimes it's hard for people to wrap their mind around 100 dogs right but to look at it correctly i don't have 100 dogs i have a community which is you know let's say 10 people counting myself and 100 dogs and this is what we do 18 plus hours a day so i have my group of dogs and then i have other people that are specifically working you're working with the yearlings and i'm overseeing you i'm working with you i'm helping you evolve but these 10 dogs are this person's responsibility and that's what you do all day long and i can guarantee you these dogs have more one-on-one time with humans than most house pets that you know stay home while you go to go to work and then sits with you on the couch for a few minutes in the afternoon so and not just time but quality of time we're actually doing something interacting accomplishing a task you know it's fulfilling time

yes but we let people come into our kennel and see you know this is we basically have an open door kennel we constantly have people coming and going guests in the winter time they're driving a sled touring the kennels kind of seeing each um age group of dogs and kind of understanding i look at it in two ways one what is a a day in the life of a sled dog and take that larger to a year in the life of a sled dog what are they doing in the summer what are they doing in the fall what does winter look like what does racing look like and then broaden that view out even a little bit farther to what is the life cycle of a sled dog what are they doing when they're puppies when they're two-year-olds when they're five years old when they're 14 years old what is their life look like and then also kind of the same with the musher the human who's doing it along with them so that's the experience there in the summertime we do basically the same thing and uh instead of running on sleds we have wheeled carts and again the guests are actually driving the carts and this is called dryland mushing which on a on a side note i think in a lot of ways that's the future of mushing because this is a sport that you can participate in not just in the arctic regions so i've spoken at mushing symposiums and in madrid right this is not where you generally think of of you know sled dog sports happening but anytime that you are traveling with a dog you are doing some form of of mushing if you will whether it's running with a dog which we call can across or bike joring or kick bikes with the dogs pulling or what we have is like a four-wheeled cart that you stand up and drive so i think the long-term future of mushing is going to be you know this this form where it can be participated in in much bigger geographic regions and also requires fewer dogs you can be very competitive in these events and they require two to four dogs right so it's it's a great way to see mushing growing where people don't aren't capable of doing what i do and that's live in alaska and have lots of space and lots of dogs and and you'll do it at that level but it's still mushing and you get the same essence of the sport at a different different level so we do those tours in the summer and then i also have um just recently a a camp of dogs they leave here in the summer and go up to a glacier and you can actually take a helicopter up to a glacier and mush on a sled on snow even in the summer months so right now most of my race dogs and uh i had a jv team in the

iditarod last year which um we were very proud to have them finish in seventh place which was not bad at all for a jv team what is a jv team what do you call a jv team um well i guess it'd be junior varsity but it's okay um that's my english yeah no worries um so when i'm training a group of dogs now i do have many dogs going into training partially because one uh we have a lot of people here and i love seeing people get excited about the sport and growing the sport so a lot of the people here they're going to be doing mid-distance races and have aspirations to run the iditarod some of them just want to learn more about mushing because they want to have 10 dogs of their own and you know just travel the back country with dogs so they enjoy mushing but not for the racing just to travel right so we have all different types and i think any involvement in the sport is good you don't have to compete to enjoy the sport right i'm sure that's true in any of the dog sports so the competition is fun for me but it doesn't mean that that is the only way that other people can enjoy the sport um so yeah we have those we need we need the depth of dogs as well because we have so many people here doing it and uh we generally last year i was training a large group of dogs because we had people doing it at different levels i had a big pool of dogs that i was working with and training with and we were effectively training two teams together i took the excuse my cat um i took the the main group um you'll basically what we'd call the a team and they went and you know we had a great race um finished second place this year we had a lot of challenges along the way but i think this was honestly my best race ever as far as when i look at how we handled the challenges to be able to pull off the finish we did i'm very very proud of this accomplishment and i don't think i could have done this with my knowledge i had five years ago quite honestly uh then our second team was basically i took the top 14 and then 15 down went with um another mushroom we had working here and finished in seventh place so he was helping me train my dogs we were able to train you know two groups of dogs there's actually three of us primarily working with that that about 30 dogs that we were working with i like to keep it about 10 dogs per person 10 to 12 dogs per person is a is a manageable number because most of what we do happens in a group right we run 10 or 12 dogs at a time so that's that's an appropriate number if you start getting over

certainly over 15 dogs per person i think it's it's challenging you're gonna have some very very long days and um obviously keeping the quality of life super high is very very important so wow wow yeah we definitely like i will i will get um i mean i'm sure people will be able to find you just to google the name it's super easy but i will definitely list uh you know your websites and how to get a hold of you because i know like i know i'm going i'm coming to see you like this coming winter i'm coming to see you there is no question in my mind like that would be one of the things um um what last last thing what are the basic commands in the sled like not not outside but within like what how what what do the dogs need to know yeah we have very few commands honestly um what we do i mean when i think about what i do with dogs yes i train specific dogs and we train into like i do a lot of training for the lead dogs particularly on an individual basis a lot and that makes a big difference but 90 of what we do as a person is you're managing a pack you are basically pretending to be the alpha dog and a pack of wolves that's what we're doing and we're trying to do it in a way that they are as comfortable and relaxed as possible i'm always telling my people the only thing the dog should have to worry about is running happily down the trail they should never have fear of any sort right they should never be afraid of um am i going to get tired before we stop or is there going to be food or where am i going to sleep or is this dog behind me going to bite me in the tail right none of those should ever even cross their mind so we're raising a very secure comfortable relaxed dog because that's where you're going to see your best performance this has been studied tremendously in human athletes you know if you have a human athlete that's great at whatever their sport is and completely removed and unrelated to their athletic ability they're going through a bad divorce that affects their performance because now their mind is separated and it we don't thrive when we're not relaxed right it's the same with dogs they need to be happy they need to be relaxed they need to be secure and they need to have a purpose and be fulfilling that purpose and now you have a strong animal and this is what i was talking about before saying we have to raise the entire dog don't just focus on the physical side i don't care how far your dog can jump or how hard it can bite or how long it can run because if you don't if you're not training the

whole dog you as a human are not getting 90 of the experience right it's about training the whole animal there but the the main commands are g and haw for right and left and we do have you know going is basically you you stop holding them back right i joke that driving a dog team is a lot like driving a tractor with a decelerator right so the default position here is we're going unless i am on the brake or telling them to stop or slowing them down when i do stop i have an anchor i put in the snow and it holds them stop um we have you know commands where obviously the leaders are responsible to hold the line tight but even a lot of the things it's not so much command driven as habit driven so yes i teach them the command but then i expect that when they're in this situation that they will do this does that make sense so if i put you in the lead of the team i expect you to be leaning into the harness holding the line tight and i shouldn't have to yes i can tell you line up which is the command but i'm not going to be telling them that if they're doing their job correctly so there are a lot of commands but most of it's building a habit and it really doesn't matter what i mean i could tell them whatever random made-up word i want um but you know the the intent should be there that they are holding this line tight they're behaving in a certain way they're behaving with their pack mates in a certain way when we stop and camp they're they're doing what they're supposed to be doing eating their food curling up and going to sleep when i'm working with them putting the ointment on their feet or administering medication or anything else i expect them to you know work with me i don't want to be fighting against my dog my dog should always be trying to accomplish the same goal i am if i'm trying to untangle the team from some impossible rat's nest you know where we got you know like again a tree fell across the trail and we're in a big ball they should not all be thinking about different things trying to do different things i want to sniff this female i want to know they should be helping me accomplish the task in front of me regardless of what that task is so most of the commands are not so much you know a specific command as far as training how do we handle the situation together and i talk to them just like i am you you know and i i don't know how much of it they understand but i think they understand intent right when i'm thinking about what i want them to do and talking to them in a way i think they understand intent and most importantly they're they are trying to understand what i want

them to do and that's a huge hurdle we see this when we're training lead dogs when it goes from when it goes from them knowing the commands because they've been in the team and they hear g and haw and they know that g means right and haw means left to taking the next step to knowing that they need to make the team go right or make the team go left taking responsibility for the command uh and this starts with when they're puppies i'll teach them sit not because they ever need to know how to sit but they start to get in their brain when i say something there is a reaction that i want them to do right it's not like oh the human saying said that's interesting they understand that if he's saying something he wants me to do something and then if they're wanting to do the right thing they'll try different things and even tone of voice of no and they're like oh it wasn't this one i'll try something else oh yeah happy voice okay that is what he wants me to do so it's more of this living breathing communication more than fixed commands and even steering a lead dog you know if i blindfolded you and you were walking away from me and i'm going to give you voice commands to steer if i say go right how much right 90 degrees one step so even this is a communication so when i'm steering a leader you know it's ggg up right there you know and so they start swinging in a direction and pull forward a little bit left a little bit right and then if they're searching the horizon they see the trail marker that i see and then they'll beeline straight for that one right and even that i find that i communicate with different lead dogs differently you know some of them we have an entirely different communication pattern than others so i i don't know that i could pinpoint certain commands it's more of us just going out there and accomplishing together you you you put it brilliantly i mean it just totally makes sense this is like it's beautiful and i want to go back to this one thing and it's it's it's the same with every dog and it's the same with people too like even even if you have the genetic predisposition and you love doing something it's very easy to get burned by just pushing you overboard and forcing you to do it just like just you know always come to mind kids that are so talented in tennis or piano or whatever and and the parent just do it over and over until the kid the moment it's old enough to say i'm not touching a rocket anymore and and that i think it's a it's what really makes champions is understanding how to keep the passion and even if you are dictating still not to make the dog feel

that it's being forced into that's a that's something not many people talk about and and and you did and i love it well one of the huge places we see that how i would say it is you always have to keep the joy it always has to be fun because you can you can make somebody do something but they will never do as well as if they want to do it so my goal is to manage the team to where they want to do what i want to do right we're trying to accomplish the same task even in the micro getting untangled i want them to have the same goal and objective as i have on the macro i want them to travel and be happy and excited and i've always said i want a dog that wants to go as much as i do right we're we're in the same in the same path where we see this most acutely is the transition when we get done with the camp like we've been sleeping the dogs are sound asleep right we wake up we put the shoes on their feet we put them in from camping formation into traveling formation hooking up the lines maybe we're putting different lead dogs in front and they're still groggy imagine you um after having a very very very tough long day and then you sleep you know two hours and somebody wakes you up you're you want coffee you want a few minutes to wake up right so this is a tough transition because now we're going to start traveling down the trail this is a really critical moment where you can take this from being really fun to being drudgery where they don't you know it's difficult for them so i'm always people because we think about racing right we're thinking about i need to be in a hurry i've got the rest now the time between when i'm done resting to when i'm you know traveling at nine miles an hour is is wasted time but you have to look at it from the dog's perspective again look at the long-term sustainability we're going to be out here for nine days i would much rather give up 10 or 15 minutes here to make sure it stays fun so when i leave a checkpoint i always joke that i i look terrible leaving checkpoints right i've got half my dogs hooked up half aren't hooked up because i wake them up we'll go 100 yards we'll stop they go to the bathroom i'll take off a couple more of the jackets that they were wearing when they're sleeping you're petting them you're you know rubbing on them letting them wake up go a little bit farther and i want this transition to be smooth and comfortable you see so often that mushers know that the cameras are watching they know that their competition is watching when you leave

a checkpoint and we instantly the first thing we do when we're around people that we're you know we want to impress or we're nervous about we're going to puff up we're going to look big and we want to you know take off and have the team go flying out of there and and and so what we do from our you know selfish standpoint as you see people that they'll be clanking a snow hook together making lots of noise and they're spiking the adrenaline on the dogs and they're almost like i don't want to say scaring them out there but they're creating this very high stress environment you have to remember this dog was found asleep five minutes ago i don't care what we look like that's that doesn't matter what matters is are we going to have a nice easy transition are we then going to have fun out there if the dogs warm up gradually we're going to have less injuries pretty soon when they feel comfortable when they feel warmed up and they've gone to the bathroom we're going to be going nine and a half ten miles an hour right back to fast speed and when we come into the next checkpoint it's going to look like a monster but we don't need to sacrifice doing it correctly to look good right right and then you also see teams that have trouble leaving checkpoints where because it's that transition that maybe the dogs don't want to go and my dogs they're not afraid of going out on the trail it's no different than in the checkpoint it's a gradual smooth very comfortable environment and so i'll gladly give up the few minutes to make sure that it's comfortable for the for the dogs because in the long run that pays dividends and it's huge to not having to not losing the joy right we're removing the difficult most difficult part of the day where you have to look at what is hard about this for the dogs and how do i get rid of as much of that as possible to make it comfortable to make it fun because to have like gamble who was eight almost nine years old when we won the iditaron 2021 for him still to be striving just driving focus he was still one of the most excited dogs that really makes me happy because it makes me feel like i did this whole career with a dog and here he is still doing the same thing last year he wasn't on my racing team he was training the two-year-olds which is the next step down so basically he went down to college sports and he ran two races last year shorter distance with a a i don't want to say a novice musher he's a pretty accomplished musher he's been with me for i think three years now and he's doing these mid-distance races and every time gamble was in lead

of these young pups transitioning that knowledge to the next generation and still you see this just focus and this joy in his eyes when he's leaning into the harness and this is at the end of a 300 mile race you know and wow when i see that it's like okay we did it right we did it right where he still loves the sport as much as he did when he was a two-year-old and now he's a 10 year old right that's that's where you should be shooting not you should never be burning them up you should always be building them up amazing amazing man i think we we should stop i don't know how long it's been this is crazy i have no idea either this is i apologize for rambling but uh no you get me you ask no good questions this is like talk about it like one of the best podcast stuff i mean like i i am genuinely so intrigued listening to you i mean it's it's the cool thing is about you know there is there's just so many components that are involved and and you know when you have this kind of conversation the time just goes you know and and and you certainly have the passion it's not just as we talk about man we can just keep going on but it's not about the competition it's about that passion and that's what we are we are dog people and we like to have the dogs have a purpose and be happy and to be part of it that's really what it is to share in that joy when you see a dog so excited to do what it's bred to do right and to be part of that and to help nurture that and watch them be able to do more and be you know for them to grow and expand as an individual to to watch that and to be part of it you get to share in their joy of it so i feel so thankful to have you know a sport that i enjoy to have something that has been fulfilling for me right i i feel like it has driven me to to push myself to become better at become a better dog person the races give us an opportunity to see if we can improve and of course we can always improve but you see other people do it differently and it makes you think you know i i see too often people say oh that's wrong and you say why is that wrong and they say because that's not how i do it well are they beating you yes okay so maybe you need to look at and i'm not saying copy them i'm saying look at what elements they're doing well because maybe they're they're not doing this perfectly but they're touching on something that's effective that's working so how do you take that little grain and

bring it into your program and keep growing no i don't want to duplicate any musher i don't want to be just like any other musher i want to take the best of all of them and bring that together i want to be able to race in fast races slow races tough races races where the dogs you know maybe get a flu bug all right this isn't the challenge we thought we would have this year like for me that's i was fighting a flu from day one in the dogs so i went out there and it wasn't the race we had hoped for but i was thinking about it like my goal of doing the iditarod was to come out here and overcome a challenge with the dogs it was not the challenge i expected but it's the challenge we were handed so we're going to do exactly that and we ended up finishing in second place we were only about an hour behind first um and i think like 17 hours ahead of third but uh for the for the challenges i feel like i had to be more of a dog person than i've ever had to be and when i look at a race the finishing position is one one aspect the bigger aspect is did we do everything perfectly yeah and of course the answer is always no we could have done something differently so then you take what could i have done better and how do i grow my knowledge grow my ability to to foster and raise an amazing dog team so yeah i'll be in this for a long time because you'll never you're never going to master it you're always going to find more to improve on and right when you think you've figured it out you'll get a dog that is somehow different than every dog before and it makes you reshape how you think to how do i teach this dog how do i communicate with him how does he understand the world or how does she feel about these situations and there again you just forced yourself to grow a little bit more to understand this new and different aspect so i'll be in it forever beautiful man i think we leave it here this is amazing like i i i think we just had the best like i i i totally enjoy this podcast my friend as did i again i apologize there's never a short answer because everything is so nuanced as i'm sure you know in dog training it's never a yes and no question you know somebody asked me what do i do when my dog does this and it's not oh you do x or y the question is why did the dog do that what was the dog thinking what was the dog experiencing and if the dog is doing that because he's nervous it's a different answer than if the dog is doing it because he's aggressive or if the dog is you know overconfident or you know

you have to figure out what the why and if you don't understand the why you'll never come up with the right answer so it all starts and ends with understanding the dog to be able to communicate and address the root cause not the symptom but the root cause if you can address that so again i apologize for the long answers and the long-winded aspect but i get excited about mushing and dogs and then all of these things are so nuanced so it makes it very difficult i'm i'm super happy that i had you super happy that we made this and then like yeah i i bet people will go through that podcast and wouldn't even stop so it's beautiful so anyway i will be in touch with you and uh i'm gonna start making plans because i am coming to alaska for sure to see you because that that's definitely the next step that has to happen and i'm hoping that some we brought enough interest to to dog crowd that is not familiar with what you guys do and and i think that's important for all of us to to appreciate and and support each other uh overall because it's a must you know we have a lot of pressure and and it's important so dallas thank you thank you thank you thank you we'll be in touch my friend thank you all right have a great day appreciate you taking the time you too you you you you you you you you you you